Feature Archives

The Peace and Freedom Party held six presidential candidate forums this weekend to inform voters about their choices on the February 5th presidential preference primary ballot. These events started with a January 11th forum in Sacramento, and continued with events in San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego.

The California Nurses Association says insurer CIGNA has "blood on their hands." The family of a 17-year-old woman who died after being initially denied payment for a liver transplant is suing the teen's insurance company. Nataline Sarkisyan died on December 20th after her family removed her from life support. She had been in a vegetative state for weeks due to complications following a bone marrow transplant. Insurer CIGNA HealthCare had first denied a doctor-recommended liver transplant for Nataline, who suffered from leukemia, but had reversed course a day before her death in the face of mounting public pressure.

On December 14th, Rod Coronado entered a guilty plea in federal court in San Diego to one count of distribution of information related to the assembly of explosives and weapons of mass destruction. This was the charge that Rod had fought for almost two years and for which he faced approximately five to ten years in prison if found guilty at trial. Rod stated in an open letter that “hopefully this plea agreement will once and for all grant me closure in a well-known campaign of repression against me for my past involvement, association and support for covert campaigns against environmental destroyers and animal abusers..."

The day after Thanksgiving in the United States has traditionally been the biggest shopping day of the year, but many prefer to call that Friday "Buy Nothing Day." Animal liberation activists use this day as an opportunity to present anti-fur messages, while others point out the negative aspects of consumerism, such as its effects on society and the environment. Buy Nothing Day events in the Bay Area in 2007 ranged from street protests to alternative Christmas caroling, and from punk shows to a critical mass ride and a really, really free market.

On November 14, a routine CIA information and recruitment session was suddenly disrupted on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara when a small group of student protesters walked in and lead a man with bound hands to the front of the room, where he was laid on a table and (voluntarily*) tortured with a CIA-approved technique used to simulate drowning, known as water-boarding. The CIA speakers were struggling to speak over the "torture victim's" coughs and cries for help, while potential CIA recruits looked on with bewilderment at the grotesquely real portrayal of torture.

On the evening of November 11th, Border Patrol officers attacked participants in the closing rally of a week-long bi-national camp in Calexico / Mexicali protesting borders. The rally took place on both sides of the fence just east of the pedestrian border crossing. Nearly 100 Border Patrol agents used pepper gas pellets and batons to assault demonstrators on the U.S side. One protestor is being charged with two counts of assaulting a federal officer.

Live radio streams from the No Borders Camp

During the week of November 7-11th, the first No Borders Camp is taking place on the US-Mexico border. Participants who want to see "a world without borders, where no one is illegal" are meeting on both sides of the border in Mexicali (MX) and Calexico (US) and will march on Wednesday, Nov. 7th to take the camp. Following the establishment of the camp there will be different days of action against capitalism, immigrant detentions and the separation wall.