Feature Archives

On March 9th at Golden Gate National Recreational Area's Fort Baker in Marin County, nearly one hundred UC service workers, students and supporters from UCB, UCSF, UCSC, and UC Davis entered the hired meeting space of Blum Capital Partnership, the Cavallo Point Lodge, and picketed the street in front. Richard Blum is a UC regent and the husband of California Senator Diane Feinstein.

On March 1st, hundreds of MUNI workers from TWU Local 250-A, riders, and community organizations rallied and marched in downtown San Francisco to oppose the MTA's proposed budget cuts and threatened layoffs. The march began at Powell and Market and went to the MTA offices, and then to City Hall for a forum led by union organizer Eric Williams, who called for unity between MUNI workers and riders.

On Monday through Thursday, February 8-11, UCSC staff and students will hold demonstrations at a different dinning hall for each of the four days, from 11:30am-1:30pm to protest the rising cost of student fees while student services are being slashed; major cuts to labor time while forcing workers to perform more labor; and workers, being rushed through their shifts, aren’t able to thoroughly clean dining halls, resulting in unsanitary eating commons and an unsafe working environment.

On January 9, the Raging Grannies joined worker safety advocates in protesting plans by Tesla Motors, Inc. to build an auto assembly plant in Downey, California. Downey is the location of a major film studio built on the site of a former NASA plant that produced spacecraft for the Apollo moon missions. Despite cleanup efforts meant to protect workers from the toxic residue of aerospace experiments and manufacturing, dozens of film production workers have developed severe health problems while working in Downey. Some never recovered.

On December 17th, 2009, KPFA Flashpoints producers Nora Barrows-Friedman, Miguel Gavilan Molina and Dennis Bernstein gave a report to a rally in front of the Berkeley-based Pacifica station about management's violation of the union contract and efforts to eliminate the show.

A poorly researched article on California water, the "New Dust Bowl," is online and appeared in the November-December edition of Mother Jones magazine, a publication known for its investigative reporting. Dan Bacher, an Indybay contributor and editor for Fish Sniffer, critiques the article, stating, "The 'New Dust Bowl' sounds just like a headline from the Sean Hannity Show or Fox 'News' - and the article reads like a propaganda piece for growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley."

Having received a $465 million low-interest loan from the US Department of Energy, Tesla Motors will soon be deciding on a site to locate their electric car manufacturing plant. On December 10th worker safety activists visited Tesla's world headquarters in San Carlos to report on the continuing contamination and dangerous working conditions at a site in southern California under consideration. They asked that Tesla not choose the site in Downey for their new plant.