GARDEN GROVE - Niko Black, a Native woman (Apache) with terminal cancer, has been evicted from her Garden Grove home by Wells Fargo, with co-operation of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and complicity of the local police. This, despite Niko posting a Federal Court Order forbidding such action on her front door and filing it with local police agencies.

On the morning of October 10, Niko Black was in bed when her front door was kicked open by the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Black, who has terminal cancer, crawled to her wheelchair as four-to-six deputies entered and proceeded to hold a gun to her face. She was then taken outside sans any of her medication. When she called the Garden Grove Police, they did nothing. Since all of her medication and other means of treatment were in her home, Black got sick very quickly and had to be taken to the hospital.

From the newswire: Wells Fargo Evicts Terminally-Ill Woman Despite Federal Court Order by Rick Panna, photos and video by Naui Huitzilopochtli | | Coverage on American Indian Airwaves (online for 90 days)

Video: Demonstration at Wells Fargo (11-3-12) by Naui Huitzilopochtli

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

ONTARIO, California - Members of the immigrant community in Ontario protested the lack of police compliance with a state law designed to reduce the number of cars impounded at checkpoints, where drivers are detained without any probable cause. About 60 people marched through the city, and then presented their demands to the city council.

In October 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed bill AB 353 (Cedillo and Allen), changing the way police impound vehicles at checkpoints in the state. In the last few years, checkpoints, and the sheer quantity of vehicles impounded at them and held for 30 days, have spurred intense organizing campaigns throughout the state, where immigrants led the way in exposing the unjust impounds and their impacts on families and the economy.

Under the new law, which took effect in January 2012 and only applies to checkpoints, motorists whose only violation of the law is driving while unlicensed (VC 12500) are permitted until the end of the checkpoint to call a licensed driver to retrieve the car and thus avoid impound. When the vehicle is driven by someone other than the registered owner, authorities are required to make a "reasonable effort" to locate the owner of the vehicle. Furthermore, those vehicles impounded at checkpoints are now held for one, rather than 30 days.

However, proper implementation of the law has been spotty. In cities with organized efforts, such as Pomona, where checkpoint start times were moved to 9:00 PM due to community pressure, and Riverside, where organized faith groups secured the pledge of the police department to not hold checkpoints in front of houses of worship, authorities have been eager to show their compliance with the new law. But in cities where communities have been slower to respond to their oppression, or where divisions have prevented such a response, police have been much more reluctant to relinquish the revenue that impounds at checkpoints generate.

Full story: Immigrant Community Stand Up Against Checkpoints by Rockero, photos by Melissa Ayala

Monday, October 15, 2012

POMONA - The community organization United Voices of Pomona continued its protest against the approved waste transfer station, and added to its demands the mayor's resignation.

The Los Angeles district attorney filed charges filed against one of Mayor Rothman's donors, alleging that Alfredo Solis, the owner of Western Recycling, had laundered $15,000 in contributions to Rothman's 2008 mayoral campaign through acquaintances. This latest scandal propelled the United Voices to demand Rothman's resignation, declaring, "we don't want trash money running our city."

Full story: United Voices of Pomona Demands Mayor's Resignation by Rockero, photos by Tony Hoang

In the spirit of furthering understanding and communication within and between our many communities LA IndyMedia brings Film-Night back with the film "Precious Knowledge." Sunday October 14, 7pm at Gateway Portal in West LA. One of the filmmakers will be present for a discussion.

"Precious Knowledge" is an important documentary that exposes the blatant racism that the State Superintendent of Education in Arizona recently displayed in cutting out the successful ethnic-studies program at Tucson High School.

The film follows the lives of four students and several teachers as they fight to save their classes and the program that became an educational lifeline for them.

The disenfranchised high school seniors became academic warriors and community leaders in the face of losing a successful program that has become a national model of success. In a climate where the national average of Mexican-American drop-outs is 45 percent, 100 percent of the students enrolled in the Tucson High ethnic studies classes graduated from high school and 85 percent of them went on to college.

The filmmakers spent an entire year in the classroom filming this innovative social-justice curriculum, documenting the transformative impact on students who become engaged, informed, and active in their communities.

This story is important to all of us; as Americans and as Angelinos. In our city Ron Gochez, a high school social studies teacher and important activist, currently running for city council, was recently fired for teaching ethnic-studies courses in his South LA classroom.

Come join LA IndyMedia, in conjunction with the Gateway-Portal in West LA for our screening of the film followed by a discussion.

Calendar announcement | | Trailer

Thursday, September 6, 2012

LOS ANGELES - While other immigrant rights organizations were getting bogged down in DACA paperwork1--many of them charging for the service--the DREAMers, never content to rest on their laurels despite their enormous accomplishment, realized the necessity of advancing the movement. Over ten years of organizing has made them masters of political strategy, timing being their forte. And last Thursday was no exception.

While the nation's attention was on the farcical Democratic National Convention, with the party of the donkey pandering to Latinx voters by taking credit for the deferred action policy for DREAM-eligible youth, the deportations continue. One of the main ways the undocumented are deported is out of county jails, where they are held when accused of minor offenses, and deported even prior to having been convicted. And while Joe Arpaio may be today's answer to Bull Connor and a perpetual thorn in the side of justice movements for his outspoken racism, Los Angeles County's Sheriff Lee Baca has deported many more people than Maricopa's, (about half of the 80,000 deported from California this year) and has done so much more quietly.

Full story: DREAMers confront Sheriff Baca on Deportations, 6 arrested by Rockero

RELATED: Letter to Governor Jerry Brown from immigrant youth led groups across California by repost

Throughout the US and Canada, chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross Federation held simultaneous runs to raise funds for the needs of political prisoners and prisoners of war, as well as to continue to chip away at the system that massively incarcerates impoverished people and colonized people worldwide. Runs were also held at four prisons.

In Los Angeles, the event drew about thirty runners to MacArthur Park. There they joined members of Revolutionary Autonomous Communities who were present for the weekly food program, danzantes from Danza Cuauhtémoc, in attendance to bless the run, and supporters from the radical community throughout Southern California.

The over $1000 raised was split between ABC to replenish the warchest and RAC to support its ongoing mutual aid and organizing efforts.

Full story: Running Down the Walls 2012 by Rockero, photos by Lane Farnham

Nuclear power plants generate heat by bombarding "fissile" atoms (such as uranium-235) with neutrons. When the atoms are split, more neutrons are released, which then split other uranium atoms in a sustained "chain reaction." The heat energy released by this process is used to boil water to produce steam to turn a turbine which produces electricity.

The process is inherently dangerous, inherently dirty, and inherently very profitable -- if you don't have to pay the additional costs of: Accidents, cancers from routine releases, or the safe storage of the nuclear waste stream for thousands upon thousands of years. However, somebody will have to pay all these costs. Catastrophic, globally-impacting accidents are inevitable, as the world has seen four times in the last three decades: Three times in Fukushima and once in Chernobyl, with many "near-misses," many of which have been hidden from public scrutiny, and countless less serious -- but still very serious -- smaller accidents.

Since the day in January that San Onofre sprung a leak, the station's owner/operators, Southern California Edison, have tried to come up with a plan to "safely" restart the reactor. Of course, they can never be operated safely, because many more things than just the steam generators can break catastrophically at a nuclear power plant, but ignoring that fact, as SCE does, SCE wants to at least run one of the reactors -- not the one that sprung a leak, that one's trashed -- at partial power, so they can make some money and, perhaps just as important to them, avoid an investigation by the CPUC of what went wrong (the CPUC has been so supportive of SCE's "need" to make a profit from San Onofre, that perhaps this was not a major concern, but it is always possible that an investigation would reveal something).

Full story: San Onofre doesn't have to become our Fukushima by Ace Hoffman

Echo Park: Mayoral candidate and City Councilmember Eric Garcetti (district 13) has somehow created the image of being a champion of the environment. Yet he's failed to support the South Central Farm (beyond lip service); he approved rezoning of a property on a wildlife corridor from three to 15 units, against the wishes of most neighbors; and recently allowed the destruction of 40 protected trees on that same land.

Meanwhile, he has also supported development in Hollywood and received money from people connected to Wal-Mart.

Although he's a front runner in the mayoral race, politicians have been stopped before. In 1993, Councilman Michael Woo, who also promoted development in Hollywood, ran for Mayor but encountered major opposition from a group called Citizens for Anyone but Woo. Hopefully, history will repeat itself.

Story and photos: Eric Garcetti Allows Destruction of 40 Protected Trees by Ross Plesset

While the struggle against nuclear energy and weapons has been a long one, it has been reinvigorated since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March of last year. The quake that set off the chain reaction ultimately resulted in a nuclear meltdown and the release of radiation into both the air and the Pacific Ocean. Traces of that radiation have been discovered in fish that have reached the west coast of the United States and in the atmosphere over the western hemisphere.

In addition to the nuclear weapons laboratories operated by the University of California, two stations generate nuclear waste in California; one at Diablo Canyon, the other at San Onofre. More than six months ago, a rupture in one of the generators prompted San Onofre's closure. Officials at first denied that any radiation had been released, but were soon forced to retract their claim, although they continue to minimize the damage the toxic radiation is causing. Southern California activists have pressured municipal officials and the public utilities commission to keep the waste-generating station closed and have been successful despite intense pressure from Southern California Edison, which profits from the station.

On August 20, the plant announced the layoffs of 730 workers, which is viewed as another step towards the plant's final closure and has awakened the possibility of a nuclear-free world.

From the newswire: San Onofre Layoffs: Latest Sign of Nuke Plant's Demise by Michael Steinberg

August 13, 2012

SAN DIEGO and LOS ANGELES - Poet and mourning father Javier Sicilia, in the next phase of his crusade against the corrupt Mexican government, the narcos, and the United States, which has financed the worldwide war on drugs, has embarked on a nationwide Caravana por la Paz ("Caravan for Peace"). The caravan will stop in twenty cities en route to Washington DC, where it will arrive on September 12.

Summary, with links: Caravan for Peace begins journey across US to oppose drug war by indyradio.nu

Last friday, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where in days past a Carl's Junior stood which gave way to a Rallys and is now home to a spanking new Chick-Fil-A, a convergence of concerned locals staged a same sex kissing protest on the intersections' corner.

Atlanta based Chick-Fil-A has recently come under scrutiny for a growing list of anti gay marriage statements that it's founder Dan Cathy has been espousing in the last few months. The attention was ratcheted up recently due to Ex- Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's campaign to support Chic Fil A by having a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, where those who were patronizing Chic-Fil-A on Wednesday Aug 1st, would also be demonstrating their support for Dan Cathy's views on gay marriage and the american evangelical's right's platforms.

The protest in Hollywood started at 5:00 pm pacific time and lasted well past 11 pm with 120 people or more demonstrating peacefully but boisterously just outside the eating area on the public sidewalk. Sporadic but well placed kissing gestures were in evidence throughout the event...Full Story: Kissing Under The Stars at Chic-Fil-A in Hollywood, California, Part 1 & Part 2 by Robert Stuart Lowden

ANAHEIM - July 29th 2012 was a sunny Sunday in Anaheim that brought over 250 protesters from all over California to demand justice for the series of recent officer involved shootings in Anaheim, during the last week and a half alone, two of which were fatal.

People lined the sidewalk down Harbor Blvd from the police station to the corner of Broadway. Many were holding signs with such sentiments as "Am I next" and "Stop Police Brutality". The protesters were not the only ones present. Orange County Sheriffs Department were on horseback lining both sides of the street.

This is the start of an ongoing protest every weekend in Anaheim until justice for the police brutality and the end of such police presence is had. After speaking to a few community members the overall feeling in regards to the police presence is uneasiness, they are tired of the racism and class discrimination that is the deciding factor when officers pull the trigger on unarmed citizens only to be later called "self defense". never seeing justice for their harmed and lost loved ones.
Full Report: Anaheim Police Protest Bring the Camouflage Out by The Lizard Queen | | Also: Demonstration in front of Disneyland by Rick Panna

Commentary: A Letter to the Residents of Anaheim by Federica
Anaheim PD Chief Hints 'Outside Agitators' and 'Occupy Wall Street' Caused 'Civil Unrest' by Duane Roberts

Latest news: "This Is What a Police State Looks Like" by Federica