Newsitem List

3/15/2005: Opponents of military recruiting picketed the main San Francisco recruiting center on Davis Street near the Embarcadero early this evening. Chants echoed the demand that the military get out of our schools. The picket featured a brief speak out and well attended press conference. SFSU students told of their success last week in kicking military recruiters off their campus, only to face discipline from the administration.Photos On March 9th, students at San Francisco State assemb...

3/15/2005 Hundreds of people gathered outside of the State Building in Oakland late this afternoon to protest the issuance of layoff notices to Oakland teachers. Several teachers who have already received their "March 15th Layoff Letters" were present- they included instructors in music and art, as well as adult education. Photos School funding is in a statewide crisis, and Governor Schwarzenegger wants to further cut funding for the 2005-06 school year. Pre-event press release | Re...

The Bakersfield Chapter of Marriage Equality California took to the streets in celebration of Judge Kramer's ruling against discrimination in marriage law, which would make Gay Marriage legal in California if the ruling is upheld. For about an hour, activists stood on the corners of busy intersections, getting much support from the local community. Small groups made their way around the crosswalks about five times, holding signs and singing songs. About forty people attended the celebration...

3/13/2005: Two white anarchists, randomly selected a table at Muddy Waters coffeeshop on 16th and Valencia. While they planned to take some time to read for an upcoming study group, they quickly realized what was happening at the table next to them. A neo-Nazi and young woman had come together and it seemed that she was loosely affilited with right-wing political activity already. He explained to her that while he grew up in the Bay Area, he's been traveling to help build up chapters around t...

3/14/2005: Richard Kramer, who is a judge in the San Francisco County Superior Court, ruled today that it is unconstitutional for the state of California to limit the right to marriage to only a man and a woman. An appeal of this decision is likely. If this ruling is upheld, it would set California on a course to allowing marriage licenses to be granted to same-sex couples throughout the state. In February of 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered SF City Hall to issue licenses to ...

March 19, 2005, is an International Day of Protest on the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. As on the first anniversary of the invasion, millions of people around the world are marching to say “No to War and Occupation from Iraq to Palestine to Haiti and Everywhere” in dozens of cities around the US and in other countries. The San Francisco March assembles at 11am in Dolores Park, and there will be a rally at 1 pm at Civic Center. Enemy Combatant Radio will be live in...

Xxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx reports that her husband, Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx, was arrested on July 28, 2004, charged with making a false claim of being a U.S. citizen on a loan application (at that time he had a Green Card) - this was apparently a computer error, not the fault of Mr. Xxxxxx. His legal team found out that the way that the government had done its investigation was by cross referencing with Homeland Security or Immigration records to identify the citizenship of all persons who received these...

3/11/05:Last Tuesday, medical marijuana patients, community organizers, and pro-pot activists gathered at the Modesto City Council to counter a vote that would shut down the newly opened "California Healthcare Collective Inc.". Around 20-30 people spoke on behalf of the store, and how they need and use marijuana for medical purposes. With only one person speaking against the store, the vast majority of speakers stood firmly on the side of the store. The fight is far from over. The council...

The logging of "protected" old-growth reserves began at the Biscuit timber sale, atop Fiddler Mountain. 11 people, including a 72-year old womyn from rural Selma, Oregon was arrested on Monday. Another 11 were arrested on Wednesday, including one man who locked down to the rear axle of a police vehicle with a steel lockbox. The logging takes place in areas set aside for protection of the northern spotted owl by Clinton, and is directly adjacent to a pristine, roadless area. Logging of so-c...

3/10/2005: 11 people, including a 72-year old womyn from rural Selma, Oregon were arrested on Monday. Another 11 were arrested on Wednesday, including one man who locked down to the rear axle of a police vehicle with a steel lockbox. Read More 3/8/2005: Old Growth Reserve Logging has begun on Fiddler timber sale unit 11 about 1 3/4 miles above the National Wild & Scenic Illinois River on the road to Babyfoot Lake (also known as the T.J. Howell Memorial Botanical Drive). The old growth f...

On February 22nd, Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian blogger and human rights activist, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of "espionage and insulting the country's leaders." This sentence would appear to be an effort by the government of Iran to send a message to other bloggers and independent government critics in that country. At the start of January, Tehran's prosecutor-general ordered Internet Service Providers to block the Internet's most popular weblog services. Iranian Inter...

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has been holding its forty-ninth session. The February 28th-March 11th gathering has been held to review and appraise the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action from the 23rd Special Session of the UN General Assembly. Read more The Beijing Declaration was adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. In addition to the declaration review, the Commission planned this month to consider "Current challenges and f...

A Press Conference was held in Sacramento on February 23rd to announce the introduction of AB 1147, which is a new piece of industrial hemp legislation in the state of California. Assemblyman Mark Leno was joined by representatives of the Hemp Industries Association, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, Nutiva, and others to state their support for legalized industrial hemp farming in California. If the new hemp bill becomes law, farmers would be able to apply for state licenses to grow hemp. The law...

3/8: Taco Bell announced today that it will fund a penny per pound "pass-through" with its suppliers of Florida tomatoes, and will undertake joint efforts with the CIW on several fronts to improve working conditions in Florida's tomato fields. For its part, the CIW has agreed to end its three-year boycott of Taco Bell, saying that the agreement "sets a new standard of social responsibility for the fast-food industry." Read more The 2005 Taco Bell Truth Tour kicked off from Immokalee, Flo...

Cultural Links will sponsor the 8th annual Radical Performance Festival on March 18th and 19th in at the SomArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. The show on Friday night will include Sparlha Swa, Shailja Patel, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, Ashley Brockington, SoulOgraphy, Julia Butterfly, the Vietnamese Artists Collective, Arts in Action poets, and others. Saturday night's performance will include Sistas in the Pit, Copper Women, Colored Ink, Matt Gonzalez, Kreatibo, Blue Buddha, Samsa...

On Friday March 4th 2005, American troops fired on a car rushing Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to freedom after a month in captivity, wounding her and killing the Italian intelligence officer who helped negotiate her release. On February 4th, Giuliana, who was working for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, was kidnapped in Baghdad and on February 15th, she appeared on a videotape begging for her life and for Italian troops to leave Iraq. While the US claimed that they fired on the car ...

3/3/05: Unions in California are keeping a close eye on Governor Schwarzenegger these days. On December 10th, he declared a state of emergency and announced that he was going to take away California workers' lunch breaks. He was forced to rescind the "emergency" status of his rule changes, but he is still attacking the guaranteed right to a lunch break for California workers. The rule changes announced by the Governator would weaken workers' rights to breaks and meal periods and would ...

Eddy Lepp's next court date will be March 14th at 9am. He is still being held, in lockdown, at the Santa Rita Jail, and has been visited by very few people. Read more He is facing multiple life sentences, as is Daniel Barnes. March 2nd: Eddy Lepp and Daniel Barnes will be arraigned together tomorrow morning at 9:30am. February 28th: Eddy Lepp finally saw a judge in a Federal Court in San Francisco today. Lepp's federal defender, David Fermino, explained in court that Lepp is an ordaine...

At 3:45 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1st, six Oakland residents began a sit-in in the office of the state administrator of the Oakland schools after their demand for a meeting with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell was refused. About 75 students, parents, teachers and labor activists rallied outside. Photos The Oakland Coalition to Defend and Improve Public Education is organizing a Town Hall meeting for Tuesday, March 8th, from 6-8PM at the First Congregational...

On February 22nd, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in San Francisco unanimously found the sheriff's department in violation of three sections of the sunshine ordinance. The Sunshine Task Force stated that "the sheriff's Department shall release all records" related to the violent cell extraction that seriously injured several people who had been arrested on June 8th during the Reclaim the Commons (RTC) biotech protests. The charges against the protesters were eventually dismissed "in the i...

3/19/2005 "What has been glimpsed in Afghanistan is a radical plan to replace Guantánamo Bay. When that detention centre was set up in January 2002, it was essentially an offshore gulag - beyond the reach of the US constitution and even the Geneva conventions. That all changed in July 2004. The US supreme court ruled that the federal court in Washington had jurisdiction to hear a case that would decide if the Cuban detentions were in violation of the US constitution, its laws or treaties. Th...

East Bay Animal Advocates sponsored a vegetarian feed-in in front of the KFC at 470 Lake Park Avenue, right by the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. As a farmers' market across the street offered an assortment vegetarian fair itself, volunteers served vegetarian "turkey" to passers-by and distributed pamphlets with information on the inhumane treatment of factory-farmed animals outside of the fast food restaurant. The 16-page pamplet on factory farming was provided by Vegan Outreach. A "feed-i...