Feature Archives

The Federal Communications Commission met at Stanford University on April 17 to hear discussion on the future of the Internet. Scores of local Internet users and activists spoke out for 90 seconds each on network neutrality and other concerns. After packing an east coast public hearing with hired seat-warmers, Comcast, AT&T and other industry heavyweights did not show up this time around.

Addy writes, "Since the administration is closing campus on 4/20, the UCSC students are extending an invitation to everyone to come up on Friday, April 18th to take over the quad. We'll have our 4/20 celebration early, to let them know that it is our campus, that we pay THEM. This new 4/20 policy is draconian and unnecessary as there have been no issues in the past."

African-American activist Metteyya Brahmana sent an email on March 19th urging voters in an April 13th Obama caucus at Cabrillo College to vote down Mayor Ryan Coonerty. Delegate candidates were competing for two seats for the 17th Congressional District, one male and one female. E-mail correspondence between Metteyya and the Mayor reposted to Santa Cruz Indymedia shows Coonerty's rationale for some of his positions as well as his short fuse.

Santa Cruz resident Matt Childers, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, testified at the Winter Soldier hearings held last month in Silver Springs, Maryland. Matt served two deployments to Iraq as an infantryman with the U.S. Marines. Originally from West Virginia, he now makes his home in Santa Cruz and is a student at Cabrillo College. His testimony was given as part of a panel on racism and dehumanization of the enemy in Iraq.

On April 8th, around noon, cyclist Christopher Evan Rock was killed at the intersection of Mission and Bay Streets in Santa Cruz. That is two deaths and one major injury at that intersection within the last year, due to a street design and a culture of driving that does not allow for the existence of cyclists. In a memorial bike ride the next day, approximately 100 people dressed in black rode up Mission St. from the clocktower to the intersection of Bay and Mission.

anonymous anarchists write, "A Wells Fargo in downtown Santa Cruz was paintbombed during the night. Wells Fargo invests in the GEO Group, the contractor which runs the gulag in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In addition to running GTMO, the GEO Group is also contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run its immigration detention facilities."

On April 6th, 7th and 9th, filmmaker Simón Sedillo led bilingual multi-media presentations in San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Cruz that included scene selections from three films, "El Enemigo Común" (2005), "El Machete" (2007) and "Paz Sin Justicia" (2008), in order to illustrate neoliberal atrocities and community based resistance to them in Oaxaca, Mexico.