On Sunday September 21st, Indybay will have an orientation in Oakland for those interested in learning about the site and getting involved in media production and editorial work. The orientation will be at 4pm at 570 14th St Suite #3.

Following last month's raid of the venerable Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, UCPD is still holding the computers and data storage devices seized from the computer lab, Slingshot newspaper and other tenants for analysis by a forensics team. The San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) says it is working with EFF on a legal response on behalf of the Long Haul.

A San Mateo County Superior Court Judge ruled on September 5th that East Palo Alto is entitled to crucial evidence they need in their fight against Page Mill Properties. This win for renters comes on top of a Rent Stabilization Board Hearing on August 27 that found in favor of the tenants.

On September 2nd, tenants supported by rent control activists from Youth United for Community Action and the Raging Grannies demonstrated their displeasure with Page Mill's continued legal attempts to flout the Rent Stabilization Ordinance, staging a sit-in and street demonstration at the landlord's office.

Starting on Friday September 6th, U.C. Berkeley's Memorial Oak Grove started being cut down. As of Sunday, all of the trees that the University plans to cut were down except for a redwood that still has four tree sitters in it. Five people were arrested as they peacefully pleaded with arborists not to destroy the trees.

During protests at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, performance artists from the San Francisco Bay Area rolled around in "Oily Dollars" symbolizing the dirty connection between Big Oil and elected officials. Not all convention attendees were amused. Ed Matthews, Republican candidate for Minnesota's 4th Congressional district, took after Jeff Grubler of the performance group Ronald Reagan Home for the Criminally Insane and grabbed Grubler's McCain mask. When Grubler tugged on Matthews' credentials, he was thrown to the ground by a uniformed officer who cuffed him while keeping his knee on the back of his neck. Grubler was then arrested and released after being detained for close to an hour.

On September 4th, nearly 300 hotel workers of the labor union Unite Here! Local 19 rallied in front of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center to draw public attention to the daily struggles of hotel service employees. They then marched to three downtown hotels that are currently undergoing contract negotiations - the Marriott, the Hilton and Towers, and the Crowne Plaza.

On Saturday, September 6, thousands of members of United Healthcare Workers and allies marched through the streets of San Jose to maintain a strong, member-controlled union and a labor movement accountable to the rank-and-file. The march, held after UHW's annual Leadership Conference, denounced the threatened trusteeship of UHW by SEIU International President Andy Stern and Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Golden Gate Park's Speedway Meadows for the 10th Annual Power to the Peaceful Festival on Saturday, September 6th. The Festival, which was founded in 1998 by musician and activist Michael Franti in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, is dedicated to educating attendees on issues of social justice, non violence, coexistence and environmental sustainability. The day's events included yoga at 9am, speakers and performers beginning at 11am, social and environmental justice info tables, a food drive, and more.

The 2008 Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul, Minnesota, September 1st through September 4th. In the Twin Cities, the RNC Welcoming Committee and a number of ad hoc regional activist groups made plans to demonstrate on the first day of the convention, September 1st. Twin Cities and Federal authorities moved hard against the activists by pre-emptively raiding a convergence space and numerous houses, confiscating equipment, and making arrests. After the convention began, police used tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag projectiles, and other weapons against demonstrators throughout St. Paul.

On Tuesday, September 2nd, Palestinian professor and activist Sami Al-Arian was released from prison after more than five-and-a-half years behind bars. Immigration authorities released him on bail after they failed to explain his continued detention pending a trial for refusing to testify before a grand jury about a cluster of Muslim organizations in northern Virginia. But while he is out of prison, Sami Al-Arian is not free. He must remain under house detention at his daughter Laila's residence in Virginia, pending trial.

On August 29th, more than two-hundred Bay Area residents demonstrated outside of developer Lennar Corp.'s Headquarters in San Francisco and then headed to Oakland to rally in front of the Oakland Police Department (OPD). The local chapter of the Right to the City Alliance, a national coalition of more than 35 social justice organizations, along with allies and supporters, aimed to bring attention to rogue developers, gentrification and criminalization of communities of color from the Bay Area to New Orleans.

On On August 25th, Sahar Vardi was sentenced to seven days in jail for refusing to join the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Vardi is the first women among a group of Israeli high school seniors who are refusing to join the occupying Israeli military. The group has published and sent a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, saying, “Our refusal comes first and foremost as a protest on the separation, control, oppression and killing policy held by the state of Israel in the occupied territories, as we understand that this oppression, killing and routing of hatred will never lead us to peace, and they are all contradictory to the basic values a society that pretends to be democratic should have.”

On August 29th at approximately 2:00pm, an FBI agent posing as a neighbor knocked at the door of a home in Oceanside, CA, lured Nathan Pope/Knoerl from his mother's house, and arrested him. The only known charge at this point is felony perjury. He is being held on $100,000 bond. Nathan is a resident of the house on Riverside Avenue in Santa Cruz that has been raided twice in the past six months.

On August 27th, an Alameda County judge made another ruling in favor of tenants at the California Hotel in Oakland, keeping in place a temporary restraining order preventing Oakland Community Housing Inc. (OCHI) from evicting residents or shutting off utilities at the historic hotel. The non-profit had abandoned the tenants, many of whom are elderly and disabled, and on July 15th threatened to turn off the utilities, but residents fought back, refusing to move and taking over management of the hotel.

At their meeting on September 9th, the Santa Cruz City Council will decide whether to fund the initial design for a 5-story garage at Cedar/Cathcart. The garage will displace the Downtown Farmer's Market. The Campaign for Sensible Transportation is proposing that the City implement less costly and greener alternatives to building the garage. On September 3rd, City Council candidates will face the garage issue at a Candidate Night on Sustainable Transportation, at Louden Nelson Center, 7-8:30pm.

On August 27th at around 10:30am, 5-6 police officers from three agencies made their way into the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, broke down every door, and confiscated all computers on the property. Computers taken included those used by the Slingshot Collective and East Bay Prisoner Support. The police stated that the computer equipment "may have been used to commit a felony." This is the first time there has been a raid since the infoshop opened 15 years ago.

Protests around the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, August 25th through August 28th, brought thousands of people to the Mile High City. Although numbers were far lower than expected, Recreate 68 had originally anticipated 25,000 to 50,000 would descend on Denver for the demonstrations. The largest demo took place on Wednesday, where more than 10,000 people marched through the streets of Denver behind 70 Iraq Veterans Against the War following a free Rage Against the Machine concert.

On August 23rd, two small boats carrying 42 human rights activists broke the siege of Gaza. They sailed from Cyprus in defiance of Israeli threats to intercept the boats to enforce its blockade of Gaza. The arriving boats were greeted by thousands of jubilant Gazans and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Intense international support was crucial in persuading Israel to allow the boats through.

Family and friends of Anita Gay, the 51-year-old grandmother gunned down by the Berkeley Police on February 16, held a two-hour street rally at the corner of Ashby and Martin Luther King Drive in Berkeley to draw attention to the large number of murders by police in the East Bay.

Activists, in coordination with the group In Defense of Animals, protested Ringling Bros. Circus August 20th - 24th. In a tradition of greeting circus-goers with information about Ringling's operation every year when Ringling brings their animal acts to the Bay Area, a group of about 15 activists wore signs and leafleted outside of the HP Pavilion in San Jose.

On August 24th, the ACLU of Santa Cruz County held their 2008 Summer Awards Celebration and Fundraiser at the Long Marine Lab's Seymour Center. The local ACLU presented Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty with the 'Hammer of Justice' award. Meanwhile, homeless rights advocates tried to educate ACLU members about what they say is the true nature of Mayor Coonerty.

The 2008 Watsonville Gay Pride Parade Committee, a group of diverse volunteers, organized the first ever pride parade in Watsonville on August 24th. The celebration was a huge success, with 325 people marching through the streets and over 500 enjoying a party in the plaza.

Glen Chase, a Professor of Systems Management, has released a second report identifying the California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) eradication program as a fraud. Professor Chase's first report revealed the falsehoods the CDFA delivered after June 19 when courts and public pressure stopped the CDFA from aerial spraying synthetic pheromone based pesticides directly on cities. This second report reveals the fraud and misinformation delivered by the CDFA from the fall of 2007 until June 19, 2008.

On Saturday, August 9th, anti-nuclear protesters gathered at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. They were joined by Reverend Nobuaki Hanaoka, who survived that devastating attack and called for the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.”

On Thursday, August 12, anti-torture and anti-war activists came to disrupt Pelosi’s book promotion at the San Francisco’s Cowell Theatre. Pelosi was promoting her new book “Know Your Power- a Message to America’s Daughter.” While speaking, activists yelled and disrupted Pelosi’s talk, calling her “traitor” and yelling “torture,” “impeach.” Two people were escorted out by security personnel, and arguments erupted between Pelosi supporters and the activists.

Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War, a new documentary created by organizers from within DASW, chronicles the story of the March 20, 2003 shutdown of San Francisco's financial district, going behind the scenes for a look at the successes and pitfalls of mass organizing. The film screens in San Francisco on Friday, August 22 along with five shorts about oil, war and organizing.

Eureka, CA-Community residents and forest activists from the redwood region and far beyond Humboldt County in Northern California, were relieved and elated as news spread of an unprecedented commitment by Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC) owners of what was Maxxam/PL land to spare the Nanning Creek and Fern Gully ancient groves where tree-sits have been keeping chain saws at bay. The message was delivered directly to tree-sitters and included a commitment to further protect from future cutting all old growth 250 years old or more.

As part of a week of international conference of anti-Zionist Jews, Reuven Abarjel, a Mizrahi anti-Zionist Jew, visited the Bay Area. Reoven is one of the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers, an anti-Zionist, and a social activist. Abergel participated in several meetings and panels and spoke about Zionism, racism, and colonialism and ways to resist them. Abergel also spoke about his personal experience as one of the ringworm children, a group of thousands of children from Jewish-Arab background that the state of Israel did radioactive experiments on without their knowledge or family consent.

On August 12th, the police of Orissa, India detained David Pugh, a teacher who lives in San Francisco. The Orissa Police have also detained two anti-displacement activists, Protima Das and Pradeep, who accompanied Pugh. Pugh has been released from detention, but the Orissa police have ordered him to stay at his hotel to await further interrogation. In a press release, the movement against displacement in India has called on people to urgently contact various officials in Orissa and India and demand the release of all the activists.

Update! Pugh has been released from detention and he has issued a statement.

California based political prisoner Sara Olson was released from prison on March 17, 2008 and re-arrested 4 days later. What was behind this bizarre incident which played out in the mainstream media? For the first time anywhere, Sara tells her story about what was behind her release and re-arrest.