Search Results
Featured Center Column Stories
(sorted by date posted in reverse chronological order)
Protect Monterey County and its attorneys will appeal the Monterey County Superior Court decision that overturns portions of Measure Z. Last year Monterey County voters passed Measure Z, an initiative that bans hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), prohibits new oil wells and phases out oil-industry wastewater injection wells. The court’s decision leaves the fracking ban in place, holding that oil-industry plaintiffs lack standing to challenge it. However, the decision strikes down the ban on ne...
Posted: Thu, Jan 11, 2018 7:24pm PST
For the fourth year in a row, the Anti Police-Terror Project has called for 96 Hours of action over the King Day Weekend. From Friday, January 12 through Monday, January 15, people will take to the streets in a series of direct actions, vigils, rallies and film screenings. The weekend concludes with the Reclaiming Kings Radical Legacy March on Monday beginning at 14th and Broadway. Friday's actions address State-Sponsored Violence; Saturday's confront the Housing crisis; Sunday's focus on In...
Posted: Thu, Jan 11, 2018 7:05pm PST
In honor of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the Santa Cruz branch of the NAACP and the Santa Cruz Police Department are co-sponsoring an event titled "March for the Dream: Honoring the Past - Impacting the Future" on January 15. In an open letter to police chief Andy Mills, former city council candidate Steve Schnaar questions if SCPD's dream for a better society is really in line with the dream of King....
Posted: Thu, Jan 4, 2018 11:32pm PST
On January 8, Berkeley's KPFA radio may have its money and property seized by the Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) because of a 1.8 million dollar debt accumulated by sister station WBAI in New York. At that point, KPFA's building and bank account may no longer be under their own control, potentially taking not only WBAI off the air, but the entire Pacifica Network which includes KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, and WPFW in Washington D.C. The Pacifica National Board ha...
Posted: Thu, Jan 4, 2018 3:05pm PST
On November 29, over a dozen climate justice activists protested Governor Jerry Brown’s speaking appearance at the Metreon in San Francisco as part of the New York Times ClimateTECH summit. They called out the hypocrisy of Brown claiming to be a “climate leader” while he promotes fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods in the state. One of the organizers of the San Francisco protest was twenty-nine-year-old Daniel Gustavo Ilario of Castro Valley, who was in Bonn, Germany as a part o...
Posted: Fri, Dec 15, 2017 4:56pm PST
UPDATE: In sweeping act of deregulation, the FCC has voted to repeal Net Neutrality
Protests to save net neutrality burst upon the San Francisco Bay Area scene on December 7. The proposal at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to roll back Obama era rules would fundamentally change the internet by favoring carriers over internet content providers. In Palo Alto, a "March on Verizon" started in Lytton Plaza, where "Digital DNA", a sculpture inviting the viewer to question how techn...
Posted: Wed, Dec 13, 2017 5:19am PST
According to a report by the Urban Displacement Project of UC Berkeley, between 2013 and 2015 the pace of gentrification and displacement in Northern California accelerated most quickly in Oakland’s low-income neighborhoods. Skyrocketing rents reveal the need for strong rent control and just cause eviction protections in Oakland and throughout the Bay Area. According to the New York Times, Oakland’s median rent during 2016 was among the highest in the nation, just short of the median rent in ...
Posted: Thu, Nov 30, 2017 6:29pm PST
The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones and other publications have touted Governor Jerry Brown and other state officials as the “resistance” to Donald Trump’s pro-oil industry policies in recent articles, but the reality on the ground is much different. In fact, the oil industry is the single largest corporate lobby in Sacramento — and dominates spending on lobbying every legislative session. Every bill opposed by the oil industry with the exception of one has failed to pass out of t...
Posted: Wed, Nov 29, 2017 5:25pm PST
On November 11, the Korea Peace Walk traveled 20 blocks along Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, pausing to rally at historic sites of the labor movement and Black Panther Party activism. The celebrated date activists chose originated as Armistice Day on November 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. About 70 people marched for over two hours from from 23rd to 44th Street. At the final rally at Koryo Place, the center of a district of small Korean family owned businesses, pungm...
Posted: Wed, Nov 22, 2017 5:30am PST
On November 16, the Public Art Commission of Palo Alto voted unanimously to remove the artwork of Adriana Varella from the city’s public art collection. "Digital DNA", a seven foot tall egg shaped sculpture made of recycled circuit boards, imparts a political message—that technology generated by Silicon Valley has a far-reaching impact. It conveys that modern technology can enslave us, and reminds the viewer that technology is also used for warfare. In protest of the commission's decision, th...
Posted: Mon, Nov 20, 2017 4:30am PST
Seventy-five protesters blocked a street in East Palo Alto to protect families at a police action at 8 a.m. on November 15. A tow truck pulled up to haul away a dozen RV's occupied mostly by working people, some with children. The RV residents received less than 24 hours notice of an emergency eviction ordinance put in place by the city. That same evening many of the protesters and about 200 residents showed up to a Public Works and Transportation Commission meeting to face off with city staf...
Posted: Sun, Nov 19, 2017 2:48am PST
Proponents of the recently passed No Camping ordinance in Fresno claim that homeless people who are sleeping on public and private property are doing so by choice. They say that if they wanted to get off the streets, there are plenty of places for them to go. They suggest homeless people should go to the Fresno Rescue Mission or the Poverello House. Homeless advocates say there are too few shelter beds and that the ordinance essentially criminalizes poverty. This matters because a lack of she...
Posted: Thu, Nov 16, 2017 4:21pm PST
On November 1, SubRosa turned nine years old. SubRosa is an anarchist community space run by a collective of committed volunteers from the Santa Cruz area, freely giving of their energy and time. Located on the south end of Pacific Avenue, it is one of few places in Santa Cruz that is not focused on commerce. SubRosa has books and zines you can't find anywhere else, as well as the Anarchist Lending Library. Meetings, film screenings, music shows, art exhibitions, privacy workshops, and the in...
Posted: Thu, Nov 16, 2017 2:00am PST
After being booted from downtown Santa Cruz and directed across the river to San Lorenzo Park, homeless people are being told to move again. The Hooverville-type camp on the benchlands in San Lorenzo Park now faces eviction. A posted notice announces that park will be closed for "maintenance" on Thursday, November 9. Homeless people began occupying the benchlands after the Santa Cruz police vowed to "clean-up the downtown area". Now City of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation says it is time for ...
Posted: Mon, Nov 6, 2017 3:23pm PST
On November 4, a rally in San Francisco's Union Square kicked off Bay Area participation in a national campaign to drive out the Trump/Pence administration. A long and spirited march snaked through the city following the rally. Protests were held on the same day in twenty-two cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle and Portland. To promote the day of action, Refuse Fascism, a project of the Revolutionary Communist Party, took out a full page a...
Posted: Mon, Nov 6, 2017 4:29am PST
For over fifteen days, tents, couches, tables of food, and dozens of students have decked the halls of Eliot Hall, Reed College’s administration building in Portland, Oregon. Students are occupying the building in protest of the college's financial ties to Wells Fargo. Demonstrators say the college holds around $300,000 in the bank on a daily basis. Wells Fargo is an American international banking and financial services holding company well known to be one of the primary investors in private ...
Posted: Sun, Nov 5, 2017 3:17pm PST
Spicing up their press conference with a Day of the Dead theme, health advocates from Fresno, Tulare, and Kern Counties rallied outside the central regional office of the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) on November 1 in Clovis. Their action was part of a continuing campaign to get DPR to urge the state to suspend agricultural use of brain-harming chlorpyrifos. Last May, the deadly pesticide was implicated in a drift incident that sickened dozens of farmworkers near Bakersfield; heal...
Posted: Fri, Nov 3, 2017 2:16pm PDT
Oakland will spend $75,000 on a study to examine the feasibility of establishing a public bank in the city. The impact on the cannabis industry would be huge, because most corporate banks do not conduct business with the cannabis trade even where their operations are legal. Without bank credit card services, business transactions must be conducted in cash. Even filing taxes with the IRS is problematic. Nearly all large corporate banks are involved in unethical practices of one kind or anoth...
Posted: Thu, Oct 26, 2017 10:28pm PDT
JP Massar writes: For nine months a stable, peaceful, law-abiding community of homeless people has resided at the HERE/THERE space on the west side of the BART tracks just north of the Oakland/Berkeley border, across the street from Sweet Adeline. They have had the support of the neighborhood and have recently obtained, through community support, the ability to access a porta-potty and a handwashing station. On Saturday afternoon [October 21], BART police put up notices demanding that they re...
Posted: Mon, Oct 23, 2017 4:41pm PDT
About 200 people went to Fresno City Hall on September 29 to demand an end to the criminalization of the homeless, following the passing of a No Camping ordinance. The demand for house keys, not handcuffs, was met by a large contingent of police who surrounded the protesters and threatened them with arrest. A statement about the event stated that Fresno needs “a safe and legal place where homeless people can go 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Homeless people need a place to go and the same basi...
Posted: Fri, Oct 20, 2017 3:13pm PDT



















