The purpose of The Project, a student organized newspaper from UC Santa Cruz, is to document and inspire strategic radical actions that are relevant to local, regional, and global socioeconomic justice. We believe independent media plays a crucial role in facilitating dialogue, organizing mass mobilizations, and encouraging daily acts of resistance.

The February 2005 edition of The Project can be found at various locations on and off campus, such as cafes, mailrooms and libraries, and is now available online at Santa Cruz Indymedia.

Salmonellosis amongst our wintering populations of Pine Siskins.

Social security reforms will let Bush take over the entire economy. Social security cards burn like modern draft cards! Protests against Nazi numbers and SSN tattoos coming!

Are you the wrong kind of queer for the "gay community"??

“These absurdly named ‘Free Speech Zones’ have no place at the free institutions of a free society. A public university does not have the authority to repeal the Bill of Rights.�

Alan Charles Kors, president of FIRE

On February 14, Santa Cruzans for Responsible Planning (SCRAP), a local grassroots organization backed by former Santa Cruz Mayors, held a news conference at the entrance to the Santa Cruz City Wharf. This was the official kickoff for a community-wide referendum campaign to halt the single largest development in the city since UC Santa Cruz. If the group can acquire at least 4,000 valid signatures, the "Coast Hotel" issue will be placed on the ballot for a city-wide vote.

Opposition to SCRAP's referendum campaign includes the developers (of course!), current employees of the Coast Hotel who would like to have more work in the winter months and SEIU Local 415.

The proposed development calls for a 270 room hotel, 6-level parking garage and a 23,000 square foot Conference Center.

Photos: Santa Cruzans for Responsible Planning vs. Workers and Bosses
Photos: SCRAP Kicks Off Anti-Hotel Petition Drive

Coverage of the 1/25/04 SC City Council Meeting: [ Meeting on Hotel-Convention Center Project I City Council Approves Coast Hotel Project Despite Widespread Community Opposition ]

UCSC Students and Workers Got Some Action This Valentine's Day!

On Monday, February 14th, the Student & Worker Coalition for Justice, AFSCME Service Workers, CUE Clericals, and other campus unions "welcomed" incoming Chancellor Denise Denton on her first day at UCSC.

Several hundred students and workers marched from McHenry Library to Kerr Hall. At Kerr, the Budget Office was noisily occupied, with the large crowd flowing out onto the upper patio.

Photos: [ 1 I 2 ]
Video: Welcoming Chancellor Denton to UC Santa Cruz
Audio: Rally Against UC Budget Practices

See Also: Labor Struggles Continue at UCSC

You are invited to participate in the Santa Cruz County Food Forum on Saturday, February 26th from 9AM to 5:30 PM (lunch provided!) at the Cabrillo College Cafeteria in Aptos.

If you had a say, how would you change the way we produce, process, distribute and prepare food?

By attending this one-day forum you will help develop specific actions for improving the food system of Santa Cruz County. You will also help build a stronger network of people for accomplishing these actions.

Organizing Resources: Santa Cruz Food (google group) I Downloadable Poster (.pdf)

Call to Action: Converge in Philadelphia, June 18th to 21st, 2005

CALLING ON ALL PEOPLE who resent the demise of democracy and hold to the promise of authentic popular empowerment! All who dare to paint poems of resistance on walls of oppression, dance in city streets in defiance of police states, and plant seeds of sedition in the shadows of Empire: come to Philadelphia! As the world's leading agents of eco-devastation and medical malpractice meet here in June, we cannot stand quiet. Join us to challenge the corporate crime, poisons for profit, and flagrant lies of the biotechnology industry, at the time of their annual international convention, with a creative uprising for truth, life and justice!

RECLAIM THE COMMONS! We recall a custom much older than two-party Republics, in which croplands, grazing land and forests were a public domain that benefited the whole community and belonged exclusively to no one. In today's global society, our commons encompass the biological strata that sustain life on earth --- air, water, food, medicine, energy, biodiversity -- plus the means of communication, education and transit that connect us culturally. Today, to a degree unprecedented in human history, corporations have seized this public wealth and privatized it to reap growing profits for a small and ever-shrinking elite. As public access to and control over the commons has eroded, so has true democracy. For democracy to thrive, for racial, economic, social and environmental justice to take deep root, and for sustainability to flourish ... we must reclaim our commons!

Check these websites in the coming months: [ www.reclaimthecommons.net I www.biodev.org I www.phillyimc.org I biotech.indymedia.org ]

In 2004, Bay Area Vegetarians joined organizations throughout the United States and abroad in supporting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' campaign against KFC's inhumane practices and calling for welfare reforms. The campaign continued on Saturday, February 12, as several dozen animal rights activists protested at the Mission St. KFC.

Over 750,000,000 chickens raised for KFC (Yum! Brands) endure egregious and unnecessary abuses. Last year, PETA released a disturbing video taken by an undercover investigator in a KFC supplier slaughterhouse. Employees were deliberately kicking, stomping on, and slamming live chickens against a wall, spitting tobacco into their eyes, and ripping their heads and beaks off with their bare hands. Previously, a former employee of another top KFC supplier came forward with accounts of employees using "dry ice bombs" to blow chickens apart, snapping their legs for fun, and intentionally scalding them to death in feather removal tanks. These abuses are in addition to KFC suppliers’ routine practices of callously shackling chickens upside down, often breaking their legs in the process, and slitting the throats of conscious birds.

KFC has so far refused to implement comprehensive guidelines developed by its own animal welfare panelists to prevent these and other abuses. Until it does, compassionate people everywhere are protesting and choosing to steer clear of the Colonel.

Photos: [ 1 I 2 I 3 ]
Audio: KFC Protest in Santa Cruz

[ Progressive Animal Rights Alliance I KFC Demo in Santa Cruz - Oct 2004 I Giant KFC Protest in SF (2/5/05) I Kentucky Fried Cruelty ]