Feature Archives

On December 6, Bay Area youth groups led the local activities of the Global Youth Climate Strike. Organizations such as Sunrise Movement, Youth Vs. Apocalypse, and Students for Climate Action called for protests, marches, rallies and die-ins. Organizers of the Climate Strike wrote: The September 20th Climate Strike was the largest day of action for climate justice ever. On December 6th, as world leaders gather at the UN’s annual climate conference, young people across America will join a national #ClimateStrike to take the momentum from September to our elected officials’ doorsteps.

On November 20, more than a thousand UC Berkeley students chanted “Berkeley is a sanctuary, no Coulter, no ICE" and similar slogans as they protested right-wing mouthpiece Ann Coulter. They formed a mass demonstration at the front door and blocked the back doors to Wheeler Auditorium, where the conservative media pundit addressed a group of 350 students. One student who interrupted Coulter's speech was arrested and held overnight in jail. Six other protesters arrested at the demonstration were quickly released.

Two homeless mothers reclaimed possession of a vacant investor-owned property in West Oakland on November 18. The mothers, Dominique Walker and Sameerah Karim, are the founding members of Moms for Housing, created to address the extreme challenges working mothers face in finding safe and affordable housing for themselves and their children. The Moms for Housing have announced their intention to remain in the home until it is returned to the Oakland community. Their supporters are surrounding the home, and will remain in place until the transfer of the home to community control has been negotiated.

The Kincade Fire has created a calamitous path through Northern California’s wine country, forcing nearly 200,000 people to flee their homes. Many of them are reliving the disastrous fire that raged through the same area in 2017. On October 25, PG&E admitted its electrical equipment may have ignited the inferno, despite electrical blackouts imposed across Northern California to prevent blazes. In the San Francisco Bay Area, activists say we need to replace private control of utilities. Two new campaigns, Let's Own PG&E and Utility Justice Campaign, are calling for a publicly-accountable takeover of the monopoly. Protests have been held in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and other cities.

On October 4, the Trump administration dismissed protests and made a formal decision to open 725,500 acres of public lands and mineral estate across California’s Central Coast and the Bay Area to new oil and gas drilling and fracking. The public lands the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has earmarked for leasing are in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus. The move will end a more than five-year-old moratorium on leasing federal public land and mineral estate in the state to oil companies.

Climate Strikes began on September 20, three days out from the United Nation's climate emergency summit in New York, and continued to September 27. As young climate strikers have shown, there is huge power in sustained action week after week to match the scale of the climate emergency. Millions walked out from home, work, school or university to declare a climate emergency and to show politicians what action in line with climate science and justice means.

As news continues to pour in that the Trump administration’s attacks against immigrants and refugees has reached new lows, Bay Area residents are feeling a renewed sense of urgency. On the heels of protests throughout the region on July 2 and further official announcements about coming ICE raids, July 12 saw a new round of demonstrations, including protests at the city of San Francisco's Sansome Street ICE facility. In Santa Clara County, the Rapid Response Network (RRN) reported an increase in calls of observed ICE activity, as people are on high alert. Volunteers who document ICE interactions with immigrants have seen their ranks increase quickly.