Feature Archives

Since July 4, community members in Santa Cruz have been sleeping one night a week at Santa Cruz City Hall to protest laws that criminalize sleeping in public places. Facing temperatures below the freezing mark, a small group of activists stayed the night for their twenty-fifth community sleepout at Santa Cruz City Hall on December 29. The next sleepout was planned for Tuesday, January 5.

Steve Schnaar writes: Santa Cruz City Council member Cynthia Chase, elected with a lot of progressive support based on her years of excellent work supporting women transitioning out of prison, has voted for some of the worst anti-homeless decisions to come out of the council recently. However when asked about the contradiction between her past progressive positions and these votes, she refuses to engage or explain herself.

Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry is facing three misdemeanor charges in Santa Cruz Superior Court as a result of his work to defend the rights of the poor. The original case stemmed from an action where McHenry replaced 33 "blue artist boxes" on Pacific Avenue that had been removed by the city.

Despite objections from environmental groups such as The Campaign for Sensible Transportation, there is a new push to widen Highway One in Santa Cruz County. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC), in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has prepared a draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Assessment for the new highway widening proposals.

The Freedom Sleepers held a protest in front of the Palomar Inn in downtown Santa Cruz on December 8, where the city council was eating a celebratory dinner in honor of the appointment of the new mayor, Cynthia Matthews. A small group of protesters also entered the Inn's banquet room during the council’s meal with a sign reading “A Ban on Sleep is a Ban on Life.”

Direct Action Monterey Network (DAMN) organized its eleventh sit-in protest in downtown Monterey on December 4. Since February, community members have been gathering monthly on the sidewalk of Alvarado Street to defy the city's sit-lie ordinance, which has been in effect for just over a year now.

Immediately following the Paris attacks of November 13, France announced the prohibition of mass marches in cities across the country. Large rallies scheduled for November 29 and December 12 in Paris during the UN climate conference have been forbidden due to this new ban. French rally mobilizers are asking why demonstrations are prohibited while sporting events and Christmas markets are being permitted. In Northern California, climate activists marched in Oakland and Santa Cruz during the weekend of November 21-22 in a lead-up to the Paris climate summit.