California News

Activists in Northern California are not waiting for court challenges to stop Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Protests are ongoing and have cropped up outside Tesla showrooms in Berkeley, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Corte Madera and Seaside, amongst other locations. The earliest of these happened on a national day of action on February 15. The action at the Van Ness Tesla location in SF grew to about a thousand people.

In spite of a year of popular mobilization against arming Israel's genocide of Palestine and in contravention of US law, President Biden and Congress are continuing massive arms shipments to Israel. The People's Arms Embargo has responded with ongoing blockades at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. “If the U.S. government won’t stop shipping arms to Israel, then we will establish a People’s Arms Embargo to stop it ourselves," organizers say.

In an inexplicable move, the National Marine Fisheries Service has allowed a little known fishery that targets bottom-dwelling sablefish to expand into federally designated habitat for critically endangered Pacific leatherback turtles off the coasts of Oregon and California. The fishery's lines can wrap around sea turtles’ necks or front flippers, anchoring them to heavy pots on the seafloor, resulting in injuries and deaths.

As of March 2024, 894,898 acres across the western United States are slated to be logged under a "community protection" measure proposed by the U.S. Forest Service. Resistance is growing. In addition to a lawsuit filed against the agency by a coalition in California, a National Day of Forest-Climate Action will take place on May 28, and the group Lost Sierra Forest Defense is organizing a Climate Action Camp in Plumas County from May 23-29.

Students at UCB, Cal Poly Humboldt, Stanford, Sonoma State, SF State, Sacramento State, USF, UCSC and UCD joined students at colleges throughout the country to establish occupations in support of Palestinians. Outrage at Israel's attempted genocide in Gaza has produced a movement of encampments at Harvard, Columbia, Yale, MIT, NYU, UT Austin, and more. Police have arrested hundreds, and yet the protests persist and expand.

On May 31, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish clerics held a pray-in to demand that Senator Padilla stop supporting Israel's genocide of Palestine. Dressed in black, protesters, many with their small children and carrying effigies of killed Palestinian children, marched in a slow, mournful procession to Padilla's office's street. There they painted a large mural bearing a Papal message of peace while religious leaders addressed the crowd.

The UCSC Campus Mobile Crisis Team (CMCT) is the first of its kind on a University of California campus. The CMCT provides an empathetic, non-police response to emergency calls regarding mental health crises on campus. Following a series of police killings in the U.S., including the choking death of George Floyd in May, 2020, worldwide protests called for the expansion of non-police crisis teams for community safety.

May Day actions this year were organized with urgency in solidarity with the Palestinian people, heeding the call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions to stand with Gaza. Workers and peoples around the world called for an immediate ceasefire. Marches and rallies filled the streets across Northern California on May 1, and there was no business as usual at the Port of Oakland as officials closed the port in anticipation of planned protests.

From April 19-22, thousands of young people from across Northern California took part in multiple national days of action calling on President Biden and other decision makers to declare a Climate Emergency and End Fossil Fuels. In San Francisco, Youth Vs. Apocalypse's annual youth-led Earth Day action centered intersectional demands around uplifting Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, countries suffering violence due to western imperialism.

Even as a case awaits a California Supreme Court decision regarding student housing UC Berkeley intends to build on the land, the university went in for the kill on People's Park shortly before midnight on January 3, sending in hundreds of police to clear the park and to make way for a wall of shipping containers. Protesters were ready for the raid, but police closed nearby streets to prevent more from coming to defend the park. Several demonstrators were arrested.