California

Lessons On Building Independent Progressive Power In A City

December 2, 2024 Steve Early, Popular Resistance. Create! California, Chevron, DSA, Green party, Left Politics

In 2006 Richmond, California became the largest city in the U.S. to elect a Green Party member as its mayor (a record it still holds). The successful candidate, who served eight years in that office, was Gayle McLaughlin, a leading critic of Chevron Corporation, the city’s largest employer and biggest polluter. McLaughlin co-founded the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) and is now an East Bay DSA member as well. In 2004, she was the sole RPA representative on the council, long dominated by friends of Big Oil. In January 2025, that seven-member body will have a progressive-majority of four, including DSA-backed Vice-Mayor Claudia Jimenez, who was re-elected to the council this fall. Richmond’s current mayor is Eduardo Martinez, one of just seven city hall leaders in the country who belong to DSA.

Workers On The Picket Line

November 26, 2024 Marie Kelly, Workers World. Resist! California, Michigan, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Union workers at CVS stores in California asserted their rights by holding a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike at seven CVS store locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The workers are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Not one CVS union member crossed the picket line, which represents 7,000 CVS workers in southern California. The strike came after UFCW filed ULP charges against CVS with the National Labor Relations Board, citing unlawful surveillance of workers, retaliation against union supporters and prohibiting workers from engaging in union activity.

How Advocates Won Bike, Bus And Pedestrian Improvements

November 26, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Strategize! Bikes, Buses, California, Los Angeles, Pedestrians, Road Safety, Transportation

Think people won’t vote for safer streets? Think again. In March, Los Angeles voters passed the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure with over 65% of the vote. What’s the story? L.A. already had a plan — Mobility Plan 2035 passed in 2015 — to create a network of safe routes for biking, driving and walking. There was only one problem: The city had implemented only about 5% of it. In 2020, StreetsLA (a.k.a. the Bureau of Street Services) was taking advantage of the pandemic shutdown to rapidly repave city streets. The transportation advocacy organization Streets For All saw an opportunity to implement complete street improvements during repaving.

Organizing To Strike: How 20,000 California Workers Got Ready

November 19, 2024 Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes. Organize! California, Higher Education, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Michael McGlenn is a clinical psychologist at the University of California-San Diego. Three years ago, feeling the pinch of dues, he looked into dropping the union. He felt that “the best I could do was see the person in front of me and care for them,” he said, and as far as he could see, the union had nothing to do with what happened in his office. That was until a member organizer went to see him. They talked about how his ability to care for his patients was related to turnover and understaffing that could only be fixed through collective action. That conversation not only kept McGlenn in the University Professional and Technical Employees—years later, he is a leader on his campus.

Even California Moved Right With Pro-Prison Ballot Measure

November 17, 2024 Katie Rose Quandt, Truthout. Educate! Ballot Measure, California, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Right wing politics

Amid the onslaught of dismal news on Election Day, Californians passed a “tough-on-crime” ballot initiative that will lengthen sentences for some theft and drug crimes — a policy that equity-focused advocates warn will vastly increase incarceration rates in the state. Proposition 36 — also known as the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act — passed overwhelmingly 70-30 at the ballot box. The measure, which was funded and supported by big box stores, prosecutors and law enforcement groups, is a response to what many perceive as triple crises.

UCSF Health Professionals Charge Leadership With Complicity In Genocide

November 11, 2024 UC People’s Tribunal For Palestine, Mondoweiss. Resist! Accountability, California, Genocide, Health Professionals, Israel, Palestine, People's Tribunal, Student Activism, University of California

Almost a year ago, on October 31, 2023, faculty held a press conference in front of the Helen Diller Medical Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to amplify the warnings of Palestinian colleagues at al-Ahli Hospital who predicted that Israel’s bombing of the hospital would be the first in a campaign that would decimate Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. At the time, British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, addressing the world while standing among the dead, stated that Israel’s targeting of al-Ahli Hospital signaled a decisive shift, marking the moment when its assault on Gaza “stopped being a war, and became a genocide.”

East Los Angeles Community Victory! Extera Charter Project Stopped!

November 1, 2024 Carlos Montes, Fight Back! News!. Resist! California, Charter Schools, Education, Gentrification, Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA – On October 29, East Los Angeles (ELA) residents, led by the community group Centro CSO, scored a major win against a proposed charter school in their neighborhood. Centro CSO members and residents spoke at a meeting of the LA County Board of Supervisors to oppose Extera Charter School’s plan to build a new facility on Gage and Eastman Avenues. Angelina Chavez, a community member voiced her concerns, stating, “This project will bring constant traffic, noise, and pollution to our quiet street.” At the meeting, Extera representatives brought over 60 parents, mostly mothers in Extera T-shirts, to voice support.

Richmond’s Progressive Alliance Has Made City Hall Better For Twenty Years

October 14, 2024 Steve Early, Social Policy. Strategize! California, City Hall, Elections, Municipalism, Progressives

Richmond, California - On a Saturday evening last spring, Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) co-chair Claudia Jimenez hosted a high-spirited rally and party with 200 supporters of her re-election campaign for the Richmond City Council. Jimenez is a 46-year-old immigrant from Columbia, who worked as an architect and community organizer before seeking elected office four years ago in her diverse, blue-collar city of 114,000, that’s 80-percent non-white. On the 7-member council, which includes an RPA majority, she has immersed herself in municipal finance questions, public safety issues, and the longstanding challenge of making Chevron, the city’s largest employer, more responsive to community concerns about its environmental impact.

Los Angeles Tenant Union Founders’ Call To Action

October 14, 2024 Roshan Abraham, Next City. Organize! Book Review, California, Housing, Housing Crisis, Los Angeles, renter's rights, Tenant Unions

Tracy Rosenthal and Leo Vilchis first met in 2012 through an activist art project in Los Angeles called the School of Echoes. The project took Vilchis, Rosenthal and others to six different L.A. communities on listening tours to hear residents’ concerns. The concerns they encountered were largely about displacement, gentrification and the feeling that people were being pushed from their communities. Their attempt to address these problems led to the creation of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, which has a membership of 3000 due-paying households. And over the past 9 years, the pair has worked alongside some of the union’s local chapters to coordinate some of the most public, and often successful, organizing fights on behalf of tenants in the country.

Long Beach Demands Return Of Puvungna To Indigenous People

October 6, 2024 Abraham Quintana, Fight Back! News. Resist! California, Higher Education, Indigenous Rights, Landback Movement

Long Beach, CA – On September 28, a crowd of about 20 people, including faculty, students and community members gathered near the Walter Pyramid at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) while the school started an event to celebrate its 75th anniversary. The protesters chanted “land back!” and made chalk art to advocate for the protection of Puvungna, a 22-acre site located on campus, sacred to the Acjachemen and Tongva peoples of California. The university is bound by a 2021 settlement with the tribes and its representatives to return the land to indigenous custodianship by September 2023, but the administration failed to do so and refuses to make progress towards this goal.

Creating A Co-Owned Pocket Community

September 24, 2024 Kirsten Dirksen, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! California, Community, Housing, Intentional Community, Oakland

Phil Levin and Kristen Berman wanted to live with their friends, but they didn’t want to sacrifice their privacy, so they started their own intentional community where you can choose your neighbors and eat together but still have your own home. Today, on their one-third-acre lot in Oakland (California), there are 20 adults and 4 babies living in 6 buildings with 10 units. There's a 4-plex with 5 adults, 2 apartments with 2 or 4 adults upstairs and families downstairs, and 2 houses with families. They started with a group of friends who joined together to create an LLC to buy a lot with 3 buildings, but once California changed the ADU laws, they added 2 extra structures of around 900 square feet each: one now houses a single family, and another is their community house with a kitchen, dining room, living room, and coworking space.

How Feed Black Futures Is Challenging Structural Racism

September 19, 2024 Tina Jenkins Bell, Resilience. Create! Black America, California, Food and Agriculture, Food Apartheid, Racism

Don’t call it a food desert. “Food apartheid” is closer to the truth. Describing a place as a food desert, says food sovereignty activist Sophi Wilmore, “implies that this is a natural phenomenon—that the lack of healthy, fresh, nutritious foods in certain neighborhoods is par for the course, normal, organic.” On the contrary, says Wilmore: The real issue is structural racism, and unjust systems that keep people impoverished, hungry, and positioned for incarceration. Wilmore is the co-executive director of Feed Black Futures, a community-based, Black, queer-led food sovereignty organization in California that connects Black and brown farmers with Black mamas and caregivers whose lives and families have been impacted by incarceration and the criminal legal system.

AT&T Southeast Strike Nears One Month

September 15, 2024 Dan DiMaggio, Labor Notes. Resist! AT&T, California, Nevada, Strikes, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Seventeen thousand AT&T workers in the Southeast have been on strike since August 16. They may be joined soon by another 8,500 workers at AT&T in California and Nevada. Workers in nine Southeast states walked out on an unfair labor practice strike four weeks ago over accusations the telecom giant has been bargaining in bad faith, including engaging in surface bargaining, not sending representatives with real authority to the table, and reneging on commitments to bargain to lower health care costs. Their contract expired August 3. “They got people at the table who can’t make the decisions—they’re just there,” said Clarence Adams, a wire technician with Communications Workers Local 3611 outside Raleigh, North Carolina.

Cal State Professors Targeted For Exposing School’s Ties To Genocide

September 11, 2024 Joshua Frank, Mondoweiss. Resist! BDS Movement, California, Campus Movement, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Retaliation

Last month, in a tangible victory for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, San Francisco State University (SFSU) agreed to pull its investment from four companies tied to weapons manufacturing and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The four include Lockheed Martin, aerospace company Leonardo, military contractor Palantir, and construction equipment maker Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have been tearing up Gaza and the West Bank for decades. The success was four years in the making, as SFSU students successfully passed a divestment resolution in 2020.

Even In California, Infrastructure Spending Is A Climate Time Bomb

August 27, 2024 Zack Deutsch-Gross and Corrigan Salerno, Next City. Educate! California, climate crisis, Infrastructure, Transportation

With the fifth largest economy in the world, California has for decades set the tone for what is possible on climate, with other states and even countries looking to it for bold policy leadership and direction. Yet while Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to tout California as a climate leader, his transportation agency — operating with little public oversight or accountability — continues to advance harmful projects that will guarantee future increases in emissions. Nowhere is this contradiction more apparent than in how California is spending its Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) dollars. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was hailed by the Biden Administration as the biggest investment in climate in U.S. history.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources