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Parents And Students Sit-In In Solidarity With Striking Teachers

Sacramento, California - In an incredible show of solidarity, Sacramento parents and students have organized a sit-in to support striking teachers and support staff. Parents have been camping out at district headquarters in the Serna Center, calling for the school board to meet with teachers and reach an agreement. They are watching movies and playing board games, and have vowed to continue the sit-in until the district takes action. These community-led tactics demonstrate the interconnectedness between teachers and their communities. Since March 23, 4,000 educators in Sacramento have been on strike demanding higher pay in pace with inflation, increased staffing in their schools, no cuts to health benefits, and improved support for students.

Movement Generation Works To Usher In A Sustainable Just Transition

In the mid-2000s, when the documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth,” first alerted viewers that human activity was drastically altering the environment, and global warming would insidiously thaw the North and South poles and raise the sea levels, urban organizers like Mateo Nube heard the warning loud and clear. Nube quickly banded together with other activists in the San Francisco Bay Area to educate their communities about humanity’s devastating impacts on the environment and what needed to be done to try to abate the eventual irreparable changes by shifting people’s views about the economy, which was contributing to the environmental degradation.

TANC Organizing Committee On San Francisco’s ‘Right To Organize’

In February, San Francisco officials amended administrative code to “require residential landlords to allow tenant organizing activities to occur in common areas of the building; require certain residential landlords to recognize duly-established tenant associations, confer in good faith with said associations, and attend some of their meetings upon request; and provide that a landlord’s failure to allow organizing activities or comply with their obligations as to tenant associations may support a petition for a rent reduction.” They call it the “right to organize.” While the media and some tenant organizations hailed the legislation as an unprecedented expansion of tenant rights, in key ways the legislation limits its nominal goal and solidifies conditions that undermine mass tenant power.

From Minneapolis To Sacramento: Teachers Teach Us How To Fight Back

Teachers have taken the lead in the fight against inflation, precarious working conditions, racist education systems, and the lack of resources for public education in America. This time it is the Sacramento teachers who have been on strike for a week. Three years ago, these same teachers in Sacramento staged a 24-hour walkout to defend the contract that education officials signed in 2019 but refused to honor. The walkout culminated in a rally at the district building where thousands of educators accompanied by the community gathered to demand that the district honor the contract. Perhaps inspired by combative teachers in recent struggles seen in the U.S., such as in Chicago and more recently Minnesota, and aware of the strength of the union and the power of struggle, this time Sacramento teachers are fighting for a wage increase in line with inflation, to keep the health care plan they have, and to increase the support available to their own students.

Oakland, California, March To Stop School Closures Reaches Thousands

Oakland, California - Students from three Oakland area schools, scheduled to be closed at the end of this school year, led a spirited march and rally today. Young people from Parker Elementary, La Escuelita Middle School and Community Day School chanted from the sound truck, carried signs and banners and spoke about how teachers in their neighborhood schools have changed their lives. Rank-and-file members of the Oakland Education Association, parents and community members participated in today’s action. Since February, a grassroots community-led coalition has come together to stop the Oakland Unified School District’s plans to close or merge 11 public schools serving primarily Black, Latinx and other students of color in East Oakland.

California Grocery Store Workers Vote To Authorize Walkouts

Over 47,000 grocery store workers in Southern California have voted to Authorize Walkouts after contract negotiations have stalled. Despite reaping huge profits during the pandemic, the supermarket executives are refusing to meet workers’ demands for increased wages, higher minimum hours for part-time workers, and health and safety committees at stores. A strike would include workers at over 500 Krogers, Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons, and Pavilions supermarkets. These workers currently make between $17.02 and $22.50 an hour after five to seven years, less than the living wage for the area, which MIT researchers estimated at  between $19 to $34 an hour. These workers have seen rising costs of living and inflation eat into their wages.

Striking Sacramento Teachers Union Slams District For Rejecting Invite

Sacramento, California - A day after Sacramento City Unified superintendent rejected State Superintendent Tony Thurmond’s offer to bring district and union officials together to resume negotiations, union leaders sent a scathing email criticizing district officials. Sacramento City Unified teachers and district classified staff have been on strike since Wednesday with no end in sight, leaving more than 40,000 students unable to attend classes. Schools were expected to remain closed Monday. District officials met Saturday with SEIU Local 1021, the union representing classified staff. After the negotiating session, SEIU asked the district to consider additional improvements to the “total overall economic package that meets or exceeds the agreement with SCTA.”

A School Created A Homeless Shelter In The Gym And It Paid Off In The Classroom

San Francisco, California - On a Friday evening in the fall of 2019, Maria Flores stood waiting with her “crazy heavy” duffel bag and her teenage son outside the office of a man whose home she cleans. A friend of hers had told him that Flores had been evicted from the apartment she had lived in for 16 years. There, the single mom had paid $700 a month in rent ever since she’d moved in eight-months pregnant. Now, one night at a motel cost as much as $250. “Every single day I was looking for a place to live,” Flores said. He’d offered two air mattresses, keys to his office, and permission to sleep there on weekends. For the better part of a year, Flores, who asked to use only one of her two surnames, lived that way: Back and forth, spend and scrimp.

When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord

Daniel Cooper could barely afford a tiny apartment at the 13-story Olume building in downtown San Francisco. But the expansive view from the roof deck captivated him. Raised in a small city in Kentucky, Cooper was struck by the grandeur of the skyline before him, from the soaring heights of Salesforce tower, San Francisco’s largest skyscraper, to the gleaming gold cupolas atop St. Joseph’s Church, one of the city’s historic landmarks. The sense of opportunity he felt when looking out on his new hometown helped convince the software engineer to become one of the glassy new building’s first tenants in 2016. He joined Mévis Mousbé, a driver for a ride-sharing service who had been the first to move in.

Is The California Coalition Fighting Subsidies For Rooftop Solar A Fake Grassroots Group?

In the fight over California’s rooftop solar policy, a coalition that claims to represent low-income, senior and environmental leaders is running ads warning about a cost shift that forces consumers to subsidize solar for people who live in mansions. This message, by Affordable Clean Energy for All, is trying to influence the debate as California regulators consider rules that would sharply reduce the financial benefits of owning rooftop systems. But Affordable Clean Energy for All is not a grassroots movement. It is a public relations campaign sponsored by big utility companies that stand to benefit from policies that hurt rooftop solar. Many of the 100-plus groups that make up the coalition have received charitable donations or other financial support from the utilities.

Another California Minimum Wage Earthquake?

California is the epicenter for a nationwide grassroots movement to raise the wage floor for American workers. On January 1st, the state set $15 an hour as the floor for large employers and $14 an hour for small ones (rising to $15 for all in 2023). Meanwhile, thirty-nine California cities and counties have established higher rates, with Emeryville the highest at $17.13 an hour and most well above $15. The Fight for Fifteen movement has reshaped public opinion, pushing local and state officials around the country to approve a $15 per hour minimum wage. Eleven states and fifty-four cities and counties have $15 minimum wage floors, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), and four in ten workers live in states on the pathway to a $15 minimum wage.

California Redwood Forest Returned To Native Tribal Group

Los Angeles - The descendants of Native American tribes on the Northern California coast are reclaiming a bit of their heritage that includes ancient redwoods that have stood since their ancestors walked the land. Save the Redwoods League planned to announce Tuesday that it is transferring more than 500 acres (202 hectares) on the Lost Coast to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council. The group of 10 tribes that have inhabited the area for thousands of years will be responsible for protecting the land dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ, or “Fish Run Place,” in the Sinkyone language. Priscilla Hunter, chairwoman of the Sinkyone Council, said it’s fitting they will be caretakers of the land where her people were removed or forced to flee before the forest was largely stripped for timber.

Teamsters Union Shuts Down Southern California Sanitation Workers Strike

In coastal Orange County, south of Los Angeles, 400 sanitation workers went on strike on December 9 against Republic Services, the second-largest waste management firm in the US. The workers, members of International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Local 396, had voted by a large majority in favor of a strike on November 23.

UC Recognizes Student Researchers United Union Of 17,000 Workers

California - The university agreed Wednesday to recognize Student Researchers United, or SRU, a union representing 17,000 student researchers employed by the UC system. The decision came after nearly 11,000 student researchers across the state voted Nov. 19 to authorize a strike. Out of the members who voted, 97.5% voted in favor of a strike, according to a press release from United Auto Workers, the parent union that SRU is joining. “This is the single biggest new union filing in any industry, definitely this year if not this decade,” said UC Berkeley student researcher Tanzil Chowdhury. “Seventeen thousand new workers just joined the labor movement, which is historic.” In the coming months, SRU will negotiate with the university to establish a contract, according to campus student researcher Tarini Hardiker.

Tribal Communities Organize To Stop Sites Reservoir

Tribal activists, drinking water advocates, and commercial and subsistence fishers are asking the public to stand with them in the fight for both the Trinity and Sacramento River salmon by supporting a California state process to restore flows in California’s largest rivers, and by fighting a proposal for a twenty square mile reservoir, the Sites Reservoir. They are asking the public to attend an online Virtual Rally and Public Testimony Training on December 6, a state hearing on the Sacramento, San Joaquin and Bay Delta flows on the December 8 at 9 a.m. and Sites Reservoir related public hearings on December 15 at 6 p.m. and on December 16 at 9 a.m., and the California Water Commission meeting on public funding for Sites Reservoir on December 15 at 9 a.m..
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