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How a Wells Fargo Occupation Led to Felony Charges

Features   Uncategorized
The occupation of a vacant building in Santa Cruz became a complicated and illegal experiment in social change. Eleven people — including alternative journalists and some of Santa Cruz’s most visible activists — were singled out and charged with misdemeanor trespassing, vandalism and felony conspiracy to commit trespass.

Chilling Crackdown on the Santa Cruz 11

Features   Uncategorized
In a chilling strategy to crush political dissent, activists in Santa Cruz face felony charges for a peaceful occupation of a vacant bank building. Six of those charged are journalists and high-profile critics of the police and city council, prompting many to call it an attack on the First Amendment

Sharing Food as a Form of Nonviolent Protest

Features
Food Not Bombs stages a daily protest against a system that values profits more than people. It expresses its values in a supremely nonviolent way. Sharing food is an act of nonviolent resistance to the violence of hunger and simultaneously a protest of the corporate state’s military and economic violence.

Berkeley’s Segregation Measure Fails the Test of History

Opinion
In voting to place this discriminatory sitting ban on the November ballot, the Berkeley City Council has betrayed the very concept of equal rights for all. Laws that banish certain groups of people from public spaces — whether based on appearance, economic class, or race — are modern-day segregation decrees, plain and simple.

The Voices of the Occupy Movement

Poetry
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, according to English poet Percy Shelley. Alameda poet Mary Rudge created profiles in poetry of the Occupy movement’s dedicated young organizers, pepper-sprayed university students, tent dwellers, longtime 1960s-era activists, jobless artists, inconvenienced bus riders, homeless squatters, and passive TV news watchers.

Spending on U.S. War Machine Creates Rising Poverty

Features   Uncategorized
The New Priorities Campaign protests military spending as a direct cause of increasing poverty and homelessness. National security needs to be defined by more than our missiles, ships, planes and drones. Our country has been turned into “fortress America” to protect the interests of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

Massive Protest at Wells Fargo Exposes Corporate Misconduct of Big Banks

News
Thousands of marchers protested the unjust gap between rich and poor by nonviolently disrupting Wells Fargo’s shareholders meeting in San Francisco. They confronted bank executives about Wells Fargo’s role in the country’s financial crisis, the high number of foreclosures that reduce families to homelessness, and the bank’s investment in private prisons.

Young Artists Crusade for Healthier Communities

News
The beautiful mural created by the young artists of Youth Spirit Artworks promotes healthy living and exposes the huge disparity between the health and lifespan of low-income and wealthier residents in Berkeley. The mural makes a strong statement about social justice by showing how poverty jeopardizes public health.