Feature Archives

On November 15th, Andrea Lewis died in an apparent heart attack at her San Francisco home. Andrea came to KPFA in 1999 as a co-host of the Morning Show and later became the host of the Sunday Sedition and the Evening News Co-Anchor.

A police fishing expedition has been fought successfully over the course of the past year by one of the Indymedia.us system administrators and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), largely in secret due to dodgy gag orders. Earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us sysadmin Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. EFF argued that the overly broad demand for Internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.

This is the first of a series of profiles of alternative and activist media workers in the Bay Area, written and photographed by Indybay contributor Peter M. Featured in the first profile is Tracy Rosenberg, the Executive Director of Media Alliance. The story of Media Alliance is key to the history of media activism in the Bay Area.

On September 24th, San Francisco-based Twitter.com shut down an account that was monitoring the movement of police and military through the city of Pittsburgh during protests against the G-20 summit on September 24th and 25th. The Pennsylvania State Police also arrested Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger and accused them of "criminal use of communication facility" and other charges. On October 1st, the FBI raided Elliot's home in Queens.

Disorientation Guide Collective writes, "So you've gotten to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Congratulations! What now? The ideas the University produces about itself construct an ideal image of what awaits you here: an image of fulfillment and understanding, a picture of the life you might build for yourself after you get your degree. So how couldn't you be idealistic and excited? After all, you’ve arrived at one of the most beautiful places in the world and prepared yourself for the journey of a lifetime."

On September 21st, J.R. Valrey stood for trial in Oakland on felony arson charges, after he was arrested while reporting on the Oscar Grant Rebellion on January 7, 2009. Valrey is a producer at KPFA radio, associate editor and multimedia director of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and runs the Block Report Radio website. His trial was postponed until late October. Supporters are asked to show they stand with J.R. by attending upcoming court dates.

Informativo Pacifica, a half hour national and international newscast produced in Spanish by volunteers at Pacifica's KPFK radio station in Los Angeles, has been cut and rescheduled without warning. Instead of broadcasting Monday through Friday at 5:30am, the show was rescheduled to 9:00pm and only four days a week, Monday through Thursday.