Newsitem List

People once associated with the People's Park community are tapping out, as UC Berkeley makes further incursions into the space. Former Park allies are ending their support for People's Park, and some are even raiding what they can as they make their exit. The People's Park website is under control of people who have no intention of updating the Park's internet presence, and the People's Park funds have been absconded with. People's Park is being dismantled by individuals who have given up th...

Richmond renters are being urged to unite and support their council members to establish the strongest just cause eviction protections and rent control possible in the struggle against gentrification, greedy landlords and real estate profiteers!...

Assemblymember Tony Thurmond is not competent to represent the progressive voices who elected him, as evidenced by his personal and his offices' recent behavior around a controversial bill....

The elderly and disabled people of East Oakland are being abused by tactics of collective punishment when agencies or government partners use their authority to target a whole community in the effort to attack the homeless, or a few drug dealers operating in an area!...

The city of Berkeley is pursuing three things, which it hopes to keep separate: high income housing developement, criminalization of the homeless, and a defunding of non-profits and people's service organizations in South Berkeley. All three work together, the latter two paving the way for the first. The whole process is called "gentirifcation," and it is a violation of human rights, once one recognizes, as it done internationally, that housing is a human right....

For Immediate Release...

San Francisco: As State and Federal lawmakers struggle to address the growing problems of poverty and income inequality, AFSCME 3299 President Kathryn Lybarger, California Labor Federation Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski and others today publicly called upon UC President Janet Napolitano to support SB 376 (Lara)—a measure that would guarantee that the employees of private firms providing contract services to the University are paid commensurate wages as career UC employees performing the same...

The history of ABAG is an example of the corporate take-over of political structures originally organized by the social justice movements. We are now subjected to this, as a form of political imposition, through the impending devastation to which ABAG's plans will subject our neighborhoods. While ABAG is composed of representatives from cities and counties, it shows how undemocratic representationism can be....

Plan Bay Area calls for almost 3000 new developments, apartments and condos, for Berkeley, along with some 900 units for low income people. The city will be permitting only 196 of these, and taking money for the rest. This article describes the various aspects and machinations of what is presently going on around the issue of affordable housing in Berkeley....

A bill to prohibit the use of bullhooks on elephants, SB 716, heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee after passing the Senate Public Safety Committee 5-2. The Humane Society of the United States, Oakland Zoo and Performing Animal Welfare Society applaud the committee and Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), the bill’s sponsor, for this important first step....