Feature Archives

Legislators and hundreds of Delta advocates held a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, July 7th, to oppose the peripheral canal -- what they call a budget-busting and environmentally destructive project that would approximate the Panama Canal in width and length. "I'm not going to vote for a plan that builds a Panama Canal down the middle of the 15th Assembly District,” exclaimed Assemblymember Joan Buchanan to loud applause.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, June 28th, a demonstration will begin at Vandenberg Air Force Base to protest the U.S. launch of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. The target of the rocket is the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, South Pacific.

Susan Jordan, a civil litigator and criminal justice lawyer from Mendocino County, died on Friday, May 29th in a plane crash in Utah. She was 67 years old and left a legacy of civil litigation and criminal justice work behind. Jordan represented several prominent political activists throughout her career, including Earth First!'s Judi Bari after she was car bombed with Daryl Cherney in 1990 and members of the SLA, Symbionese Liberation Army in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

If approved by the state legislature, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget plan will close 220 of 279 State Parks and Beaches, including each and every State Park and Beach in Santa Cruz County. The only public hearing on this proposal took place in Sacramento on June 2nd before the Legislative Budget Conference Committee.

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.

On Tuesday May 26th, the California Supreme Court's ruled in favor of Proposition 8 banning future same-sex marriages but upholding existing same-sex marriages. Street actions to protest discrimination are taking place throughout the day in California and elsewhere in the nation. In San Francisco, police arrested more than 150 protesters for blocking an intersection near City Hall shortly after the ruling was announced.

On May 19, activists in the San Francisco Bay Area and Fresno marked a Global Day of Action for death row inmate Troy Davis with rallies, vigils and public information sessions. Davis has been on Georgia's death row for more than 18 years despite a strong case of innocence. He lost his most recent appeal and his execution date is expected to be set soon.