$183.00 donated in past month
|
Santa Cruz, Calif. — Just as PG&E enters the final phase of its deployment of wireless “smart” meters in California, the largest of the state’s Investor Owned Utilities (IOU’s) has reversed course, quietly beginning to replace the ‘smart’ meters of those reporting health impacts with the old analog version. Consumer rights and health groups immediately seized on the news, demanding that millions of Californians unhappy with their new wireless meters get their analogs returned immediately at no cost.
Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California announced that they are beginning an indefinite hunger strike on July 1st to protest the conditions of their imprisonment, which they say are cruel and inhumane. An online petition has been started by supporters of the strikers. Key demands include the elimination of group punishments, modification of active/inactive gang status criteria, and the provision of adequate food.
For protesting on the county steps against Santa Cruz laws that make it illegal for the homeless to sleep at night, homeless activists Gary Johnson and Attorney Ed Frey were sentenced to 6 months in jail on June 10th. Bail was set for Ed Frey at $50,000. Their only act of civil disobedience was sleeping. Revealing the political nature of the draconian sentences, Judge Gallagher told Gary Johnson that he “could get some sleep in jail” before they were dragged away in chains for their 6 month sentences.
After six months of organizing rallies and actions behind the "redwood curtain" protesting CalTrans' plan to expand Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park, Richardson Grove Action Now took the fight to the state capital in Sacramento, where they carried out a flash mob action. The highway expansion plan threatens some of the last 2% remaining ancient redwoods on Earth.
After more than a decade of legal battles, a decision by a final court ruled against the group Friends of Juana Briones House. The oldest house in Palo Alto, named for its famous resident who was a latina pioneer, is being dismantled, piece by piece.
Juana Briones healed the sick and cared for the poor. An elementary school and park in Palo Alto both bear her name. Her house, parts of which were built in 1844, is being destroyed by the current property owner who has fought off historic preservationists, latino/latina activists, and descendants of Briones for years. Feminists joined in the struggle for the home's preservation as well. Jeanne McDonnell, biographer of Juana Briones, stated that historic buildings associated with women are more likely to be demolished than those associated with men.
Read more |  Photo
Past Indybay Coverage
2008: Activists Work to Save Former Home of Juana Briones | 2009: Action Revived to Save Juana Briones House | 2010: Juana Briones Birthday Celebration
UPDATE 6/7/11: Bay Trail and Association of Bay Area Governments Suspends $200,000 Grant to GVRD!
On May 31st, supporters of the Glen Cove native encampment converged outside the offices of the Bay Trail project in downtown Oakland to demand that Bay Trail divest from desecration of the Sogorea Te sacred burial ground in Vallejo. Over 65 people gathered in front of the Bay Trail offices and vowed to pursue further action if the $200,000 is not immediately pulled from plans to bulldoze the burial grounds and build on top of it.
A new film, Medical Cannabis and Its Impact on Human Health, exposes the lies about the medical use of marijuana that led the San Diego City Council to enact a virtual ban on dispensaries in the city. Director James Schmachtenberger, who works at a local dispensary, appeared with the film on April 30th at a showing sponsored by Activist San Diego. The film is a bit dry, and even Schmachtenberger describes it as not especially entertaining, but it lays out the facts about marijuana's medical uses and makes the case for allowing the substance to be used to treat disease and preserve health.
The aim of the film was to counteract the claims of dumb politicians and so-called “prevention experts” who pounce on all uses of cannabis as evil — and make wildly false claims to do so.
“Our approach was to talk to the experts … traveling up and down the state for interviews with the professionals,” explained Schmachtenberger.
“We released it only two months ago, and it has gone viral, seen in 62 countries,” he reported.
Read more | MarijuanaMovie.org
Around the world, workers united on May 1st for International Workers' Day — with marches and rallies. Across Northern California — from Berkeley to San Francisco, from Fresno to Sacramento — thousands of workers and supporters stood up for immigrant and labor rights on May Day 2011. Code Pink and others began an eight-day march from San Francisco to Sacramento to demand a just budget in California.
Activists in the Bay Area are marking the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with rallies, speakers, street theater, and educational events. Calling the Ukraine catastrophe "the most significant nuclear reactor failure in the history of nuclear power", anti-nuke enthusiasts say they want the world to remember that April 26, 1986 was the day when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, killing plant employees instantly and leading to a projected increase in cancer deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
Tri-Valley CARES, Plutonium-Free Future and other groups concerned about the proliferation of nuclear power sponsored a panel discussion on April 10 in Oakland called "A Quarter Century of Chernobyl". The panel featured Russian women activists with first-hand experience in that nuclear reactor disaster.
In Menlo Park, a community demonstration at the busy downtown intersection spilled over to a nearby outdoor cafe where lunchtime patrons became the audience for street theater with an anti-nuke message.
Photos
1
2
 video
In San Francisco, the AA Clearinghouse and allied organizations held a speak-out and open mic at the Federal Building on April 26th. The origins of AA Clearinghouse lie in the Abalone Alliance that was formed in 1977 as a nonviolent civil disobedience group to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County. That nuclear power plant is seeking recertification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today. Some of the participants in Tuesday's demonstration took part in the blockades and occupations at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant site during the years between 1977 and 1982.
The Abalone Alliance itself was closed in 1985 with the Clearinghouse taking on the responsibility of holding onto the history and resources of the Alliance in the Bay Area.
Photos
1
2
video
On May 4th, the Fellowship of Humanity will screen the movie Battle for Chernobyl in Oakland. This documentary reveals that a narrowly prevented second explosion at the time would have wiped out more than half of Europe, a secret kept for twenty years by the Soviets and the West alike.
AA Clearinghouse | Tri-Valley CARES | Plutonium Free Future
On April 16th, over 300 people gathered for a protest at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County. They called for the closure of nearby Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and insisted that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must halt PG&E's relicensing application process for the structure.
The group Mothers for Peace was behind the fight to stop the construction of the nuclear power plant in the 1970s and was the organizer of Saturday's rally as well. Jane Swanson, speaking on behalf of the anti-nuclear organization, said that her group spearheaded the rally in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. She commented from the podium, "Mothers for Peace said in 1973 a workable evacuation plan is not possible at Diablo Canyon and in 2011 this is still true. It is time to shut it down". The crowd raised their voices in agreement, shouting "Shut it Down!" over and over.
Photos: 1 |
2 |
Video | see also: San Diego: Ghost Town for 10,000 Years?
Mothers for Peace
Activists in the Bay Area are shining a light on the connection between recently announced budget cuts and a corporate culture of tax evasion. Late last month, members of San Francisco's US Uncut movement held a sit-in at a Bank of America branch in the Mission District to call attention to the fact that the mega-bank paid no federal taxes for years 2009 or 2010.
Photos
1 |
2 |
Video
As tax-time approached, the Yes Men unleashed a satirical media hoax on General Electric, another corporate tax evader. They issued a phony press release that was widely circulated via the Associated Press, stating GE would be returning its entire 2010 tax refund of $3.2 billion to the US Treasury.
Read More
On April 14th, San Mateo Take Back Democracy called for election finance reform to stop corporations from essentially buying tax-break votes. Their members and allied organizations protested in front of San Mateo's A.P. Giannini branch of the Bank of America. Demonstrators pointed out irony in the fact that Giannini founded what later became the Bank of America at this location. His bank was referred to as the "Little Fellow's Bank" because it served immigrants and working-class people who were denied loans by other banks in the early 1900's.
Photos
1 |
2
San Francisco Uncut announced an April 15th march around the SF Financial District and staged a musical performance inside a Bank Of America lobby.
Photos & Video:
1 |
2
Taxes returns are due on Monday, April 18th, and more rallies are planned outside banks. In Oakland demonstrators will make the rounds of several banks in an action dubbed "Make the Banks Pay on Tax Day" while a separate protest will be held in front of Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco. A Tax Day demo will also be held in Santa Cruz.
US Uncut | Yes Men
The San Diego City Council spent nearly six hours on Monday, March 28th listening to public input and debating a proposed permit process for medical marijuana dispensaries — and passed, with only slight changes, a measure that dispensary members and their supporters say amounts to a virtual ban. Though public speakers in support of giving medical marijuana users safe access to the substance through collectives far outnumbered opponents at each stage of the process — at the Planning Commission and the City Council’s committees as well as the Council itself — the Council listened to the voices of advocates of the so-called "war on drugs" and enacted an ordinance that would make it virtually impossible for dispensaries to locate anywhere in the city of San Diego.
Medical marijuana supporters — including patients who use dispensaries as well as their managers and attorneys, as well as volunteer activists — organized a massive campaign they called "Stop the Ban" to try to get the Council to adopt a looser regulation along the lines suggested by the Council's Medical Marijuana Task Force. They packed the hearings before the Planning Commission and Council committees. They got constituents to write up to 3,000 letters to Councilmembers — the largest letter-writing campaign directed at the Council, according to organizer Ben Cisneros. And they staged a demonstration on the day of the Council meeting that drew up to 500 people, beginning at the Federal Building downtown and moving to the outside of San Diego City Hall.
Read more and view photos | San Diego Chapter of Americans for Safe Access
A spike in the level of radioactive iodine from Japan's Fukushima Daichii plant was discovered in milk samples in California's San Luis Obispo County in late March. On April 2nd, the EPA issued a press release stating that radioactive material in California's rainwater is the result of the nuclear disaster in Japan. While health officials assure the public that the increases present no danger, Californians are expressing deep concern about nuclear reactors that are poised near earthquake faults on the coast. Scheduled protests include in San Francisco on April 14th, Avila Beach, California, near Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, on April 16th, and Menlo Park on April 26th.
|
|
UPDATE 7/12: Hunger Striker’s Health Rapidly Deteriorates | 
7/14: Vigil to support the Prisoner Hunger Strikers
