As of Wednesday, 23 June, 2004, at 7 pm. Santa Cruz Earth First! will be gone - Unless you do something about it!

If any of you want to see Santa Cruz Earth First! continue, then you have to let the group know it.

You MUST come to the meeting on Wednesday, 23 June at 7 pm at 224 Walnut Ave (The HUB) Suite E (Upstairs over the Bike Church) or You MUST send a donation to Santa Cruz Earth First!, POB 344, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 that arrives before the meeting on June 23rd.

Don't send a reply email saying how much you want SCEF! to continue - SHOW UP OR SEND A DONATION!

If you want SCEF! to continue and are willing to participate, support it and be active, and show it, then SCEF! will live on.

A Quick Look Back: History of Santa Cruz Earth First! I SCEF! Fights for Jailed Comrade "Victim" I SC County Jail is Redecorated I Treesitters Needed NOW I EF! Tree-Sit in Ramsey Gulch! I Ramsey II Sitters Threatened at Gun Point I Treesitter Dies Defending Ramsey Gulch Ecosystem I EF! Organizers' Conference I SCEF! Climb Training I Earth First! Radio News (archives)

Felton residents are organizing to buy back their water supply from the multinational RWE AG. This corporation, which touts its services as ‘everything you need from one source - electricity, gas, water, recycling� and which also has interests in nuclear energy, bought Felton’s privately owned water in 2002.

But RWE AG is no match for residents like the 86 year old man who is out walking the hills and knocking on doors.

At a recent board meeting, one speaker pointed to the global impact of RWE AG’s acquisitions; her daughter who lives in London has the same water carrier.

Felton residents would like to acquire their water system and put it in public hands, but Cal-Am is trying to undermine these community efforts while pushing to raise rates. When a water main broke last December in Felton, residents phoned an emergency hotline that led to an operator located in Illinois. The company failed to alert some of the residents to boil their water. The company has also interrupted service without notifying customers.

As of August, RWE-Thames had already gotten over $40 million in rate increases from their America's water division and they are pressing for rate increases in almost every one of their state subsidiaries. They have an aggressive expansion strategy and are planning to build a large ocean water desalination plant on the Monterey Coast, at the mouth of the nationally protected estuary, the Elkhorn Slough.

To find out more about the campaign, contact FLOW (Friends of Locally Owned Water) and Public Citizen at 510-663-0888 or California (at) citizen.org

Thousands of activists and organizers around the Western US will converge on San Francisco from June 3 - 9 to shut down the corporate takeover of basic life needs. While Savannah, Georgia will be the focus of G8 protests on East Coast, the West Coast G8 demonstrations will target the biotech industry's largest meeting of lobbyists and executives happening concurrently in San Francisco. However, this mobilization is much bigger than biotech.

Organizers have put out a call to not only target the meetings, but to reclaim the city of San Francisco from the corporate oligarchs and return it to the people. They plan actions that will create free local food sources and community gathering spaces, as well as actions that will bring together groups working for global, environmental and racial justice.

One focal point of the "Reclaim the Commons" mobilization will be the shut down of the biotech industry meeting. The most widely discussed aspects of biotechnology relate to its incorporation into foods that humans consume and biological weapons. We live in a world where tomatoes can be manipulated to contain anti-freeze genes and every cell of a corn plant can be engineered to contain toxic pesticides. We live in a world where ‘terminator technologies’ can create plants incapable of producing fertile seeds, and where those plants are being shoved down the throats of Developing Nations in order to make them more dependent on buying seeds.

June 8, the opening day of the G8 meetings in Georgia, will be a day of mass action against the corporate empire. Pick your coast, but mobilize!!

[ Reclaim the Commons I RTC Spokescouncil May 2 I West Coast G8 Regional Mobilization I Direct Action to Stop the War ]

The Najaf Emergency Peace Team, "Peace Between Peoples", includes two members of the Santa Cruz activist community. Meg Lumsdaine and Peter Lumsdaine are among the handful of determined volunteers who have placed themselves "nonviolently, symbolically and physically" between the U.S. armed forces massed nearby and the civilian population of the ancient holy city, Najaf.

As numerous people from nonprofit organizations working in Iraq evacuated the country during the past week, an independent emergency delegation of U.S. civilians was preparing to enter the conflict-torn nation, traveling to the tense stand-off around Najaf, where the U.S. military recently deployed almost 3,000 troops for a looming assault to crush Shiite rebels there.

[ Peace Between Peoples Update: Najaf 4-28-04 I Peter Lumsdaine on Democracy Now (4/27/04) I AP article (4/30/04) ]

[ Indybay's Iraq page I Al-MuaJaha I Occupation Watch I Electronic Iraq ]

Sahar Saba, a soft spoken young woman, stood firmly as darkness fell. She spoke of the hell that is her home; where 'everyone has a story to tell’ about a sister, a brother, a parent, or a child who was tortured, raped, killed; sometimes before their eyes.

She repeated several times that the problem of fundamentalism persists in Afghanistan. That RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, sees the persistence of fundamentalism as the major problem for women, children, and the Afghani culture in general. That the US attack and presence has done little to improve the situation, that indeed the situation has gotten worse under the US supported warlords.

Audio: Rockin' the Boat: Interview with Sahar Saba

[ Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan I Afghan Women's Mission ]

A post on Santa Cruz Indymedia earlier today (11/11/05) stated, "A group of workers from the [Union Pacific] railroad came on 11/10/05 to the newly built trail next to the railroad tracks near Almar. They used a grader to tear up the volunteer-built trail as to render it difficult to ride a bike on. They also took down the "welcome" signs. Too bad!"
From: Rail Trail - Almar Ave

I rode my bike to the Coastal Rail Trail off Almar on the Westside of Santa Cruz and came across a sad scene of willful and vengeful destruction of an important community resource.

global capitalism is an economic Colt 45 for the times

by Bradley & V-Man

The Indynewswire Show airs every Monday from 1-3pm on Free Radio Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM. On this edition we speak with a volunter from Radio Algiers in New Orleans. The unlicensed station was recently visited by the FCC. Also, we talk with folks at a counter-recruitment protest at Foothill College, discuss the Paris/France uprising, provide coverage of a rally at KFC, and hear about the California special election, Plus some great music from Mule Train (Santa Cruz musicians), Ryan Harvey, Defiance, Ohio, K-Otix, Mos Def, King Missile, The Coup, and more. (2 hours and 10 minutes / 44.6 MB)

Audio: Download the mp3 or (download torrent)

BBC PHOTO: Families of the Magdalena prison victims were held back by police.

A one line comment in Argentina Indymedia says Fernando Catz and Roger Sampedro have been sent to Batan: a place with a reputation as bad as any prison in Argentina. All the prisons are crowded, and the media, even the BBC has speculated the reason is a "crime wave" precipated by economic collapse.

This is false. The facts indicate otherwise.
It is for this reason former president Menen is hiding in Chile right now.

A CHILEAN judge yesterday threw out Argentine judges’ second request to extradite former president Carlos Menem for questioning about allegations that $60 million was embezzled from funds to be used to build two prisons.

The Scotsman: June 9, 2003

In case you, your friends, or your family need another reason to vote "NO" on Propositions 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, and 78, consider these quotes from power-hungry Governor Arnold: