(re)Claim your power! Learn martial arts-based self defense this Saturday, December 11th. A free workshop offered from 1-4 PM will include basic escapes, strikes, and exercises to increase awareness of your own body and your abilities to defend it.

Come enjoy the music of legendary folk musician Utah Phillips in concert with Keith Greeninger and Faith Petric, along with the bootstomping sounds of The Devil Makes Three, an all-acoustic trio from Santa Cruz, at a benefit for Free Radio Santa Cruz. The event will take place on Friday, December 10th at 7:30 pm at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Avenue.

Audio PSAs: [ 1 - 2 ]
Photos from the Benefit: A Night at the Rio with FRSC and Friends

Tonight (Thursday December 2nd) there'll be a candlelight march from Borders Book Store at Pacific and Soquel to City Hall, where Robert Wagner reportedly died of exposure while sleeping on a City Hall bench over the weekend.

At least one activist plans to spend the night at City Hall shivering. Hot vegan soup will be provided sometime between 10 and 11 PM.

+++ Under the new Rotkin Council, it remains illegal to sleep outside, cover up with a blanket, or put up a tent against the cold. City Council has given no indication it will let up on criminal enforcement of MC 6.36 (The Camping Ordinance), even before this latest death and after the death of Scotty under the Soquel St. bridge last month--also by exposure.

+++ Early Wednesday morning (12-1) police drove away all the people (approx. a dozen) who were sleeping quietly under the eaves of the federal post office. According to the victims, police admitted they had no specific complaints & did not provide any options for the sleepers.

+++ The Winter Armory Shelter requires picture ID, involves waiting in lines for more than an hour, has scheduloing requirements often impossible for working people, does not take pets, has no parking place for vehicles, is not a walk-up situation, refuses those under 18 unless with parent, and is restrictive for couples. In addition there is emergency shelter for only 160 of the 1500 to 2000 homeless people in Santa Cruz city limits on any given night.

Photos from the Vigil: Watch Us Freeze

About 500 Santa Cruz city workers, represented by SEIU Local 415, are poised to strike Friday at midnight when their contract expires.

According to Leslie Scanagatta, Local 415's chief spokesperson, rising costs of health care benefits, and low wages, are key issues on the bargaining table. She points out that city employees have twice agreed to a voluntarily wage freeze, to help the city get through a financial crunch, and haven't had a raise since April, 2002.

Irwin Young, human resources director for the City, said, "we've been working dilligently to reach an agreement." If an agreement isn't reached, he says, "we can continue to bargain, or the union then decides to take action."

Talks between the parties will continue on Thursday, and Friday, but Scanagatta says at this point, she's not hopeful. "Local 415 members spent the day making picket signs, and are prepared for the worst."

Update from 12/3/04: A strike of some 500 Santa Cruz, CA city employees was sidestepped for the time being Thursday, when reps from SEIU Local 415 and city officials came to terms on a tentative agreement in their contract dispute. (read the full comment)

see also: SEIU Rank and File Revolt

November 30, 1999 represented a triumphal moment for worldwide civil resistance against a global economic system that gives private corporations more power than governments. In the morning hours of N30, 1999, tens of thousands of activists from across the globe converged in the streets of downtown Seattle, to shut down meetings of the World Trade Organization, the undemocratic, international governing forum of neoliberal globalization.

The conflict became infamous around the world, partially because of the violent police response to the largely peaceful demonstrations. In years since, N30 has been remembered in the streets of Seattle and around the globe, with marches, rallies and celebrations of resistance. Dialogues about the effectiveness of the movement have multiplied in number, both within and beyond activist circles. The date is also remembered as the birth of the Independent Media Center, www.Indymedia.org.

At the WTO protests in Seattle, we had a collective vision. We saw beyond the borders that divide us. We saw people come together across every kind of political and cultural difference and stand up in a way that we had not seen in this country for decades. We saw peaceful protests shut down one of the most powerful institutions in the world and we saw a system dazed and frightened by the sound of our voices.

Audio:

• FRSC's Look Back to the Historic Anti-WTO Protests of Five Years Ago
• This Is What Democracy Looks Like

This Friday. November 26th. The "Biggest Shopping Day of the Year" Tell your friends, allies, neighbors, and family:
NO SHOPPING WHILE BOMBS ARE DROPPING

Buy Nothing Day is happening in Santa Cruz!!

I imagine some of you will want to be part of another Buy Nothing Day. Downtown, Art & Revolution are meeting at 1:30 at the Farmer's Market Lot (by toadal fitness). Capitola Mall will be a favorite spot, too.

Free Radio Santa Cruz will be "webcasting" all day as part of the Critical Mass Radio Network. Listen to broadcasts from Portland, LA, SF, NYC, SD, and from 2-4 PM all networked stations will be broadcasting FRSC's stream over the people's airwaves. The day's programming will be focused on "COLONIAL HOLIDAYs". Stay "tuned" to freakradio.org.

[ CRITICAL MASS BIKE RIDE (buy nothing day edition) I Fourth Critical Mass Radio Network Broadcast ]

If you question "the official story," don't miss these events!!

Tuesday, November 23 – Film.
“The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw.�
Toronto journalist Barrie Zwicker’s well-researched film traces the background of other 9/11 type events in recent history and reveals numerous anomalies that would lead any reasonable person to question the veracity of the "official story.�

Wednesday, December 1 – Speaker / Multimedia Presentation.
Ken Jenkins’ “Perspectives on 9/11: Exposing the Lies of the Official Story and Seeking the Truth.�
Using excerpts from eleven videos, the award winning Bay area media producer explores the historical context as well as what really happened on September 11, 2001.

Where and When: 7:30pm - Veterans' Hall, 846 Front St., S. C.
Donation of $5. (no one turned away).
Discussion after events.

see related: [ NO EVIDENCE OF 757 HITTING PENTAGON I Portland IMC's 911 Investigation I Mike Ruppert: The Truth and Lies of 9/11 ]

The new issue of the monthly newspaper of the SF Bay Independent Media Center, Fault Lines is out. Coinciding with the Thanksgiving holiday, the theme of the sixth issue is Indigenous People; read about the Occupation of Alcatraz that took place 35 years ago, the indigenous struggle in Brazil and the origins of Thanksgiving.

Eddie Yuen analyzes the implications of the U.S. election and Kevin Keating provides readers with a historical overview of mutiny during the Vietnam War. In the Arts and Action section you can read how cinema has penetrated the abyss of electoral politics.

Other articles include, letter from Angola 3 political prisoner Herman Wallace, insight into the next 5 years in the Middle East by Immanuel Wallerstein, Bay Guardian lawsuit against SF Weekly publisher New Times, US approved carnage in Haiti and life after the oil peak.

PDF of the Sixth Issue | Distribution points | Subscribe and help our all-volunteer collective put out FL.

After broadcasting over the radio airwaves in the Santa Cruz, Ca. area for almost 10 years without a license, in defiance of federal regulations, one day this fall, the U.S. government decided to take some action. On Sept. 29, 2004, Federal Marshals, aiding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), raided Free Radio Santa Cruz (FRSC), seizing radio equipment to disable their broadcasts. I wondered what FRSC volunteers, and other microradio, or “pirate,� radio station volunteers, were feeling about this raid. It seems so often the government does things like this to “set an example� for others, to be a warning to others engaging in similar activity, to deter them from continuing on with defiant behavior…and sometimes that type of governmental intimidation works, and sometimes it does not. Questions linger, such as what the federal government intends to do with FRSC’s seized radio equipment. I interviewed several West Coast microradio station volunteers about their reactions to the FRSC raid for this article.

[ Freak Radio I Enemy Combatant Radio I Free Radio Olympia I Radio 4 All I Micropower Radio Stations I Seizing the Airwaves, a free radio handbook I Micropower Broadcasting - A Technical Primer ]

Abuse of power is always wrong. Abuse of animals legitimizes the abuse of power over human beings (sexism, racism, homophobia and all the other "isms"). This leads to war.

What's the point of knitting a sweater-while unraveling it at the same time? Women fighting for reproductive and equal rights, social justice workers, gays and lesbians fighting homophobia, civil rights activists and even environmentalists "unravel" all their good work if they abuse their power over animals and Nature! What a bitter irony!

What is the source of racism, sexism, homophobia, exploitation of the poor by the rich, genocide, war and all the other ways humans oppress each other? Why are we arrogantly destroying Mother Earth who sustains all living beings-including humans and their global economy? Why do these insane practices from the age of barbarism continue?

[ United Poultry Concerns I Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth ]