Education & Student Activism News

On September 10, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was fatally shot by a sniper while speaking in Utah. The event was the first stop of TPUSA's "American Comeback Tour." On November 10, Turning Point concluded their tour at UC Berkeley. The campus was locked down beforehand by a phalanx of riot police. Despite the show of force, hundreds of demonstrators turned out to denounce TPUSA. Several arrests were made.

On October 24, youth from 50 middle schools, high schools, and colleges in California walked out of class in a coordinated statewide action demanding that oil and gas corporations be held financially accountable for the damage caused by their pollution. Students called on lawmakers to pass the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act, SB 684/AB 1243. While not passed this legislative session, students and climate advocates are working to pass it next year.

In February 1975, construction work on Lee Road in Watsonville desecrated an Ohlone burial site, and bones and artifacts were removed by archeologists. When initial efforts failed to protect the sacred site, the cemetery was occupied by a group of armed local Native families, activists, and members of the American Indian Movement. John Malkin speaks with Patrick Yana-Hea Orozco, who played a critical role in the direct action at Wounded Lee.

Pesticides continue to be pervasive in the air throughout California’s agricultural regions, according to the 2023 Air Monitoring Network Report released in September by the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). Weekly samples collected at DPR’s four air monitors detected 19 different pesticides at trace or quantifiable levels and 8 pesticides at quantifiable levels, with 80% of samples including at least one pesticide detection.

The SF Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on the University of California, San Francisco to reinstate professor of medicine Dr. Rupa Marya and publicly affirm that it will safeguard academic freedom and free speech. Dr. Marya was terminated from UCSF in May 2025, which came after her medical privileges were suspended in September 2024 over social media posts in which she criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Events were organized across northern California to commemorate two years of resistance to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Calls were widely made for an end to the forced starvation of the Gazan population, and for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. In Oakland, community members marched to demand an arms embargo; at UC Berkeley, students organized a mass walkout; in Petaluma, activists conducted their long-time weekly picket.

Casey Support Committee writes, "Casey is a dedicated community educator, writer, distroist, and printer who has committed their life to struggles for liberation. A federal investigation by the FBI and several other law enforcement agencies resulted in Casey’s arrest for alleged politically motivated 'crimes.' Since June 17 2024, Casey has been incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail facing federal felonies that could result in up to 20 years of imprisonment."

Students at UCB, Cal Poly Humboldt, Stanford, Sonoma State, SF State, Sacramento State, USF, UCSC and UCD joined students at colleges throughout the country to establish occupations in support of Palestinians. Outrage at Israel's attempted genocide in Gaza has produced a movement of encampments at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, MIT, NYU, UT Austin, and more. Police have arrested hundreds, and yet the protests persist and expand.