Legislators and hundreds of Delta advocates held a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, July 7th, to oppose the peripheral canal -- what they call a budget-busting and environmentally destructive project that would approximate the Panama Canal in width and length. "I'm not going to vote for a plan that builds a Panama Canal down the middle of the 15th Assembly District,” exclaimed Assemblymember Joan Buchanan to loud applause.

Over the July 4th traffic on Interstate 80, “torture victims and detainees” staged a banner display on the University Avenue overpass in Berkeley. World Can’t Wait has demonstrated on this overpass action every 4th of July since 2006. This year the focus was on the torture state forged under Bush – and now being continued and refined by Obama – as witnessed by the thousands who passed the display. The act of civil disobedience slowed northbound traffic along I-80.

On July 5th, health care reform advocates counter-protested a right-wing "tea party" demonstration at a busy intersection in San Jose, California. The Raging Grannies, in colorful costumes and carrying "Patients Not Profits" parasols, joined members of other advocates of a single payer health care system. Angry “tea party” demonstrators, who said they are against any health care reform whatsoever, carried signs with their slogan Taxed Enough Already. Their t-shirts, buttons and placards proclaimed their anti-gay, pro-gun and pro free market health care position.

On Monday, July 6th, labor activists gathered at Harry Bridges Plaza in the Embarcadero to remember the day, July 5, 1934, when two strikers were gunned down and killed by police. Several hundred union members and their supporters, many from around the world, marched in a reenacted funeral procession of the fallen men, Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise. As the procession passed the memorial at Mission and Steuart Streets, across the street from the site of the deaths, they took off their hats.

Cynthia Papermaster and Susan Harman write: "Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee was confronted by three torture accountability activists in a Pasadena courtroom who called out to him to resign for giving legal approval to interrogation techniques amounting to torture. He was so surprised that he stopped and listened to the three women, Cynthia Papermaster, Susan Harman, and Dianne Wright while they told him he is unfit to be a judge and should resign."

On July 6th, California State prosecutors were forced to admit that they have insufficient evidence against the San Francisco 8. Charges against four of the defendants were dropped and Jalil Muntaqim pled no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter. Those for whom charges were dismissed were Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, and Harold Taylor. A Community Celebration for the SF8 was held July 7th in San Francisco.

A massive campaign is underway to “turn on the pumps” and deliver additional water to farms in the western Central Valley. Agribusiness interests and their allies claim environmental and water activists care more about fish than people and are demanding more water, now! Central Valley Congress members are calling for an exclusion from the Endangered Species Act of the delta smelt, more dams, a peripheral canal, and a bond initiative in 2010 that will result in taxpayers subsidizing water for large corporate farming operations.

Rose City Antifa writes: "This July, David Irving, a British neo-fascist and fraudulent historian, goes on the road in the United States, planning to hold approximately one and a half dozen speaking engagements over the course of a month. As militant anti-racists and anti-fascists, we are making a public call for resistance at each stop along the way of this tour."

On Sunday, June 28, two groups of radical queer activists demonstrated against other contingents participating in the 2009 Pride Parade in San Francisco. Members of the International Jewish Solidarity Network marched and protested Zionist presence at the Pride Parade. Another group staged a die-in in front of Gavin Newsom's float at the annual Pride Parade to protest cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention, queer youth programs, and other vital services.

On July 30, Michael Steinberg Writes:, "Today San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hid in his office and locked the door on a crowd of tenants who came to petition him to support a package of renter relief measures. The SF Board of Supervisors passed the package earlier this month, but not by a veto proof margin, and Newsom has said he will veto it."

On Saturday, June 27, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams hosted a forum in San Francisco to address the issue: "A United Ireland, How Do We Get There?" Hundreds packed St. Anne’s Meeting Hall in San Francisco’s Sunset District to discuss how to unite the still divided island nation of Ireland. Gerry Adams said the purpose of the forum was “to kickstart yet another chapter in our struggle — the final chapter.”

For the 5th year running, the burning of American flags took place on July 3rd at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz. Organizers say they raise the burning flag up as a sacred symbol representing their highest ideals as Americans, and that the "American Flag is so great a symbol that it represents the right to burn it."

Robert Norse comments, "Burning a flag in solidarity with the Honduran people on July 4th makes more sense to me than burning a flag as a celebration of the First Amendment. Divorcing flag-burning from its visceral ('Yanqui, go home!') content is a way of stripping the action of its force."

Several thousand people gathered in Dolores Park on June 26th to demand equality for the transgender community. Beginning at the park they formed a contingent of marchers that made their way through San Francisco's Mission district to 26th and Valencia. This year's march marked San Francisco's sixth year since the event began in 2004 when it was first established to honor Gwen Araujo, a young transgendered woman who was brutally murdered in Newark, California in November of 2002.

Live radio broadcast from Radio Liberada in Honduras
On June 28th, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected government of Honduras, detaining and then exiling President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica. The head of the Honduran Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, along with other military leaders in the country, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). On June 29, an emergency rally and press conference to denounce the coup in Honduras took place at the Honduran Consulate in San Francisco.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, June 28th, a demonstration will begin at Vandenberg Air Force Base to protest the U.S. launch of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. The target of the rocket is the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, South Pacific.

On Sunday June 28th, the first-ever Atheist Film Festival will be held at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District from 12pm to midnight. Feature-length films will be shown in the 240-seat theater, short films in the small 46-seat screening room. The festival is sponsored by San Francisco Atheists.

Gay Shame held a protest at the San Francisco LGBT Center on Thursday, June 25th. Gay Shame wrote: Does today’s mainstream LGBT movement make you feel like you’re lost in an alternate reality? Perhaps even another dimension? Do the things groups like the HRC fight for cause you to feel as if you’re going the wrong way backwards through time? Does the thought of straight ally Gavin Newsom’s ascendancy to governor give you vertigo?

On June 24, nearly five months after opening an investigation of University of California sociology professor William I. Robinson for alleged faculty misconduct, university officials abruptly announced that they have dismissed all charges and terminated the case. Robinson has been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League for forwarding images that made a historical comparison to the state violence of the Israeli military actions in Gaza with that of German Nazi Wehrmacht in Warsaw.

Nurses, doctors, and other health care advocates protested in front of the Fairmont Hotel on June 22 to voice objection to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius' visit to San Francisco. In a June 16 interview, Secretary Sebelius vowed that the health care reform legislation now being drafted in Congress would be written specifically to bar single payer, both now and in the future. She instead urged support for a so-called "public option," a government subsidized health care fund that would coexist with private insurance. Sebelius was at the Fairmont as guest speaker for a Democratic fundraiser held by Nancy Pelosi.

The demolition of the Bevatron, a.k.a. Building 51 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), is scheduled to begin in July. The demolition will include the removal of radioactive waste, trucked down University Avenue covered with tarps. According to the LBNL website, 1000-1200 truckloads of the 4700 "may contain hazardous or radioactive material." A press conference will take place on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6:30pm in front of Berkeley City Hall in order to draw attention to this blatant disregard for the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.

On June 23rd, the Santa Cruz City Council passed a 45-day moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries in the city limits. Councilmembers said they needed the moratorium because they claimed there was a flood of daily inquiries to the city's Planning Department about opening medical marijuana centers. The are two pending applications for dispensaries on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

On Saturday, June 20, activists gathered at Trader Joe’s in Oakland and San Francisco to demand that the company stop carrying Israeli goods. Protesters removed Israeli products from the shelves in order to show customers which products they should not buy. They also met with the store managers and asked them to notify their headquarters that they no longer wanted to carry Israeli herbs, couscous and cheese. Similar actions were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. The activists were inspired by campaigns to deshelve Israeli products in Wales and France.

On June 21st, the Israeli State Prosecutor ordered police to start an investigation of Indymedia Israel. At the heart of the investigation is an article posted to the website with a picture of a soldier who, according to witnesses, murdered protest organizer Abu Rahma on April 17th. The posting with the heading “murderer“ asks for the name and any other relevant information of that soldier so that he can face murder charges.

Davey D, producer of KPFA's Hard Knock Radio, writes: "It’s interesting to hear a number of progressives who immediately jumped out the box telling people that they were being duped by supporting the protests in Tehran. Many arrogantly pointed out that we were somehow carrying the mainstream party line and what we were seeing in the streets was a CIA backed operation. In fact one person hit me up and told me I should be ashamed of myself and that I was somehow pushing the mainstream party line."

Fresno County homecare providers reported scores of incidents of voter intimidation, illegal threats, and ballot manipulation by SEIU staff in an election for workers to quit the scandal-plagued union and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). SEIU spent an estimated $10 million on attack mailings, robo-calls, TV and radio ads, but failed to win enough support from workers to win the election without breaking the law.

In the early hours of Monday, June 22, 2009, settlers from the Bat ‘Ain settlement set fire and cut down more than 125 grapevines and fruit trees. Israeli soldiers said they saw a fire in the Palestinian agricultural fields some time during the night and went to put it out, though they did nothing to collect the evidence; kerosene canisters and matches were still there the next morning when activists from the Palestine Solidarity Project accompanied the farmer’s family to survey the damage.

The Santa Cruz City Council Measure K Oversight Committee held their most recent meeting on June 15th. As directed in Santa Cruz Municipal Code Section 9.84.060, the Committee is charged with overseeing the implementation of SCMC Chapter 9.84 which makes "Adult Marijuana Criminal Offenses" the "Lowest Law Enforcement Priority."

After print-runs for the SF and NY Anarchist Book Fairs, a magazine entitled Unfinished Acts: January Rebellions is now available on Indybay in digital format. The magazine is a collective recounting and analysis of events surrounding the shooting of the unarmed, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III by BART police officers in the early hours of 2009 on the Fruitvale station platform.

On Wednesday, June 10th, hundreds of people who will be affected by Newsom's budget cuts took to the streets to demand that the Board of Supervisors save front-line services, and take a more balanced approach to the San Francisco budget. The demonstration followed a proposed budget, released by Mayor Newsom, that will terminate critical health and human services, while pumping up salaries for police by 25% and adding many new high paid patronage positions into his own administration.