Indybay

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.

Through products like Project Nimbus, Google profits directly by enhancing Israeli surveillance and control over Palestinians. Recent reporting shows Google signed a deal with the Ministry of Defense. On May 14, pro-Palestinian protesters rallied near the entrance to Google’s annual developer conference, many chaining themselves together. Thousands of attendees waiting to enter the Google event were delayed and had to be redirected.

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.

On April 18, workers at the REI store in Santa Cruz voted 32-12 in favor of forming a union. The workers filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on March 14, at which time they announced their intent to join United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 5. The Santa Cruz REI store is the second REI location in the Bay Area to unionize, and the tenth nationwide.

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.

A coalition has filed a lawsuit challenging the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) and Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner’s repeat rubberstamping of applications to use highly toxic and legally restricted pesticides, including chloropicrin and 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D), near three schools in the Pajaro Valley of Monterey County. The young students suffer some of the highest exposure to fumigants in the state.

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.

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.

After years of prayers and protests, the struggle to protect the West Berkeley Shellmound Sacred Site has prevailed. On March 12, the Berkeley City Council approved a global settlement with the owners of the Shellmound village site and adopted an ordinance giving title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. The deal results in what Ohlone tribal leaders describe as one of the most significant urban land back victories in United States history.

On January 24, SFPD served a search warrant on Indybay, seeking identifying information about the author of a communiqué. The warrant included a non-disclosure order. After pushback from Electronic Frontier Foundation attorneys, SFPD agreed to take no further action on the warrant. Indybay and EFF then filed a motion to quash the warrant and vacate the gag order. On March 7, the gag order was vacated and the warrant was confirmed void.

On January 20, thousands traveled to San Francisco to protest the continued availability of abortion. Lacking local support, the Catholic Church hires dozens of busses to transport their flock for the Walk for Life annually. As in previous years, their event this year attracted members of hate groups, with some giving nazi salutes. Counter-protesters assembled in front the San Francisco Public Library to confront marchers as they passed.

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.

Protesters in Northern California have engaged in direct actions aimed at disrupting business as usual and raising the profile of the call to free Palestine. Activists shut down the Bay Bridge. A US military vessel destined to deliver weaponry to Israel was blocked from leaving the Port of Oakland. A defense contractor's office was locked down. Communiqués posted on Indybay claim sabotage of train lines, as well as a water main at a pro-IDF fundraiser.

Millions of people worldwide are standing in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel wages war on Gaza. Marches and rallies have demanded a ceasefire, the end of US military support for Israel, and that Palestine be freed once and for all. Every week there are more protests in cities large and small, including in many that have never seen a pro-Palestinian demonstration. In San Francisco, tens of thousands have marched against Israel's war on Gaza.

As billionaires and politicians met behind ten-foot-high metal walls, tens of thousands of demonstrators protested outside. Member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit claim to have "Inclusive, Collaborative Solutions for Just Transitions," but opponents call this greenwashing and maintain that years of corporate neoliberalism are responsible for economic inequality, oppression, the climate crisis, and war.

At sunrise on October 19, youth climate activists associated with the group Occupy Beale gave a speech decrying the imperialist military-industrial complex, responsible for countless ecological atrocities, energy consumption, and carbon emissions. Four activists, banners in hand, then marched across the demarcation line at the Schneider gate of Beale Air Force Base. Military police detained three of them for over an hour.

Over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced and face serious malnutrition and dehydration. Nearly 15,000 have been killed, a third of whom are children. Around 50% of all residential housing in the strip has been destroyed. Israel has killed over 200 medical and aid workers, and 65 journalists. It has bombed and raided hospitals, schools, UN facilities, and more, allowing in barely enough supplies to keep the population from starving to death.

The city of San Pablo plans on building a new police headquarters and training facility. The Stop Cop Campus Coalition intends to prevent the new facility from being constructed, arguing such huge amounts of money would be better spent meeting the needs of city residents rather than policing them. On September 30, their second protest was held with a march down the middle of San Pablo Avenue to the site of the proposed "Cop Campus."

The newly-formed Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) will hold its inaugural bicoastal conference, Battling the “IHRA Definition”: Theory & Activism, on October 13-14. Through the lens of research on structural racism, state violence, and social justice movements, the conference will analyze political campaigns that seek to codify the “IHRA definition” of antisemitism, and efforts to oppose IHRA policies.

On September 16, thousands rallied and marched in Sacramento in solidarity with New York City's massive March to End Fossil Fuels. Starting with colorful rallies in Sacramento's Old Town, protesters marched to the Tower Bridge and displayed a huge banner demanding an end of fossil fuel use. Sign bearing kayakers in the river joined in. Smaller demonstrations happened in Palo Alto and other cities.