Bay Area Committee Against Fascism asks: On April 15th, where will the Left be? A repulsive spring medley of Trump supporters, white supremacists, fascists and racists are planning yet another rally in downtown Berkeley. The threat of far-Right and Alt-Right violence isn't fun and it isn't pretty. It isn't happening "somewhere else" and it isn't found inside empty buildings that we march outside of and chant slogans at. It's real, it's in our face, and it's power is growing all around us. We need mass action to defeat them as a community. What we do, or do not do, on Saturday, April 15 will have ramifications across the country.

Fishery scientists are expecting a record low return of fall-run Chinook salmon to the Klamath River this year, due to a combination of several years of drought, water diversions in the Klamath Basin and to the Sacramento River and the continued presence of the PacifiCorp dams. Tribal, commercial and recreational fishermen are currently waiting for the decision by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) on the fishing seasons at its meeting in Sacramento on April 10, but the outlook is dismal, based on the low Klamath salmon estimates.

Valerie Corral and her former husband founded Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in Santa Cruz, the nation’s oldest continuously operating medical cannabis collective that provides free cannabis for 30 percent of its members. She also helped write and pass Proposition 215, California’s revolutionary medical marijuana law. She has helped build the medical industry and seen it change into what it is today. Now, another twenty years later, the financial climate around cannabis in the United States has changed into a million dollar industry, but Valerie still isn't interested in making money from cannabis.

On April 4, the Santa Cruz City Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Citing​ ​DAPL’s​ ​violation​ ​of​ ​treaty​ ​rights,​ ​destruction​ ​of​ ​sacred​ ​sites​ ​and​ ​the​ ​threat​ ​posed​ ​to​ ​Standing​ ​Rock’s​ ​water​ ​supply,​ ​the​ ​city’s agenda report​ ​advised ​that​ ​Santa​ ​Cruz​ ​join​ ​the many​ cities​ across the country ​in​ ​officially “Standing​ ​with​ ​Standing​ ​Rock.” The Council’s resolution was formed as part of a collaborative effort between the city and a coalition of Santa Cruz residents working toward the divestment of city funds from major banks funding the project.

Luis Góngora Pat was a 45-year-old indigenous Mayan Mexican, an immigrant worker, and a family man who supported his wife and three children in southern Mexico. On April 7, 2016, his life was brutally taken by SFPD. Luis’s killing was at the nexis of several struggles faced by low income people of color: indigenous peoples’ struggles, housing rights, illegal evictions, immigrant rights, dignified wage labor, homelessness, racial profiling and discrimination, police brutality and utter impunity for killing Black and Brown residents. On Friday, April 7, the one year anniversary of his death, Luis’s family will march against police terror in the so-called Sanctuary City of San Francisco.

Dejuan Hall was brutally beaten by Vallejo police officer Spencer Muniz-Bottomley on March 10, then he was charged with battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. Hall does not face any charges related to the reason police were called on him as he was not breaking any laws. His next court appearances are on Friday, April 7 and then again on Monday, April 10. Hall's trial is set for Wednesday, April 12. Advocates state, "Pretrial hearings are important to attend as lack of pre-trial court support gives the District Attorney's office leverage to intimidate innocent people into taking plea deals."

Land Day was marked with demonstrations in memory of the seizure of 21 thousand dunams of land in Al-Jalil, Al-Muthalth and Al-Naqab on March 30, 1976. Palestinians protested the Israeli apartheid wall, attempted to plant olive trees on stolen land, and called for the release of political prisoners held by Israel. Scores were injured by Israelis with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. Israeli occupation violations against Palestinians continue. Israel has seized more than 85% of the total area of historical land of Palestine. Arabs comprise 48% of the total population, but are able to utilize only 15% of the land.

Commercial Dungeness crab gear entangled a record number of whales in 2016, contributing to a third straight record-breaking year for entanglements along the U.S. West Coast, according to information released this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service. While whale entanglements are reported up and down the coast, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary has recently seen the highest number of entanglements. “Whales are suffering slow, painful deaths because there are too many crab traps in Monterey Bay,” said Catherine Kilduff of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Miguel Masso was hired by the Oakland Police after leaving his job in New York City in 2007 in the wake of a torture lawsuit. After killing Alan Blueford in 2012, Masso resigned from the Oakland Police Department in late spring of 2014 in the aftermath of the lawsuit brought by the Blueford family against the City of Oakland. He quickly found another job with the Hollister Police Department in August of 2014. Now, after being pulled over by Masso on January 27, 2017, Hollister resident Earl Malanado was physically and verbally abused by Masso. Malanado believes he barely escaped with his life.

Mike Zint & JP Massar write: What does it take to get off the streets? Money? Affordable housing? Employment? Of course the answer is yes, but none of those things is the first step. The first step is stability. Stability that the housed take for granted. A lack of stability means the homeless barely survive. Figuring out how to exist with no sense of safety and security and nowhere to go, worrying about the police yet having committed no crime, takes all that someone has. Sometimes it’s too much and a short note appears in a local paper.

In the first comprehensive review of the more than 4,000 native bee species in North America and Hawaii, the Center for Biological Diversity has found that more than half the species with sufficient data to assess are declining. Nearly 1 in 4 is imperiled and at increasing risk of extinction. The widespread decline of European honeybees has been well documented in recent years, but until now much less has been revealed about the 4,337 native bee species in North America and Hawaii. The new analysis reveals that more than 700 species are in trouble from a range of serious threats.

The YARR (Your Allied Rapid Response) Open House and Legal Observer Training on March 11 attracted a crowd of nearly 150 people to hear about how they could be part of the Rapid Response Team of Sanctuary Santa Cruz, supporting community members who are targets of an ICE raid or other forms of harassment or bullying. Three attorneys from the Immigrant Liberation Movement (ILM) conducted a training based on their work in three Bay Area Counties now networked in a Rapid Response System. YARR was formed in December 2016 shortly after the election cycle as an outgrowth of Sanctuary Santa Cruz.

Left wing activists, in partnership with tech employees, staged a rally against White House policies on March 14 at Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza in Palo Alto. The demonstration was attended by hundreds of people. Speakers at the four hour "Tech Stands Up" rally called for inclusion, diversity, and civil liberties. Tech Stands Up is an organization of people in the tech world who object to the Trump administration’s alt-right policies, and wants tech company leaders to speak out against the White House's discriminatory actions.

On March 13, a judge in the US District Court in Oakland denied a motion to dismiss charges in the case of Yuvette Henderson, a 38-year-old woman killed by Emeryville police on February 3, 2015. Henderson’s family is seeking damages from the Emeryville police department for wrongful death, as well as changes to city policies on police use of force. The motion filed by the Emeryville police department claimed there was nothing for a jury to decide in the lawsuit, because officers Michelle Shepard and Warren Williams had a reasonable fear for their safety. Monday’s ruling means the lawsuit will go forward.

Anti-homeless architecture is common in Santa Cruz, including hi-frequency Mosquito Boxes in parks, removing planter boxes and free speech zones on Pacific, replacing the City Hall lawn with gravel and rocks, and now the ugly chain link fencing at the historic downtown post office. On March 11 and 12, Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs decorated the anti-homeless fence at the post office to make it more attractive. Signs, toys, toothpaste and toothbrushes, socks, soap, clothes, shoes, flowers, and strips of fabric were weaved through the links of the fence.

On March 8, striking community members marched through downtown Santa Cruz in solidarity with Women's Strikes organized around the world on International Women's Day as a follow up to the massive Women's Marches held on January 21, 2017, the day after the Inauguration of Trump. One group participating in the March 8 demonstration was the UCSC March Collective, who invited people of all genders to join the action, stating, "We strike because we can't afford not to care."

On March 11, 2017, videos were uploaded to social media showing police in Vallejo, California brutalizing an individual who may have been experiencing mental health issues. The incident took place Friday, March 10 on Fairgrounds Drive in front of the Valero gas station. The Vallejo police officer captured on video punching and bashing with a flashlight has been identified as Spencer Bottomley, an ex-Marine. Bottomley was named in a strikingly similar brutality case, Derrick Lamoris Shields vs. City of Vallejo, for an incident on the night of April 11, 2016. According to the statement of claims, five Vallejo police officers "violated Plaintiff's rights [...] when they subjected Plaintiff to excessive and/deadly force and assault and battery."

ROAR, aka the Revolutionary Organizing Against Racism Conference, is a free two-day event, organized by Northern California Anti-Racist Action, that will be held on Ohlone Territory March 11 at OMNI Commons in Oakland and March 12th at California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. Organizers write: During these times more and more attention is being paid to those of us who use direct action and hold liberatory and revolutionary politics. We can use this moment not only to inspire others through our actions, but to also inspire with our ideas.

On March 8, International Women's Day events are scheduled for Berkeley/Albany, Oakland, San Francisco, Cupertino, Santa Cruz and throughout Northern California. A diverse group of radical feminists issuing a call-out for an international women's strike write: In our view, it is not enough to oppose Trump and his aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies. We also need to target the ongoing neoliberal attack on social provision and labor rights. Let us use the occasion to build a feminism for the 99%, a grassroots, anti-capitalist feminism – a feminism in solidarity with working women, their families and their allies throughout the world.

Keith McHenry writes: The most common government response to the suffering of those being forced into homelessness is the passage of laws against being homeless. Laws against sleeping, sitting, asking for money, living outside, or what officials call “quality of life crimes” make this bad situation even worse, and make the lives of homeless men, women, and children even more miserable. Another aspect of this punitive response to homelessness is passage of laws prohibiting the public sharing of meals with the hungry. The hope is that hiding from public view the problem of homelessness will make it go away.

Two Bay Area Air Quality Management District employees charge in a new lawsuit that they were bullied, retaliated against, and fired for exposing the illegal destruction of agency documents that are required to be maintained for a record of the violations of air pollution laws by corporations. They say they had tried to stop the destruction of the documents but that the agency's top managers continued to engage in destroying citations, compliance records, and settlement agreements for air pollution control violations by major companies like Chevron, Shell, Tosco, Pacific Steel Casting, and many other companies.

The city of Anaheim in Southern California erupted in youth protest on February 22 after Kevin Ferguson, an off-duty LAPD police officer detained a 13-year-old male, dragging him by the collar across a yard, and pulling him over hedges in front of the police officer’s home, before pulling out a gun and firing it into a crowd of students. Soon after the shooting happened, a crowd gathered outside of the officer’s home, taking to the streets while riot police were stationed around the home in order to protect the officer who was inside.