Feature Archives

After nearly a year of struggle, Moms for Housing announced on October 9 that their house on Magnolia Street in West Oakland had been purchased. Moms4Housing co-founder Dominique Walker declared, "This is officially Moms' House." In November, Dominique Walker and her allies running as the "Right to Housing" slate were elected to the Berkeley rent board. ACCE Director and Moms4Housing co-founder Carroll Fife claimed victory as Oakland's D3 councilmember-elect.

Erica Aitken of Reimagine Santa Cruz writes: The next City Council elections will decide the future of Santa Cruz. Do we open our doors to Silicon Valley with luxury rentals and our very own Santana Row? Or do we take control and build beautiful affordable housing for those who work and would like to live here? If we ask ourselves this question, it is because we have recently been the victims of a particularly galling breach of trust from our current City Councilmembers.

Facebook blocked hundreds of accounts days before a September 21 online event targeting the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The pipeline is set to cut through sovereign Wet’suwet’en land, defiantly ignoring hereditary chiefs of their rights, title, and consent for the project. The project would lock in decades of increased fracked gas and the impacts to climate, air, water and the risks posed to Indigenous camps built along the route.

President Trump has said little about the wildfires raging in California, Oregon and Washington for weeks, other than to suggest poor forest management was primarily to blame. “These are climate fires,” says Timothy Ingalsbee, an Oregon-based wildland fire ecologist and former wildland firefighter. “Though some scientists hesitate to attribute a single event to climate change, these are exactly the conditions predicted by climatologists.”

On August 28, tribal members and local residents protested outside the Mendocino Forest Products (MFP) wood pellet plant in Calpella, near Ukiah, calling for suspension of the plant’s operations during the Covid pandemic, now compounded by recent fires and extremely poor air quality. Organizers say the protest is needed to bring attention to demands for public transparency on air pollution and fire safety issues presented by the plant’s operations to date and especially under present conditions.

Despite limited concessions by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy following public outcry against mail delaying tactics, community members and postal workers rallied to demand that Congress save the US Postal Service in protests across the US. Naturally the San Francisco Bay Area was no exception. Many here have long been concerned about privatization schemes. A national day of action on August 22 drew protests throughout the Bay Area.

On August 21, protesters met at Crissy field for a march across the Golden Gate Bridge. The march was to honor those who have died from coronavirus and police brutality, to fight for the living, and to demand Trump's resignation in solidarity with marches across the Brooklyn Bridge and other bridges in U.S. cities on the same day. In San Francisco, shield training readied protesters for police confrontation when they were not allowed to cross the iconic bridge's pedestrian walkway. Organizers called it a taste of what is to come.