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How San Francisco Longshoremen Made Their Union A Powerhouse

August 13, 2024 Peter Cole, Jacobin. , , , , ,
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University and the author of Dockworker Power: Race & Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018). In this interview, Cole and Jacobin’s Benjamin Y. Fong discussed the dedication and success of the longshore workers in the 1930s and ’40s in overcoming racial division on the docks. Clips from this interview are included in Episode 6 of Organize the Unorganized (among others), which also includes archival interviews with the first International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) president, Harry Bridges, and the first black president of ILWU Local 10, Cleophas Williams.

Kamala Harris’s Environmental Deceptions

August 10, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and the strongest environmental protections the US had ever seen in response to the mass movements of the 1960s. After Nixon, environmental laws gradually improved until Bill Clinton’s administration started rolling them back, especially through global “free trade” deals like NAFTA and those of the WTO, putting the environmental movement on the defensive. Every president since Clinton, Democrat or Republican, has successively worsened environmental protections. Obama expanded fossil fuel production more than any other president in US history, and Biden continued to expand it even more than Trump had. There’s little reason to think that Kamala Harris would be different, and she’s already reversed her opposition to fracking.

Appeal In Biden Gaza Genocide Case Heard Today

June 11, 2024 Center for Constitutional Rights. , , , , , , ,
June 10, 2024, San Francisco, CA – Today before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Palestinians from Gaza and Palestinian-Americans with family in Gaza argued that the courts have a constitutional obligation to hear their claims that President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin violated their legal duty to prevent – and are complicit in – Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The lower court had found a plausible case of genocide and urged the Biden administration to reexamine its “unflagging support” for Israel’s siege of Gaza, but dismissed the lawsuit in January, finding it was not the court’s place to rule on what it determined was a “political question.”

Union Members Step Up And Dig In For Palestine Solidarity

March 6, 2024 Bahaar Tadjbakhsh, Labor Notes. , , ,
When street protests seem ignored by the war machine, what are union members to do? In the San Francisco Bay Area, unions and rank-and-file networks are using direct action and endorsement-revoking campaigns to target the politicians who are still shipping weapons to Israel for its scorched-earth campaign. Meanwhile we’ve held a teach-in and launched campaigns to boycott Israeli goods and divest our pensions from the occupation. Nearly six months in, Israel’s invasion of Gaza is responsible for 30,000 Palestinian deaths and counting. Across the U.S., more than 100 union locals, six internationals, and the AFL-CIO have called for a ceasefire.

Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative

March 6, 2024 Storied: San Francisco, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
From a collection of neighborhood clubs called the Food Conspiracy, whose motto was, "If you can't walk to Food Conspiracy, it's time for a new Food Conspiracy," to the People's Food System, which included Other Avenues, Rainbow Grocery, Veritable Vegetable, and other co-ops that don't exist anymore, there's proof all over today that cooperative models work. We like the sound of that, in fact, compared to competitive businesses. Other Avenues' doors opened in 1974. By 1987, a hybrid system of worker and community management was adopted. And the worker-owned model that exists today started back in 1999.

Protesters Outside Google Call For Immediate End To ‘Project Nimbus’

December 15, 2023 Rachael Myrow, KQED. , , , , ,
Pro-Palestinian Google employees protested outside Google offices in San Francisco on Thursday to demand the tech giant cancel a $1.2 billion contract — called “Project Nimbus” — with the Israeli government and military. An estimated 500 protesters chanted “Google, Google you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” reflecting growing outrage over the contract during Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza. The Israeli Finance Ministry described the Project Nimbus contract as “intended to provide the government, the defense establishment and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution.”

Why Activists Shut Down The 2023 APEC Summit In San Francisco

December 13, 2023 Ju-Hyun Park, The Real News Network. , , , , ,
From Nov. 11-17, leaders from 20 nations across the Pacific Rim gathered in San Francisco for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. An activist coalition known as No to APEC greeted the visiting world leaders with a countersummit decrying APEC as a forum to advance the interests of transnational corporations at the expense of workers and the environment. While the Biden administration worked to construct a new free trade regime in the Pacific exclusive of China, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), grassroots organizations in the No to APEC Coalition advanced an alternate vision of international cooperation and development in opposition to the corporate, pro-war agenda pushed by the US and allied governments at APEC.

No To APEC Coalition Unity Statement

November 20, 2023 International League of People's Struggle, US. , , ,
At the close of our People’s Counter Summit Against APEC, we issued a unity statement to summarize the positions of the No To APEC Coalition during our 2023 campaign culminating in the 800+ person Counter Summit.  The statement is titled “People and Planet against Profit and Plunder: Towards a World Beyond Profit-Oriented Systems!” We publish this statement as the APEC Heads of State concluded their own Summit with the so-called “Golden Gate Declaration” to lay out the rosey-sounding false solutions they spent an entire year writing while desperately-needed practical policies for reversing the global economic, political and climate crises eluded them.

Civil Disobedience Action At APEC CEO Summit

November 17, 2023 No to APEC Coalition, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
San Francisco, CA - Members of the No to APEC Coalition engaged in a civil disobedience action by blocking access to the site of the APEC CEO Summit at the Moscone West Convention Center in defiance of the hyper-militarized structures erected by the local and federal government. This action is the latest effort by the No to APEC Coalition during its months-long campaign to highlight the global and local harms of free trade and global free market agendas while demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.  “We know APEC and IPEF do not represent the interest of the people or the planet,” said Rhonda Ramiro from the No to APEC Coalition.

APEC Summit In San Francisco Met With Mass Protests

November 14, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
10,000 people took to the streets on Sunday, November 12 to protest the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meetings taking place in San Francisco this week. The APEC summit will run from November 11 to 17. The protest took place following a 1,000-person APEC counter-summit on November 11. The mobilizations have been organized by the No to APEC Coalition, which represents almost 150 organizations across the United States. “APEC is the epitome of all that is wicked and corrupt in our society today,” said Simon Ma, a family doctor and member of the anti-imperialist Korean-American organization Nodutdol. He described APEC as a “cabal of billionaires and politicians scheming behind closed doors, trying to come up with new and innovative ways to further exploit the working class of our planet.”

Signs Of Our Times

November 4, 2023 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Tens of thousands rallied in San Francisco on October 28 to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and then marched to disrupt traffic on the freeway to get the attention of an otherwise inattentive press. That demonstration joined multitudes globally protesting the on-going genocide. Signs read, “You can’t hide genocide.” “Genocide Joe” placards connected the dots to the White House’s complicity with the collective punishment of civilians. “Free Palestine!” signs proliferated. Another sign said, “America’s 9/11 is Palestine’s 24/7.” “We are all Palestinians” signs voiced a message of solidarity and common humanity. “US Jews say ceasefire now!” signs were prominent. A clear distinction was drawn between cultural Judaism and political Zionism. The latter weaponizes religion in service of settler colonialism and is an adjunct of US imperialism. The slogan “never again,” a reaction to the original genocide committed against the Jews, has taken on new meaning to anti-Zionist Jews protesting the current holocaust being perpetrated in their name.

No To APEC Coalition Calls On City Officials To Defend Free Speech

October 26, 2023 No to APEC Coalition, Rising Tide North America. , , ,
San Francisco - The No to APEC Coalition demands immediate action by Mayor London Breed, the federal government, and all San Francisco elected officials to reaffirm long standing support for civil and human rights, rights to free speech, protest, and dissent during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) “Economic Leaders’ Week” and “CEO Summit,” in November 11-18, 2023. “The Department of Homeland Security has designated the APEC Summit as a ‘National Special Security Event.’ The Secret Service is creating a protest exclusion zone around the Moscone Center, where the event will take place, which threatens to prevent the public from exercising its First Amendment right to protest within sight and sound of the APEC and CEO summit delegates.

No Business As Usual At Rally In Solidarity With Gaza

October 21, 2023 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , ,
As people got off work on Thursday evening, October 19, the street in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco swelled with a spirited crowd chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” An ocean of demonstrators had stopped traffic as Homeland Security police looked on and a helicopter hovered overhead. With less than 24 hours’ notice, the “All Out for Gaza” emergency protest amassed two to three thousand demanding an end to the siege on Gaza and an immediate cessation of US aid to Israel. Organizers included Al-Awada, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Workers World Party.

Chesa Boudin On Decarceration In Our Lifetimes

August 28, 2023 Avalon Edwards, In These Times. , , ,
San Francisco joined the short list of cities with reform-oriented prosecutors in 2019 with the election of Chesa Boudin, a rising star in the progressive prosecutor movement. The child of two parents incarcerated for their involvement with the leftist group Weather Underground, Boudin campaigned on ending cash bail, decarceration, and police accountability. The city saw many real results as he followed through on several of these promises his first year in the role. Boudin forbade his staff from requesting money bail under any circumstances, San Francisco’s jail population dropped by 25%, and law enforcement officers were charged in three different police brutality cases.5591

Lessons From San Francisco About Overcoming Our Transit Deficit

August 27, 2023 Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Next City. , , ,
Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented the United States’ dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the 20th century. But as I show in my new book, “The Great American Transit Disaster,” our transit networks are bad for a very simple reason: We wanted it this way. Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and San Francisco, I trace the overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. There were a few exceptions to this mostly distressing story – such as San Francisco, where the publicly-owned Municipal Railway, or Muni, offers positive lessons for contemporary policymakers, politicians and voters.
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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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