Articles Posted April 2012

  • Occupy the Golden Gate Bridge on May Day

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    Golden Gate Bridge Workers Call Off May Day Bridge Occupation

    Coalition Organizer Alix Tonnison said there will be a strike on May Day because management has left them with no other choice. He thanked all the groups who have offered to stand with the bridge workers and asked them to attend their May Day picket lines instead of attempting to shutdown the bridge.

  • CWA local 9415 held a picket and protest April 18 over Pacifica Foundation's hiring of law farm Jackson Lewis which the union believes has been hired to bust their union.  Photo by Luke Thomas.

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    Why did KPFA CWA Local 9415 Members Picket the Pacifica Foundation?

    Management says that the insurance company that covers Pacifica offered the firm on a list, and that Pacifica contracted with it only to handle non-labor legal work, not with the bargaining units. CWA agrees that Jackson Lewis has not been used in any union arbitrations at KPFA.

  • Protesters rally outside St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco against the Catholic Church's crackdown on nuns and women's reproduction rights.

    Women’s Rights Activists, Atheists, Protest Pope Crackdown on Nuns

    The LCWR is under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican agency charged with overseeing orthodoxy, which Benedict – then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – led for more than 20 years, for its endorsement support of President Obama’s health care reforms including a mandate that provides insurance coverage for birth control.

  • occupy the farm: gill tract, uc berkeley, albany

    #OccupyTheFarm: Disobey with Great Love

    With horns playing, banners flying, and traffic briefly stopping, the Earth Day march from Ohlone Park in Berkeley started off with the hallmark signs of a bay area occupy protest, but something was different. There was a bold, if cautious optimism amongst this crowd.

  • workplace islamaphobia

    Islamophobia in the Workplace

    I was surprised then to learn that although Muslims make up only two percent of the U.S. workforce, they filed nearly 25 percent of religious-discrimination claims in 2009. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), during the past fiscal year, it received a record high of 100,000 charges of discrimination, a slight increase over fiscal year 2010.

  • Doonesbury huffington post

    Doonesbury Takes a Whack at Huffington Post. No Hard Feelings, Says HuffPo Bureau Chief

    Trudeau is in good company: The Huffington Post has been dissed by the best, from Chris Hedges to Stephen Colbert. The first editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize, the Doonesbury creator was just named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine.

  • wells fargo protest foreclosures shareholders meeting

    Foreclosure Fighters Occupy Wells Fargo Shareholders Meeting

    As many as 500 demonstrators took aim at Wells Fargo over its corporate policies Tuesday, blocking entrances to the Merchants Exchange building in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District in an attempt to disrupt the bank’s annual meeting of shareholders.

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    Gender Equality: Is There a War on Women?

    Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal sums it best as she writes, “The war is against women in American public life, in politics and media most obviously, but in other spheres as well. Leaders who are women are publicly demeaned and diminished because they are women. Women are the object of sexual slurs and vulgar sexual terms, meant to tear down and embarrass.”

  • An anti-domestic violence billboard campaign was financed in part by donations from supporters of a rival candidate for sheriff.

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    Mirkarimi Political Rivals Helped to Fund Anti-Domestic Violence Billboard Campaign

    The contributions to the billboard campaign launched by La Casa De Las Madres – a city-funded non-profit organization committed to preventing domestic violence and providing support services to victims of domestic violence – may suggest the contributions were, in part, politically motivated.

  • Cartoon by Mike Licht (NotionsCapital.com).

    Stopping Those Irritating Robocalls

    Many of these worthless or dubious deals are offered by companies operating “autodialing” businesses, which deliver prerecorded messages that allow clients to deliver large numbers of prerecorded phone calls, or “robocalls.” The prerecorded messages would last just a few seconds. If a call recipient who received a prerecorded message pressed “1” during the message, the recipient would be transferred to a live operator who would attempt to sell the product or service.

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    Judge Denies Motion to Disqualify City Attorney in Mirkarimi Suspension Case

    Mirkarimi’s defense counsel, Shepard Kopp and David Waggoner, argued in a brief filed April 11 that the City charter requires the City Attorney to defend the City and County of San Francisco; that no Charter provision exists for the City Attorney to defend a specific office within the city. If that were the case, then the City Attorney would also be obligated to defend the Office of Sheriff as well.

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    Workers to Protest Pacifica Radio Over Union Busting

    Pacifica Foundation hired Jackson Lewis in 2010, but that is the only point of agreement between the five-station, listener-supported broadcasting network and its KPFA workers group.

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    Olague Kicks Off Campaign for Supervisor

    In attendance included Mayor Ed Lee, Senator Mark Leno, Supervisor David Campos, former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, as well as labor leaders including Mike Casey of Unite HERE Locate 2 and Larry Griffith of IFPTE Local 21 and the San Francisco Labor Council.

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    Groups Kick Off 99% Spring Training Sessions

    Others believe Occupy is an all-encompassing movement and must include all voices (except the 1 percent and non-breathing corporations of course); that labor has the resources and the organizational expertise to achieve realistic goals.

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    City Attorney Authorizes Outside Counsel in Mirkarimi Suspension Case

    Due to a conflict of interest raised by Mirkarimi’s defense team, filed Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court, attorney Scott Emblidge of Moscone, Emblidge and Sater LLP, has been assigned to represent both the Ethics Commission and Board of Supervisors.

  • Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

    U.S. Postal Service: Privatize or Reform?

    Part of the problem is that lawmakers continue to micromanage its practices. (We know how Congressional micromanagement has worked with regard to our economy). For example, Congress has repeatedly prohibited requests to eliminate costly Saturday mail deliveries and reduce the number of post offices. Congress and the Obama administration need to empower the USPS to operate more like a business by giving USPS management more control over decisions about its financial well-being.

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    Matt Haney Declares Candidacy for School Board

    Haney, a progressive, said he is running because, “Education is the most important and critical institution in our society – and it’s under attack right now.”