Newsitem List

Thursday, March 13, 2008 : My daughter’s teacher was one of the 500-plus who received pink slips this month, preliminary notices that by law must be sent out by a certain date if layoffs are likely given budget forecasts for the upcoming year. This teacher, like so many in our district and so many who received those slips, is dedicated to and passionate about his work....

People of the world, the US Government is planning to poison more than two million people, in California, using an untested biological "pesticide" this summer. The chemical to be sprayed is classified by the EPA as a "pesticide" and the plan is to douse cities with this chemical designed to stick on everything for 90 days or longer....

This is an update for those who have been following the trial of Briana Waters, a wonderful mother and violin teacher from the Bay area who to this day maintains her innocence of these charges she was just convicted of. We are going to continue doing our best to support her in the ongoing legal battle for justice....

Friends of Flora and Fauna is a non-profit organization which has established a Legal Defense Fund for students and other young people who are protesting UCSC expansion and have been targeted in a recent lawsuit by the UC Regents. Board members are Professor Bettina Aptheker (UCSC, Feminist Studies), Attorney Deborah Malkin, Professor Paul Ortiz (UCSC, Community Studies), Treasurer Mathilde Rand and Professor Zack Schlesinger (UCSC, Physics). The letter below was written in response to the...

Council member Rotkin's "Unruly Assemblies" ordinance, the "Party at Your Peril" law, comes up for modification on March 11th at the evening city council meeting. Coonerty and Rotkin are moving to liberalize the ordinance with four changes. The real question, of course, is whether there should be such an ordinance at all and what kind of suffering it has inflicted. Police stats, as usual, are not included in the police report and may not be forthcoming at all (as was the case in the Parkin...

Monday, March 10, 2008 : Heads are still buzzing as to why three San Francisco Supervisors, one School Board member and five November candidates for Supervisor all filed papers on Friday – to run for the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC). Criticized by some as a heavy-handed tactic, Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin said that it’s about raising the profile of an obscure political body – and making the Democratic Party more relevant, more vocal and more progressive....

Thursday, March 6, 2008 : In response to polls showing her trailing in her re-election campaign, State Senator Carole Migden filed suit on Tuesday to invalidate a voter-approved campaign finance law that she previously had supported. Although Migden voted in favor of placing Prop 34 on California’s 2000 ballot, she now claims the measure she backed unconstitutionally prevents her from spending $647,000 in the Senate race....

Wednesday, March 5, 2008 : The California Supreme Court heard nearly four hours of arguments yesterday on whether the state’s laws preventing same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Much of the argument centered on the difference between marriage and domestic partnerships, which California passed in 2003 as AB 205. Associate Justice Ming Chin asked Deputy SF City Attorney Therese Stewart if she believed that the state’s domestic partnership offered a “substantial improvement” over previous la...

Zami! 807 Laurel Street...

Monday, March 3, 2008 : A poll taken last week by David Binder found State Senate District 3 a two-way contest between challengers Joe Nation and Mark Leno, with incumbent Carole Migden trailing badly. Binder, San Francisco’s leading pollster who has been busy in recent months surveying for Barack Obama, found that Nation led Leno 27-24% on the initial ask, with Migden trailing at 17%....