straight outta concord

Occupy Walnut Creek

2011-10-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was the first action by the recently formed Contra Costa 99%. A few hundred people showed up to the demonstration in Walnut Creek. Pretty fantastic for a group that formed only about a week beforehand.
Video:

As one may expect, the crowd was very liberal (as opposed to radical.) The organizers of this action seemed to not really understand that the main thing the Occupy movement has agreed on is a participatory and consensus based form of decision making. read a good critique of the Walnut Creek demo here.

Finally, I recommend everyone, especially those new to this who protesting thing read the letter Crimethinc wrote to the Occupy movement. The anti globalization movement learned a lot during the last decade. The Occupy folks should use that knowledge.

More dirty local cops

2011-02-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

more dirty local cops.

A former Walnut Creek police officer has been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a minor, authorities said today.

Shawn Wallace, 45, was arrested Feb. 3, the same day he resigned from the department where he had served for six years

Drug Dealing Cops

2011-02-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

Corrupt cops are nothing new or surprising to anyone who has ever dealt with law enforcement. Looks like one of Contra Costa's finest is now in trouble himself.

"Norman Wielsch, commander of the Central Contra Costa County Narcotics Enforcement Team, and Chris Butler, who runs the P.I. firm Butler and Associates, were booked into County Jail in Martinez on Wednesday on scores of suspected offenses including possession and sale of marijuana and controlled substances, embezzlement, second-degree burglary and conspiracy."

Pics of Port Chicago Naval Magazine Memorial

2011-02-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

Dina Boyer posted some nice photographs of the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial on indybay. The memorial is not open to the public, so it is nice to at least see some pictures. Check it out.

Attempt to burn down the Sunvalley mall

2011-01-23T03:38:00.000-08:00

A highly organized plan to burn down the Sunvalley mall unfortunately resulted in little more than smoke. Working in the style of The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei and other Greek anarchist groups, this action is clearly part of recent spread of worldwide anarchist resistance to consumer culture.

Concord's very own Dave Brubeck

2010-12-29T04:41:00.000-08:00

Dave Brubeck is a well recognized jazz pianist who was born in Concord! He did grow up in Ione, California (which used to be called bed bug city!) but we Concordians can still claim him as one of our own.
You can read more about Mr. Brubeck on his wikipedia page and listen to some fo his music on youtube.
Here is an old video of a young Mr. Brubeck playing with The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Halfway through the video we are treated to an interview with Mr. Burbeck.

Finally, we should remember that along with being a tremendous musician, Mr. Burbeck created one of the first racially integrated bands of the US armed forces.
Later, he faced pressure from club owners and television producers who were not willing to allow an integrated band to perform. Instead of taking the easy way out and replacing the black musicians in his band, Mr. Brubeck canceled those appearances. This included whole tours of countries such as South Africa.
Now that is someone Concord can be proud of.

dead blog

2010-11-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

lol concord police

2010-10-02T03:22:00.000-07:00

As reported on claycord, two concord police cars crashed into one another.

karl marx got it right

2010-08-01T02:11:00.000-07:00

in every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's NEVER free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him. -- George Orwell

The Business Insider, hardly a mouthpiece for the Communist Party has "15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America" and they really are mind blowing. I honestly don't see how someone can look at these statistics and justify or defend the existence of capitalist class society. I dont want to go into a rant about it because other, far more intelligent people have written plenty about class and the injustices of the capitalist system. I just want to point out that basically, these 15 facts that the Business Insider put together are the reason i am an anti-capitalist.

free the hikers

2010-07-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

3 US citizens have been held imprisoned by Iran for one year now. they have not been charged with anything. they are victims of a stupid game that governments play with one another. that's how the world works. innocent people are always the ones who suffer most when governments cannot get along.
to mark the one year period of imprisonment there are going to be rallies held around the US, including one in San Francisco.
12:00 at 16th and Mission on Saturday.

These kinds of things are frustrating because there is so little we can do. it seems impossible to put pressure on the government of iran. the people of iran have so little influence on their government, what can we do? look at the list of people who have called for the release of the hikers, with no results. it just makes me hope for a successful revolt in iran even more.

lawyer scum in pleasant hill

2010-07-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

the KKK.... errr, i mean, the Mehserle supporters held their little rally in walnut creek and were far outnumbered and outclassed by the larger group of Oscar Grant supporters.

In other interesting news, Michael Rains, the lawyer scum bag who has been defending Merserle is from San Ramon and has his offices in Pleasant Hill. His whole deal is that he defends corrupt cops, including the Oakland Riders. Feel free to read about the criminal cops he has been defending on his firm's website.

For the pigs reading this, if you feel like beating someone up or shooting and unarmed man in the back, just get in touch with Rains, Lucia & Wilkinson LLP. They will make sure you will not be held accountable for your actions.

Pleasant Hill (Main Office)
2300 Contra Costa Boulevard
Suite 230
Pleasant Hill, CA 94523
PH: 925.609.1699
FX: 925.609.1690
info@RLWlaw.com

pig rally

2010-07-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

oh boy, there's gonna be a buncha bacon in walnut creek on monday.

some idiots decided to have a pro johannes mehserl, pro pig rally.

Anyone who supports Johannes and our Law Enforcement Officers may attend. This is a peaceful rally to show our support for Johannes and the injustices he is experiencing.

The rally is from 2pm-7pm on Monday July 19th at the Walnut Creek Courthouse on Ygnacio Valley Road.

i really wasnt sure if i should give these idiots any more publicity, but i guess the contra costa times picked up on this, so i may as well mention it.
oh, and 2-7 on monday? dont these people have jobs?!
(which is something you always hear right-wingers saying whenever the left has a rally)
i sure hope this thing stays peaceful. it sure would be a pity if a riot broke out in walnut creek or is some of those bomb throwing anarchists showed up. that would be a real pity.

hey liberals

2010-07-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

if in a couple years, when you tell me i should vote for obama, will you try to remember this:

god, i cant believe i just linked to CNN....

just a taste

2010-07-12T13:38:00.001-07:00

a hero is caught

2010-07-12T02:19:00.000-07:00

Colton Harris-Moore, the 'Barefoot Bandit' has been caught while enjoying the good times in the Bahamas.

The 19-year-old became a cult hero in America, after evading authorities for two years by stealing fast cars, powerboats and planes.

this is the kid who ordered a flying instructions DVD with a stolen credit card, and with it learned to steal and fly airplanes.

it is a sad day indeed.

makes me wonder how many people out there think it is great that this criminal got caught, while at the same time these people thought Catch Me If You Can was a great movie and had tons of sympathy for Leonardo DiCaprio's character.

oscar grant, riots, prison, etc.

2010-07-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

So Johannes Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Really though, i could care less. The world would be a much better place without any cops, but it would also be a much better place without any prisons. I'm a prison abolitionist, and this means that i dont think anyone should be sent to our modern prisons. they just shouldnt exist; not for rapists, not for child molesters, not for cops.
what alternatives do i offer? that would depend of what kind of society i was living in. so i'm kind of refusing to answer that question, because it is a theoretical one. i'm not saying we need to get rid of prisons, but keep everything else the same. im saying we need to get rid of the whole capitalist system. we need to abolish prisons along with a whole hell of a lot of other crap.
but i have seen first hand how certain anarchists physically deal with rapists in their communities. that's certainly one way of doing it.

I'm not going to shed any tears for mehserle, but i certainly am not going to go and demand he get convicted of murder. i have no interest in demanding anything of the "justice" system other than it leave me and my friends the hell alone. or better yet, that it disappear all together.
it always makes me sad when i hear people saying things like "justice has been served" when someone gets a high prison sentence. i just dont understand how revenge is equated to justice. they are two separate things, and a lot of the time revenge isnt useful to anyone.
i suppose an argument can be made that because a cop was convicted of something it might restrain other cops from killing other people. but i doubt it. the pigs know they are exempt from the law.

all that being said, rioting is an appropriate response. not to the verdict or the fact that the legal system is unjust, but because yet another unarmed black man was shot in the back by a pig. in fact, people should be rioting every single day because it is every single day that pigs harass, intimidate, beat up and kill people around the world. we should be rioting every day until this whole authoritarian and oppressive system is destroyed.
and finally then we can decide what we want to do about the rapists, the child molesters and the pigs.

crimethinc has a new poster out called The Police. it reads:

The ones who beat Rodney King, who gunned down Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant, who murdered Fred Hampton in his bed. The ones who broke Víctor Jara’s hands and Steve Biko’s skull, who disappeared dissidents from Argentina to Zaire, who served Josef Stalin. The ones who enforced Apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States. The ones who interrogated Black Panthers and Catholic Workers, who maintained records on 16 million people in East Germany, who track us through surveillance cameras and phone taps. The ones firing tear gas and rubber bullets whenever a demonstration gets out of hand, who back the bosses in every strike. The ones who stand between every hungry person and the grocery shelves stocked with food, between every homeless person and the buildings standing empty, between every immigrant and her family.

In every nation, in every age, you tell us you’re indispensable, that without you we’d all be killing each other. But we know well enough who the killers are. You won’t fuck with us much longer.

oh, and i guess the news media was correct about outside aggitators coming in to oakland to cause trouble. 14 of them were from concord!

off the pigs. abolish the prisons. riot until the system we live under is destroyed.

nor cal, it's hella tight

2010-07-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

what is 10 to the 27th power? hella!

a college kids in Davis is attempting to officially name the number 10^27 "hella."

It started as a joke, but Sendek's Facebook petition: to the Consultative Committee on Units, a subdivision of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, has drawn more than 60,000 supporters. Its chances for formal adoption by the global weights-and-measures community are hella dim, but Google was so taken with Sendek's modest proposal that it incorporated "hella" in its online calculator.

it would be so tight!

patriotism = nationalism

2010-07-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

apparently, vandalism is great, as long as it is nationalistic.

we dont talk to police

2010-07-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

as someone who wants nothing to do with police or the prison system, sometimes people say things like "well, that's all good and fine now, but what if you got robbed..."
well, subrosa infoshop in santa cruz did get robbed. the police caught the thief and guess what? the anarchist infoshop doesnt want to press any charges and isnt interested in working with the police to put this person in jail.

We had a break-in/burglary in the early hours of Sat, June 26. Someone broke a window, took some stuff from the backroom and the money we had in the register, which didn't really amount to much.

It is a bit of an inconvenience for us, but not anything more than that really. A small portion of the SubRosa collective, who were dealing with the aftermath and cleanup, decided that we do not want to pursue charges against the person who was arrested. We see this as another symptom of capitalism--some people have nothing and feel desperate enough to break in to spaces that also, it turns out this time, have nothing. Crimes against property are driven by poverty and desperation. We have no desire for police in our community and will not be working with them in this case, except to recover our property, which they have in their possession.

the reaction of the local fox news station is great. they are so shocked and amazed that anyone wouldnt press charges against someone else. watching it you will either laugh or cry. laugh at how they seem to just not understand where subrosa is coming from. cry that so many people in our society would be willing to put a person in a cage because they tried to take someone else's stuff.

Oakland General Assembly for Justice for Oscar Grant press conference

2010-07-02T02:05:00.000-07:00

"we feel that the outside agitators are the police"

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

concord hates nationalists and christians

2010-07-02T01:41:00.000-07:00

two brave heroes vandalized The Singing Flag a patriotic (nationalistic) christian wooden flag used by the Calvary Temple Church to celebrate the fourth of july.
these graffiti vandals did it all while the private security hired to keep on eye on things was near by.

About 2 a.m. Thursday, security hired by the church to watch over the flag saw two people inside a fenced in area behind the structure and chased them off.

hail satan! (who, like god, doesnt exist)

comida no bambas en concord

2010-06-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

diablo food not bombs has photos and a write up on indybay responding to some of the accusations people on the internets have been throwing around.

One of the most obscene lies being touted is that Diablo Food not Bombs is trying to undermine the farmers market by taking money out of the pockets of the local farmers and business owners. The last thing Diablo Food not Bombs wants to do is make the lives of the working poor any harder. Farmers are the keystone of our society and to think that they would try to undermine them is an absurd notion. They want to do everything they can to help them thrive. When they talked about “overpriced vendors” in their previous statement they were talking about vendors there that were serving cooked meals, not the farmers. However, the group is not attacking them either. They simply think that the meals are overpriced and not everyone can afford them. The reason they are overpriced is because of the same bureaucratic expenses they have to go through as well as the economic conditions which makes their food relatively high cost. When they said they were a “threat” to profits, they later expressed that this threat was falsely perceived because the people they were serving cannot afford the vendors’ food in the first place. Even though some people might see them as a “threat” to business interests, they in fact are not at all and any other interpretation of their previous statement is taking it out of context. They sympathize with the farmers need to make money in order to survive and want to give them all the support and gratitude they can for what the farmers do for us. That is why when they serve food at the farmers market they bring plates of food to all the farmers who want to eat! Last Thursday a majority of the farmers took plates from the group and were as grateful to them as they are to the farmers. This is their way of giving back to those that give so much for us. Also because the group is a non-profit, when the farmers make a tax-deductible donation they benefit as well while they help to feed hungry people. When Diablo Food not Bombs serves or collects donations from the farmers they tell them exactly who they are and exactly what they are doing, they do not trick them. They are not taking anything away from the farmers; they are only cooking and serving the excess that would have otherwise been wasted. Besides, over a third of the food produced in this country is never eaten anyway! Any condemnation of farmers is the antithesis of what Diablo Food not Bombs is all about. One of their core tenets is solidarity not charity. Meaning that they stand with and not above those they are assisting.
Diablo Food not Bombs stands in solidarity with all working class and poor people especially during this economic crisis.

The ultimate goal of Diablo Food not Bombs is to make genuine connections and build community. They would argue that many of society’s problems stem from a lack of community cohesion. During this economic crisis everything does in fact become overpriced, especially for homeless, poor and otherwise underprivileged people. They recognize this and are eager to feed anyone who is willing to eat out of their 5-gallon plastic buckets. Feeding their neighbors free food is their way of creating a community with the hungry people of our area that would otherwise be non-existent. What they are trying to do is create a genuine community event and make real human connections that are beyond the framework of purely economic transactions. A genuine community event would be one that includes everybody, not just those with money to spend. With many people from the community gathered in one place they see the Concord Farmers market as an auspicious place to make these ideals of inclusion come to fruition, especially for those who are often over looked or flat out ignored. They would also like to think that that those who facilitate, run or support the farmers market would also want to create a genuine community event inclusive of everyone and not solely be driven by business interest which they do not affect anyway. If this is the case, it is an expression of business interests over the interests of people in the community, which would be very unfortunate. If you read the history, the Todos Santos Park and plaza used to be a fantastic communal space in which anyone could come share in food, festivities and be part of a group. All Diablo Food not Bombs are trying to do is revive these ideas and create a loving and harmonious community in which we care for one another.

Diablo Food not Bombs also wants everyone to know that they have the best of intentions. They are all compassionate people that just want to help those in need. It has been said the they are deliberately interfering with the efforts of Anna Chan aka “The Lemon Lady.” A great community member who collects food for local food pantries. This is completely false. They adore Anna and everything that she does. That is why the group went out of their way to network with Anna told her they are willing to work with her and even offered her excess food they had left over. They are in no way interfering with the efforts of the Lemon Lady. Once they are established, Diablo Food not Bombs plans on working with many benevolent individuals and organizations in the community. They are willing and want to work with other homeless and hunger action and advocacy groups, just like other Food not Bombs chapters do. They wish to support the efforts of anyone who is helping those in need. The members of Diablo Food not Bombs are driven by love, compassion and the will to do something directly for the hungry people in our community.

good for them for responding to all the silly internet accusations. the one i find most annoying is thsoe who claim that food not bombs isnt interested in helping anyone, only in protesting and getting attention. yes, food not bombs is interested in getting attention and protesting poverty. unlike other charity groups, they are not only interested in helping out the poor, but they are also interested in ending poverty. to do this you need to bring attention to poverty and protest against it. (and you have to do a whole lot more too.) bringing attention to the fact that there are people who do not have homes or food to eat and helping those people is not mutually exclusive. they go hand in hand!
i've said it before, look at all the hundreds of food not bombs chapters around the world that feed people who do not get a ton of media attention. if they were only in it to get attention, why would they keep doing what they are doing when they are being ignored?
look at berkeley food not bombs. they serve free food at people's park almost every day. there are no confrontations with the police. there is no media attention. anyone who claims that food not bombs is only interested in getting media attention is either ignorant or an idiot.
good diablo FNB!

CNWS Neighborhood Alliance tree cutting update

2010-06-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

got an email from the CNWS NA:

• In January 2010, the public was notified that a “tree thinning” project would take place on the CNWS in the spring to bring the tree plantations in to compliance with an agreement the US Forest Service had with the Navy. CNWSNA steering committee members met with USFS to avoid any “mistakes” in the removal. A CNWSNA member who is a biologist joined us in the meeting. We asked that he be allowed on the property to preview the area to be cut. He agreed that some thinning was in order. We were told the thinning would be done in February or March. We requested that the US Forest plant new seedlings in another area on the CNWS to make up for the lost mature trees.

• This project actually started May 17, 2010, the height of nesting season. We were notified the week before. Despite resident’s requests to postpone cutting of trees on the CNWS until after nesting season the US Forest Service moved ahead with the plan and started cutting.

• On May 20, we asked the USFS to stop and emailed our members asking them to send emails and make phone calls to the USFS and Congressman George Miller’s office.

• While CNWS Neighborhood Alliance steering committee members worked to determine who was responsible and who could stop the tree removal process, agencies “passed the buck”. The USFS said the CNWS Fire Marshall ordered the trees to be cut. The CNWS Fire Marshal said he requested that significantly less trees be cut, and not during nesting season. The USFS said the Navy was responsible, the Navy said the USFS was responsible. CA Fish & Game could not get involved without “evidence” of dead animals. We were not allowed on the CNWS to collect evidence, however we watched as turkey vultures cleaned up on evenings and weekends when there was no cutting activity. We have asked that our biologist be allowed on the base, but our request has been denied.

• One June 7, after two and one half weeks of promised, then delayed meetings (and continued tree removal), four CNWS Neighborhood Alliance Steering Committee members met with representatives from the US Forest Service at Congressman George Miller’s office.

• In the June 7 meeting, Tim Howard, the USFS person in charge of the cutting admitted they checked for nests in February. When they started the project in May, they only rechecked the nests found in February. They did not check for new nests. Nest building season begins later in spring, not in February.

• In the June 7 meeting we asked the USFS once again to postpone cutting of the remaining trees in plantations 7, 8 and 9. Our request was denied and our meeting only speeded up the removal process. Trees on these plantations were removed on June 9 and 10.

• It appears that the USFS violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

• Not only were 50-60% of the trees removed during nesting season, some were removed in the areas of threatened and endangered species. See Special Species map below.

http://www.concordreuseproject.org/library/cac/Land_Stewardship_CAC_2008_06_05_v11.pdf

• In the process of the tree removal, heavy equipment was used. See ABC 7 tree removal video link below. This heavy equipment damaged even more nearby trees in the removal process.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=7447091

• What next? The CNWS Neighborhood Alliance is preparing documentation to send to federal US Fish and Wildlife for an investigation. When we were notified of the tree cutting in January 2010, members of our steering committee met with US Forest Service representatives to avoid this very problem. We did not want a repeat of the tule elk removal resulting in the deaths of some of the elk, or of the cow deaths last summer due to their water supply being cut off after a controlled burn. We want responsible parties held accountable for the destruction of wildlife during tree removal in prime nesting season. We want seedling trees planted to replace mature trees removed.

• If this is any indication of how toxic soil will be removed in the Bunker City area or any area on the CNWS, concerned residents should plan to attend every meeting regarding this removal.

Kathy Gleason and Steering Committee Members

CNWS Neighborhood Alliance

till the world looks the way it should

2010-06-20T02:09:00.000-07:00

Concord mustache wins!

2010-06-18T01:56:00.000-07:00

congratulations to Larry McClure of Concord, for winning the 2010 Best Mustache in the inaugural National Beard and Mustache Championships.
Looks like past winner and local beardo, Jack Passion of Walnut Creek, was an MC this year.

diablo food not bombs a success

2010-06-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

So Food not Bombs was able to give out food for free on thursday's farmers market without any hassles from the police or the health department.
the CC times:

a number of people who were not with their group, such as Ravinder Sekhon, of Pittsburg, got free food, too.

"It's a good way to get the issue (of hunger and war) to the front," he said as he walked away with two toddlers in tow, plate in hand.

He was not worried about the group lacking a health permit.

"Aw, come on. Let it slide. These guys are not hurting anybody," he said.

make no mistake, Food not Bombs (FnB) is a charity group. it's not a revolutionary group or anything like that. however, unlike other charities, FnB tends to be anarchist inspired. they dont really care to beg the government for permission to do something nice. it's completely insane to have to deal with a bunch of bureaucratic paper work just to give away some food.
FnB also tends to be different from other charity groups in that they want to spread a certain message with their work. their name alone points out the backwards priorities that government's tend to have. spending trillions of dollars on war, while people go hungry.
FnB serves at public places for a reason. our society loves to hide away all signs of poverty, pretending it doesnt exist. that way, when people spend thousands of dollars on a diamond ring they dont have to feel guilty about those who dont have a roof over their heads or food to eat. by feeding people in public FnB helps remind people that poverty exists all around them. capitalism does have different classes, and as much as the rich would like to ignore the poor, poverty does exist and that is morally inexcusable.

Great job to Diablo Food not Bombs and their supporters. Santa Cruz Food not Bombs feeds during their farmers market and it is not a problem. there are food not bombs chapters throughout the world and there is no problems. on the one hand, getting harassed by the police was good for concord food not bombs because they got some media attention from it, but hopefully from now on they will be left alone by the authorities.

Diablo food not bombs shutdown by the pigs

2010-06-15T03:49:00.001-07:00

of course concord PD had to come and stop people from giving away free food. that's almost as dangerous as a bag of coffee.

On Thursday June 10th, a newly formed chapter of Food Not Bombs in the Diablo valley area attempted to serve food at the Concord farmers market in the Todos Santos plaza. Prior to the serving of food, the group was confronted by the health department and the police which told members of the group not to serve the meal. Due to the presence of hungry individuals and families at the park, the group decided to set up and begin serving despite instructions by the authorities not to. After serving around 30-40 people and with about 50 people waiting in line, the Contra Costa Health Department with the assistance of the Concord Police Department ordered the group to cease operations and confiscated all of the group's remaining food and supplies. The authorities used lack of permits and violations of health codes to justify their actions. As hungry people walked away with plates full of food, the police proceeded to take their plates and ordered them to leave. The police also began to yell and push individuals that were trying to save what was left. They ordered them to leave the park stating they were causing a "disturbance" and threatened them with arrest even though the individuals were simply serving free food and constituted no threat to the public. Diablo Food Not Bombs maintains the only threat the group posed was to the business interests of the overpriced vendors and the gentrified downtown area of Concord, in which the serving of free food might undermine profit margins, even though the people being fed could not afford the expensive food in the first place. Also those who have effectively shut out the issue of American poverty in their minds would then have to see and mingle with the homeless, underprivileged and starving. The only threat Diablo Food Not Bombs poses is a threat to the status quo of hunger in our area. The city of Concord is obviously not doing enough about those deprived of food in our community and instead subdues efforts of ordinary people who try to feed them. If the city truly wants to make the farmers market a community event, it would be inclusive of all people, especially those trying to help others out directly, instead of spending tax payer dollars and city resources to repress them. The Health Department is currently holding the cookware and supplies that were taken and will not release them until the group signs a document saying that they will not serve food in the future without a permit. Diablo Food not Bombs states that given their current capacity, they cannot meet the unfeasibly enormous financial and facility permit requirements set by the city ordinance and the county health code, and they will not just wait around or go through bureaucratic motions while there are people in our community that are in need of food. DIABLO FOOD NOT BOMBS IS CALLING A BAY WIDE ACTION NEXT THURSDAY JUNE 17th IN TODOS SANTOS PARK, CONCORD AT 4:30pm. COME DEFEND THE HUMAN RIGHT TO FOOD!!!

for photos see indybay.

this isnt the first time concord has had a food not bombs group, and i believe at least one of the people who started chico food not bombs was from concord. go concord!

robbery suspect almost shot a concord pig

2010-06-05T03:53:00.001-07:00

the police were attempting to arrest someone for robbery. he shot at them and ran. after an insane amount of law enforcement joined in the manhunt for him, he still got away.
claycord reports. looks like the police are the loosers here.

concord is in the new york times

2010-06-03T02:57:00.001-07:00

Protests at BP gas stations have sprouted around the world, with events scheduled at franchises from Berlin to Concord, Calif. And almost 300,000 people have joined a “Boycott BP” group on Facebook.

i know nothing about these protests and didnt find anything with my quick google search, but hey, it's not every day we get the activist street cred associated with being in the NYtimes.

liberal nanny state

2010-06-02T02:42:00.000-07:00

liberals love a nanny state, where the government protects you from yourself. where you cannot do anything that might remotely endanger yourself.
the open carry folks have not had any accidents or shootings or anything that all go bad other than making some people who are not familiar with guns uncomfortable.
looks like now

the state Assembly approved a bill 45-25 that would forbid anyone from openly carrying an unloaded handgun. It now moves to the Senate.

the only rational for this law i can think of is that guns make certain people uncomfortable. so should we ban anything that makes people uncomfortable?
obviously someone who is planning on shooting someone else isnt going to be walking around displaying their gun, making sure plenty of witnesses see it..

also, check out the anti-authoritarian gun club.

Concord to become a safer city

2010-05-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

the Claycord blog is in hysterics. apperently the city of concord is going to have to cut the police budget.

unless new revenue is identified, the next round of cuts will significantly affect public safety and other services our community relies on, including:

* Reducing neighborhood police patrols, and eliminating the district command program and downtown officer, decreasing the PD’s capacity to provide community policing.
* Eliminate Police Officers from Special Enforcement and Special Victim’s Units, slowing down response to major crimes and reducing the ability to investigate crimes.
* Eliminating School Resource Officers, reducing gang/drug prevention programs and eliminating ALL crossing guards.
* Reducing traffic signal maintenance/pothole repairs and suspending street maintenance activities.
* Suspending code inspections of rental apartment buildings.

sick! the less armed authoritarians (cops) out on our streets the better.
more cuts to the police, less cuts to schools.

Richard Carrier coming to Rossmoor

2010-05-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday, May 20th, atheist, historian and author Richard Carrier is going to be giving a talk on “Why Everyone Says Medieval Christians Invented Science” for the Atheists & Agnostics of Rossmoor.

Location:
Del Valle Clubhouse
1751 Tice Creek Drive
Walnut Creek, CA

3:00PM, May 20th.

Dr. Carrier summarizes and expands on one of his chapters in the new, controversial book, The Christian Delusion (edited by John Loftus), which addresses the new argument going around that we have Christianity to thank for modern science. We all know it’s closer to the other way around. So how on earth do they think the opposite? What are their arguments? What is their evidence? How can they be so mistaken? Dr. Carrier tells all.

Dr. Carrier holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in ancient history, specializing in the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, particularly ancient philosophy, religion, and science, with emphasis on the origins of Christianity and the use and progress of science under the Roman empire.

Important!
Rossmoor is a gated community. Enter in a visitor lane and tell them that you are attending the Atheists & Agnostics meeting. This is never a problem.

i love glenn beck

2010-05-15T02:42:00.000-07:00

ahh, glenn beck, the USA's favorite wingnut.
apparently, on his May 3rd TV program Glenn Beck "reviewed" We Are an Image From the Future: The Greek Revolt of December 2008, a book put out by Oakland's very own AK press.
video of glenn's hilarious show can be seen here:

the good stuff starts around 2:10, so just skip his babbling intro.
well, AK press put out a really good open letter in response to Glenn's babbling.
part of the letter reads

Then it dawned on us: you’re afraid of anarchists. You’re not afraid of the fake media portrayal of anarchists as bomb-throwing maniacs: that’s your bread and butter. You’re afraid of real anarchists, the actual ideas they espouse, the real work they do.

We don’t blame you, Glenn. When we sift through your rants, we realize that there’s a lot of overlap between you and anarchists. The difference is that anarchists are more honest, aren’t part of the same elites they criticize, and they make a lot more sense. They see you, and raise you one.

Like you, we believe that people’s lives would be much better off without government intervention. Centralized power suppresses individual and community initiative and keeps people from achieving their full potential. Like you, we don’t think the solution to our current economic crisis lies in socialized industry or new layers of well-paid government bureaucrats. And, like you and many of your tea party pals, we agree that bankers and fat-cat corporate elites aren’t exactly concerned with our best interests. As you put it, it’s time to take down the folks who “line their pockets with wealth gained from enslaving a whole group of people.” And, although you seemed a bit confused on this point, that means putting “people before profits,” which is pretty much the central concern of the protesters in Greece right now. And we mean all people, regardless of income, race, gender, sexuality, or immigration status.

it's seems that certain anarchists are attempting to start a dialog with the anti-authoritarian members of the tea party movement.
the Phoenix Class War Council was able to do this successfully when they invited right-wing libertarians to protest a white power fascist rally. this white power fascist group was attempting to be a part of the tea party movement, but was forcefully kicked out by the anti-authoritarian members.

Our intent here was to call the libertarians in Arizona, who had been flirting with anti-immigration positions for quite a while, to choose whether they were going to act on their alleged opposition to fascism or whether they were going to defend the Nazis. Up to this time, large parts of the libertarian movement in the state had flirted, to say the least, with a kind of anti-immigrant politics that emerged mostly from their unconscious defense of whiteness. At best, they had stood by without speaking up against the crack down on immigrants and brown people generally.

there is definitely common ground between left-wing anti-authoritarians and right-wing anti-authoritarians and i think the non-libertarian right is afraid of these two groups starting a dialogue.

anyway, people like Glenn Beck are just in it to make lots of money. i doubt they mean what they say. i doubt glenn beck is being honest when comparing the peace corps to the nazis. im glad AK press wrote their letter and i do hope anarchists are able to engage with anti-authoritarians on the right. instead of protesting against tea-parties we should be attempting to start an honest talk with their libertarian sections.

and of course the daily show has yet another great clip of what a dishonest wingnut glenn beck is:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

renut phaze kode must and a beaver

2010-05-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

violent anarchists kill 3 in greece... or do they?

2010-05-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

in athens greece today 3 people were burned alive after someone set fire to a bank they were working in. the media i am sure is going to blame it on violent anarchists. lets see what the greeks have to say:

here:

After the tragic death of the three workers made the round of Athens, new clashes started to spread in the Greek capital, with a large crowd gathered outside the burned bank when Marfin's boss tried to visit the site. Clashes broke out between the crowd and police when the former attacked the bank magnate accusing him of forcing the dead workers to scab on a general strike and locking them in the building despite them demanding to evacuate it since 12:00.

In Parliament the Communist Party of Greece has accused the government for the deaths, claiming it was a result of agents provocateur fascist groups. The claims of the Communist Party are based on the fact that 50 fascists tried to enter the PAME demo bearing the flags of the union earlier in the morning. The fascists were spotted, chased and sought refuge behind riot police lines. Accusing the extreme-right as being behind the deaths, the Coalition of Radical Left has declared in Parliament that the government cannot pretend to be in grief for the loss of life, as it has been attacking human life by all means possible.

here is a video of greek police smashing up a cafe that they and the media no doubt attempt to blame on anarchists:

i strongly urge you to read the whole thing, but here is one part of a letter by a greek marfin bank worker on why many, including the bank workers union is blaming the owners and managers of the bank for the deaths:

The management of the bank strictly bared the employees from leaving today, even though they had persistently asked so themselves from very early this morning – while they also forced the employees to lock up the doors and repeatedly confirmed that the building remained locked up throughout the day, over the phone. They even blocked off their internet access so as to prevent the employees from communicating with the outside world.

unlike here in the united states, in greece the people know that corruption and lies are common place amongst the police and the politicians. they dont believe something just because a cop or a politician said it is true.

claycord sucks

2010-05-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

so people from the local blog, claycord.com are insane. 80% of that blog is about crime that happens. anyone reading that would think the concord area is the most dangerous place in america. that, along with the racist comments that appear there all the time. it's rather insane.
really, i feel sorry for people with that kind of world view. people who are too afraid to go for a walk because they think everyone out there is a rapist or thief or whatever. it must be pretty crummy living a life full of fear.

one of the recent posts seems to be over the top, even for them. they think a local restaurant, the buttercup grill, has "sunk to a new low." the reason is that they are offering a free meal to people found not guilty at walnut creek superior court.

the claycord people have obviously never been falsely accused of something. because this blog focuses mainly on crime, the readers all seem to assume people are guilty until proven innocent, and then are still guilty!

all the time and effort and money it takes someone to prove that they are not guilty of a crime, they certainly do deserve a free meal. this certainly isnt "sinking to a new low." the claycord people need to relax and stop assuming everyone is a terrible criminal out to get them.

oakland police go urban hunting

2010-05-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

so the trigger happy oakland police have shot a young deer that somehow ended up in an east oakland back yard.
from sfgate:

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts said Tuesday that he was "unhappy" that an officer shot and killed a young deer in an East Oakland backyard over the weekend and promised an internal investigation into what led to the decision to open fire...

...before a state game warden could arrive, Oakland police Sgt. Terrance West ordered another officer to kill the deer. The officer, whose name was not released, fired several shots, but the deer did not die immediately, so he fired several more shots, Weems said. A total of six or seven shots were fired but it was not known how many hit the deer.

so the neighborhood that this happened in is rightfully upset.
however, compare this to when oakland PD kills a young black man. the police chief would never say he was unhappy about that. he would defend his officers to the end, as would every other pig, gladly lying about all the details as long as it meant protecting one of their own. that's the kind of world we live in, where certain people are going to be upset about the killing of a deer, but not at all touched by the killing of a human.

oil spills and nuclear power

2010-05-04T08:01:00.001-07:00

so we all know about the giant oil spill in the gulf right now.
well, that along with climate change has actually made certain politicians take up the idea that nuclear power is the answer. a fair amount of scientists seem to agree. it's true, nuclear power will not contribute as much to climate change.
the thing is, just like offshore oil drilling, though it is by and large a safe thing to do, all you need is one accident and the damage is astronomical.
it would be great if schwarzenegger and other politicians who have now reversed their views on offshore oil drilling came to the same realization about nuclear power. by and large it isnt all that harmful, but when something does go wrong it can be really really bad. it's been a long time since the chernobyl disaster. i really hope it doesnt take another disaster for certain people in power to realize the dangers that nuclear power isnt a very good way to stop climate change.
what we need to do is change our lifestyles to be more sustainable. it is foolish to keep living the way we do and hoping that technology might come along and save us at the last minute.

oh, and on a final note, i would like to point out a silver lining in this oil spill. all the money that british petroleum spent on public relations trying to greenwash their image has now gone to waste. changing their name to BP, putting up that cute green flower logo and all their stupid misleading commercials are worthless. for the next 20 years BP is going to be remembered for one of the worst ecological disasters.

Mayday was a riot

2010-05-03T03:55:00.000-07:00

it's pretty amazing how every year you are guaranteed to have a riot in certain places on mayday and there is nothing the police are able to do about it. berlin for example has been at it for decades now. but also places like china, iran, greece, nepal and others.

here in the US and in the bay area we also had some fun. a good roundup can be found here.
santa cruz riot:

in san francisco a bank window got smashed and a abondonded school was squatted.
also in san francisco a racist got beat up.
click here for more info on all the usa stuff.

it's neat how insurrectionary anarchism has become the new big thing, and everyone wants to go and riot. it was only a few years ago where primitivism was the new cutting edge thing and everyone was learning primitive skills and trying to join the ELF. i wonder where we wil be 10 years from now.

the district attorney is a mysogynist

2010-05-03T03:42:00.000-07:00

the contra costa district attorney's office is full of assholes. that is obvious. only an asshole would be a prosecutor. now the "shocking" news that the office is full of mycologists and a former prosecutor is accused of raping a woman with an ice pick while holding a gun to her head.

the coco times reports:

The rape case against Gressett, who was fired last year, shone a light on a culture of racy, over-the-top sex talk among prosecutors that no one denies: supervisors engaging in banter about "manscaping," a slang term for trimming male pubic hair; a senior prosecutor grilling new hires about their sexual appetites; chitchat about an "anal sex club," and pointed questions about which prosecutors were members.

The sex talk was just venting from lawyers who deal every day with heinous crimes, said prosecutor Barry Grove, president of the prosecutors' union. Even so, "there's a point where it crosses the line and it's crossed the line on many, many instances,"

...Grove and others contend the raunchy talk was largely centered in the sexual assault unit, where Gressett worked. But other prosecutors said it was far more widespread. They describe a fraternity house atmosphere in which members of the right clique are favored in job assignments.

"It was kind of a cowboy culture," said one former prosecutor who left the office recently. "We had a retreat in Napa. The way people were behaving "... I was horrified."

Courtenay Bravmann, a five-year veteran who quit the office in March, said she left because of the environment. She said she was shocked when she moved from the sex unit, and started eating lunch in the main office, where she witnessed administrators participating in inappropriate banter.

"I never felt more uncomfortable. Sometimes it wasn't just the content of the conversation, but who was involved that made it so inappropriate," Bravmann said.

fuck prosecutors, fuck the police and fuck judges.
also, fuck a culture that encourages misogyny and fuck people who think rape is a joke.
no, seriously, fuck them.
i dont think i need to add anything else.

Pig news

2010-04-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

well over a year later, BART finally fired Anthony Pirone, one of the ultra aggressive cops responsible for the death of oscar grant.

At one point, as Grant stood along the wall of the station platform, Pirone rushed toward him and appeared to pull him down, video footage shows...

...Later, video footage shows Pirone shouting at Grant, "Bitch ass n-, right?"

Indybay reports that Pirone, who has been on paid leave since the oscar grant murder was paid "well over $100,000...in salary"

in other news, Oakland police once again shot an unarmed man.

finally, something i didnt know about the hurricane katrina tragedy was that pigs went into the city and confiscated all civilian owned fire-arms. from anti-authoritarian gun club:

New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass ordered local police, National Guard troops, and US Marshals to confiscate all civilian-held firearms. He said "Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns." Seizures were carried out without warrant, and in some cases with excessive force. National Guard troops, armed with assault rifles, were used for house to house searches, seizing firearms.

After refusing to admit that it had any seized firearms, the city eventually revealed that it did have a cache of some 1000 firearms seized after the hurricane.

a good reason to buy unregistered guns from your local street corner?

death to mohammed

2010-04-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

so once again some religious nut-job sent death threats against someone who offended their religion. this time it was some idiot muslim, upset at south park and comedy central for airing a show that would have the prophet mohammed being mocked. comedy central responded by airing the show but censoring parts of it.
now i dont like south park. the humor is too juvenile for me, and being offensive isnt funny in itself. i much prefer beavis and butt head or the simpsons. whatever.

see, this is why i roll my eyes at moderate muslims who claim islam is a non-violent religion. it is a violent religion. there's examples from the qur'an right here. one being Qur’an:9:5 “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”

now, at the same time, i do think it's important to realize that within the united states there is racism against people from islamic countries and cultures. however, to be an anti-racist one does not have to respect the religious beliefs of someone. there is a difference between mocking a religion and mocking a specific ethnic group or a specific ethnic culture. "the muslim world" is large and divers. there is no single culture that is islam.

the point is religion of any kind is stupid. lets turn the churches and the mosques into atheist social centers.
like they did in the spanish civil war:

Churches became cinemas, cafes, butcher shops, carpenters' workshops, hospitals, noodle and spaghetti factories and in one case a barracks. Perhaps a more typical example of the new role of the church in the collectives is the use put to the former church in Alcaniz:

"The priests fled. The church was not burned. It serves as a warehouse for the collective. The different sections are marked on the church's pillars: shoes and sandals here; soap and other cleaning materials: meats and sausage; preserves and other provisions; fabrics and cloth. Potatoes are stored near the main altar......

Offices have been set up. Nothing can be obtained with money, only with vouchers. Each member of the collective has a membership card and a book of vouchers. People are given what they request and it is recorded in the book of vouchers. The public enters through the main front door. The side doors are used for delivery of supplies. The church is the local market place."

no gods no masters.

should organizations be allowed to decide who is a member?

2010-04-22T02:26:00.000-07:00

So, a San Francisco softball team in the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance was disqualified for having more than the allowed two straight members. now there is a law suit. members of the team

were called separately into a conference room in front of 25 people for a hearing to determine whether they were heterosexual or gay, the suit said.

They were asked "very intrusive, sexual questions," including what their sexual interests and preferences were, Suzanne Thomas, a Seattle attorney for the plaintiffs, said Wednesday.

Charles, who was D2's manager, asked whether he could say he was bisexual and was told, "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series," the suit said.

the attorney for the not-gay-enough men says the limit engages in a whole series of stereotyping that somehow, gay men are less able players than straight men.

the supreme court is looking at a somewhat similar issue of whether or not a university christian group is allowed to ban gays and lesbians. it's a little different because the christian group is on a public university campus making it eligible for office space, inclusion in school publications and bulletin boards, and travel funded by student fees.

the whole softball thing reminds me of the Daily Show's recent mocking of the all-white basketball league.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Snowball

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

I think people should be allowed to associate with whoever they want to, but also to not associate with whoever they dont want to. if a private group (that isnt using public resources) wants to discriminate against a certain group, it might be dumb, but they should be able to do so.
i wonder how liberals feel about it though. they tend to be in favor of "nanny states" where the government protects the people from themselves, and they also tend to be against any kind of discrimination. would liberals in general say that white racists arnt allowed to have a white-only basketball league? would they say gay softball players arnt allowed to have their own softball league? i'd like to hear their arguments...

however, if i were gay or white i would be offended that i cannot play sports as well as "regular" basketball or softball players.

remembering mona (676-1111)

2010-04-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

remember mona?

oh, the joys of middle school....

concord ghetto graffiti flix

2010-04-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

also a short film made by some folks from concord. note the eastern european rap.

BART pigs still using tasers on kids

2010-04-16T02:00:00.000-07:00

a few days ago a BART police officer attempted to use his taser on a 13 year old who was riding away on his bicycle.

a veteran sergeant in a moving patrol car fired his Taser several days ago on a 13-year-old boy, who was fleeing from an altercation at BART's Richmond Station on a bicycle.

The darts missed the boy, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They said the sergeant, who has taught defensive tactics at BART, remained at work but had been removed from street duty.

how the hell can that stupid pig justify shooting a taser at a 13 year old on a bicycle?! how can BART justify allowing their cops to keep using tasers?
amnesty international found that between 2001 and 2008 at least 344 people were killed by tasers in the united states. that number is even higher today.
retraining of the use of tasers is not going to make things any better. BART police are already trained not to use tasers on fleeing suspects, yet this is exactly what happened with the 13 year old kid. BART can retrain their police force all they want, it's not going to change a thing.

to tea party or steal something from work?

2010-04-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

today, some people are busy giving money to the government.
others are tea bagging or counter tea bagging.
yet others are stealing from work.
today is the first, but certainly not the last official "steal something from work day."
join your fellow citizens in concord, walnut creek, clayton, antioch and across the world in stealing something from work. they steal our lives from us. years from now, on our death beds, looking back at life, will any of us be glad that we spent 40 hours a week at work, instead of doing what we truely want?

pakistan critical mass

2010-04-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

All i ever hear about pakistan is terrible. it's almost enough to convince me that pakistani people are all bloodthirsty terrorists and the country is nothing but chaos.
wouldnt it be nice if the USA news media covered things like this:

support our troops

2010-04-05T21:24:00.001-07:00

"support our troops" is a completely meaningless phrase. what does it mean? support our troops when they do what? at all times? which troops? all of them? what about that soldier that shot at other soldiers in texas not too long ago? and how should we support them? it's a stupid phrase that doesnt mean anything.
I have old friends who are still in the military. i "support" them the same as i would any other friend. i certainly wouldnt support any of my friends going and killing civilians and then laughing about it. and this is exactly why i claim not to support our troops.
besides, i bet most of the folks in the military are jerks anyway. they were jerks before signing up, and they're most likely still jerks. it never makes sense to me why the few people who i know and respect are still in the military....

anyway, wikileaks just put out a video of US military killing a couple Routers reporters along with about a dozen others. from the NY Times:

a group of people milling around on a street...The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.

“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.

A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one pilot says.

A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.

At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. “I think they just drove over a body,” one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.

how the hell can you say you support these sadistic jerks in any way? they're having so much fun killing people, it's as if they were playing a video game.

homes not jails

2010-04-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reading a little bit about the crazy squatter movement that was around parts of europe a few decades ago (and some today,) maybe the following is a start of something similar here in the bay?

stories here and here
On Sunday Homes Not Jails took over a building in San Francisco's Mission District that had been sitting empty for over two years. The house is the former home of 80-something Jose Morales, who had lived there since 1965 and fought off eviction attempts for 14 years. Morales was finally kicked out of his home of 43 years through the Ellis Act, a state law that caused over 3000 families to lose their homes in San Francisco.

San Francisco, April 4-Housing activists and occupation minded activists gathered in the rain at noon today at 24th and Mission in San Francisco to rally against the crime of residential building left vacant while people are left out on the streets in the cold and rain.

Homes Not Jails, a direct action nonviolent group that regularly opens up such buildings for people to live in, sponsored the rally. Periodically Homes Not Jails organizes a pubic action to highlight this tragic situation and take action to show how easily the problem could be remedied. Such was today's street action.

After rallying in the inclement weather, the assembled marched down Mission Street, chanting "Homes Not Jails" as the Liberation Brass Band added vibrant musical riffs to the mix. The march, accompanied by a large SFPD presence, soon arrived at the former home of Jose Morales at 572 San Jose Avenue in the Mission District. There they were greeted by a group of occupiers who had taken over the building, hanging out banners as the crowd cheered them on. Police fanned out around the area, but took no further action.

A number of speakers, including SF poet laureate Jack Hirschman, articulated many of the reasons the action was necessary, specifically the failure of government on all levels to do a damn thing about houses sitting empty while people suffer and die trying to live outside.

The final speaker was former resident Jose Morales himself. At first overcome with emotion, the Latino octogenarian passionately outlined his struggles to keep his home of 4+ decades, and his decade and a half resistance to eviction attempts by various landlords at his San Jose Avenue home. Morales explained that he was finally forced out illegally through the Ellis Act, a state law that allows property owners to empty buildings if they contend they are going out of the landlord business. Jose Morales was one of thousands in San Francisco booted out of their homes through the Ellis Act by unscrupulous speculators.

The landlord said he was going to turn the property into condos, but when the economy tanked that plan went down the tubes too, and consequently Jose Morales' home has sat empty for over two years, while Morales himself became homeless.

Meanwhile the mood turned festive at the occupation site. Banners waved in the rain and wind, the brass band funkified the street, and East Bay Food Not Bombs served scrumptious free food, as it had at the rally.

The SFPD, for its part, stood idle. In order to legally take action to oust the squatters, the cops need the landlord to declare the occupiers to be trespassers. Evidently the police were having difficulty locating the (in name only) property owner, and as the afternoon went on, the cops withdrew until they had only a token presence.

And so the occupiers prepared to spend a pleasant and peaceful evening at home,as the heavens poured down their approval.

more anti-police actions

2010-03-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

So as i mentioned the other day, in Portland the police killed a homeless man, and soon after there was a demonstration and mini-riot. The following day there was another march and this is one of the things that happened:

when i saw this video it blew my mind. the cop is obviously a real jerk, riding his motorcycle into people, but the person who threw their bicycle is crazy! i would never throw away my bicycle like that. i love my bicycle way too much.
it was pretty amazing and awesome to see someone take such a response to police bullying.
however, the pigs have now arrested Joel Dow who they claim threw the bicycle. you can read his charges and donate money here.

Here in the bay, Oakland is once again the scene of anti-police action. Nathaniel Riddick, 25, took a shotgun and a hatchet to the police cars parked at police headquarters.

Police said Riddick first embedded a hatchet into the windshield of a car parked a few feet up from Broadway. He then began walking up the street firing shotgun rounds into several of the parked police vehicles.

Sgt. Todd Crutchfield said the rounds were fired into the cars' sides, windshields and other windows.

The shots were heard by officers in an office at the Washington Street end of the street.

To stop him, the pigs shot him. he is currently in the hospital.

i recently heard that after the first oscar grant riots, the FBI came to town to tell the oakland police department to arrest "people who look like anarchists." interesting.

grey water and rain water

2010-03-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

In Walnut Creek a woman has started collecting her rain water. She plans to use the water during spring and summer for her garden. The more people we have living here, and the closer we get to 2012, the smarter it is to set up things like rainwater collection and grey water systems. There's only so much water to go around, and with all the new housing and development being planes on the CNWS....

this is how we respond to police brutality

2010-03-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

At the recent talk the Greeks gave in Berkeley they mentioned that anytime the police kill someone in greece there are riots. this way the police are less inclined to kill. they know if they do there will be repercussions.
this is what happened here in oakland when oscar grant was murdered by the police.
a few days ago this is what happened in portland. the police killed a man. that night, before the police were able to all get their stories straight a group of between 50 and 100 anarchists went on a night time protest/riot, smashing windows and ATM machines. there were no arrests.
a few years ago in King County in Washington state a 15 year old girl got beat up the police in a holding cell. video:

the officer who was facing at most a year in jail for the beating recently got off scot-free on a mistrial. this beating got a man named Christopher Monfort angry enough to take action. he bombed police cars and on a Halloween night shoot and killed a police officer. he is now facing life in prison or the death penalty.

now, obviously i aint trying to get anyone to do anything illegal. i'm just saying, there's not a big chance the legal system is going to do anything about police bastards.

Flicks and Troops

2010-03-23T22:20:00.001-07:00

The Vietnam Memorial plaque on Memorial Hill at Newhall Park in Concord has been stolen.
Awesome! I dont want to see plaques celebrating imperialist wars.
Update:dude got caught after trying to sell the plaque to a local recycle place. don't try to sell it locally! duh!
also this:

weekend events

2010-03-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the talent show that is a benefit for the Oakland 100. I'm excited. you should be there. bring a talent.

From 7-10 pm Friday March 19th at the EAST SIDE ARTS ALLIANCE
2277 International Blvd, Oakland CA, 94606

A safe stage for any body willing to show off what they can do.

also this weekend:

The community of Chaco Rio in the Navajo Nation (SW of Farmington, New Mexico) has been blockading entry to the site of a proposed 1,500 megawatt coal fired power plant since December of 2006. Desert Rock would be the third coal plant within a 20-mile radius in a region already suffering from extreme levels of toxic emissions.
Elouise Brown of Dooda Desert Rock will be visiting communities throughout California on an 11-day speaking and fund-raising tour.

Friday, March 19th - Stockton
10:00am at 10601 Escondido Place
hosted by CVMT

Friday, March 19th - Sacramento
7:00pm at the SacPeace Meeting Room - 909 12th St. (near 12th and I)

Saturday, March 20th - San Francisco
7:30pm at Women’s Building - 3543 18th St.
hosted by AIM West / Mark Anquoe

Sunday, March 21st - Richmond
1:00pm at the Native American Health Center - 260 23rd St.
hosted by Communities for a Better Environment and the Native American Health Center

Sunday, March 21st - Berkeley
7:00 PM at the Long Haul Infoshop - 3124 Shattuck Ave.

Greeks need your help

2010-03-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

so the Greeks who spoke briefly at the anarchist bookfair and then at more length at the BASTARD conference had their car broken into and a bunch of stuff taken. FBI? who knows...
if you are able to, you should donate some money.
their talk was possibly the best one i have ever seen. it wasnt full of facts, so i guess i didnt learn a lot in that sense. but it was great to see a couple of people who come from a different culture, and who come from a place with a huge and powerful anarchist movement. it was great to hear of all these seemingly amazing things that have been accomplished by the anarchists in greece. and it helped that both of the speakers were very charming. it was extremely inspiring.
one of the best things was to hear how much emphasis they put on building a movement and reaching out to people. In the USA many anarchists write publications for fellow anarchists. it also seems that in the USA many insurrectionist anarchists focus on attacking and fucking shit up, and almost ignore things like propaganda and building a larger movement (i cant think of a better word.) it sounded like in greece, there is a lot more of an attempt to communicate with non-anarchists. makes me want to go wheat-paste or print out and pass out pamphlets at a protest march.

it was just a really inspiring speech and made me want to go visit greece and see what it looks like for myself.
here is audio of a talk they gave in southern california.
here is the full audio of the talk in berkeley at the BASTARD conference. listen to it. seriously, it is a much better thing to talk about than lierre keith getting pied.

CNWS hikes

2010-03-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

Save Mount Diablo will be leading three hikes on the CNWS. This is a rare opportunity!
Since World War II the Weapons Station has been locked away. As development filled
Central Contra Costa County, the Station fences protected thousands of acres and
many species of sensitive wildlife. All hikes are on paved roads. We'll see sections
of Mt. Diablo creek and hike into the foothills for views of the Weapons Station
and of Central County. Hikes limited to 40 people. RSVP required. These free
hikes will fill up fast. More info and sign up form here

Sat., March 27, 7:15am to noon -Bailey Road South (4 miles roundtrip, 300' elevation
gain) RSVP with waiver form and other info by Tuesday, March 23, photo ID on the
day

Sat., April 17, 7:15 am to noon - Northern Foothills (4.5 miles roundtrip, 580'
elevation gain) RSVP with waiver form and other info by Tuesday, April 13, photo
ID on the day

Sat., May 8, 7:15 am to noon - The BART Station Hills (4.5 miles roundtrip, 175'
elevation gain) RSVP with waiver form and other info by Tuesday, May 4, photo ID
on the day

Concord Naval Weapons Station

also:

On Saturday, March 27 we will be removing non-native weeds along the stream bank at our Marsh Creek IV property, east of Clayton. Join the Diablo Restoration Team and help to clean up near the Creek.

When: Saturday, March 27. 9am - noon.
Where: 3240 Aspara Dr., Clayton 94517. Off Marsh Creek Rd.
What: Removing non-native weeds. We'll provide gloves; bring water, hand trowel, a snack and dress in layers.

For information and RSVP contact George, gphillips@savemountdiablo.org or (925) 947-3535.

This past December 75 volunteers planted 500 native plants on our Marsh Creek IV property. The abundance of rain has created ideal growing conditions for the native plants to take root, but has also resulted in non-natives thriving. Weed removal will ensure the native plants will have a greater chance of survival. The Diablo Restoration Team volunteers make it possible. Join us!

vegan pies + Lierre Keith = LULZ

2010-03-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

lierre keith, the lady who wrote the vegetarian myth got pied at the anarchist bookfair.
it was pretty much awesome and full of lulz.

some people who i know thought the pieing was lame, but none of them really knew who she was or what her book was about. so here is the low-down.
she was a vegan for 20 years, did it in a really unhealthy way, and now blames veganism for her health problems. it's stupid, you can be a healthy meat eater or a unhealthy vegan. just because chocolate cake is vegan doesnt mean it's healthy!
her book is weird, because a large chunk of it is about how industrial farming and monoculture is bad, something most vegans i know agree with.
she makes some faulty claims and most of her sources are from internet websites. the internet is not exactly a reliable resource. if you are going to write a book about environmental science, nutrition and health, and moralism, you should probably use a lot of peer-reviewed journals, not websites.
there have been a number of factual errors in her book, such as the ridiculous claim that a glass of soy milk contains 60 grams of protein. go read the label of any soy milk product and you will see it is 1/10th to 1/5th of that amount. when someone makes such blatantly false claims, I'm not very likely to take the rest of their arguments very seriously.

one thing in the book that did give me worry was that it is impossible to have organic sustainable farming without animal products and animal manure. apparently, the Veganic movement shows otherwise.
nor is grass fed beef all that great for the environment.

i, along with most of the vegans i know agree that industrial agriculture is not sustainable. it would be awesome if we lived in a world with a sustainable amount of people and in a society with a sustainable food production process. but in todays industrial capitalist society a vegan diet is more humane, (when done right) more healthy, and better for the environment than one that includes meat. buying local fruits and vegetables is better than buying local meat. her book made me look up a few things, but in the end it is very unconvincing and disingenuous.

the way she writes of vegans in her book is really condescending and mean. she says vegans are all naive and veganism is an eating disorder which causes anger problems. this is super offensive and reason enough to get pied for. she lumps all vegans together, and assumes that all vegan diets are the same (she seems to have no idea that there are plenty of vegans who dont eat soy.)

the worst part of her book is that a lot of people who dont know any better might read it and turn away from vegan/vegitarian diets which would be better for the planet, better for their health and better for the animals.

finally, a lot of people claim that even if they disagree with her, the pie throwers should have let her speak. this is silly. there are plenty of people who i would not give a platform to. especially at an anarchist event. i might have been more into it if it was an actual debate between Keith and an informed vegan, and both were given equal time, but im not interested or sympathetic to giving Keith half an hour of time to speak without any kind of opposing point of view. oh, and fuck anyone who calls the police and gives them a 20 minute statement because someone threw a pie at them.

basically, her book is going to do a lot of harm to the planet, people's health and the animals of the world. her getting pied was hella funny.

piedmont lumber possible arson?

2010-03-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

it looks like the five million dollar fire at piedmont lumber may have been arson. but not by eco-terrorists or anything like that. there is speculation that the owner of the place may have had something to do with the fire.
an arson fire caused half a million dollars worth of damage at their pittsburg store last year, but no one has been arrested for that yet.
add to that the fact that the company has been having a bunch of money problems recently.

the company is in default on nearly $15 million in loans obtained since 2007.
County Costa County records show a bank lien filed March 2 began foreclosure proceedings related to the Pittsburg property.
the company has also failed to make fringe benefit contributions to employees as required in the union contract.

capitalism will drive people to do pretty crazy things. certain stock brokers jump out of windows when they realize how much money they lost. some business owners burn down their businesses when faced with bankruptcy. many people will screw over others just to make a buck. it's a crazy world.

SEIU-UHW jail workers locked out

2010-03-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

Nurses, physician's assistants, dental assistants and others who provide medical care at Alameda County's two jails have been locked out by their employer. This comes after a one day strike held to protest six months of stalled contract negotiations and unfair labor practices.
The workers, members of the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, approved the one-day strike last month after working more than two months without a contract and making minimal headway on a new one with Tennessee-based Prison Health Services. As punishment, the company has now locked out those workers.
Prison Health Services is a Tennessee-based for-profit corporation that had earnings of more than half a billion dollars in 2009. They hold a $77 million, 3-year contract with Alameda County to provide medical services at the two County facilities.
to read more, click here.

Prison Health Services also have a 24 hour ethics and compliance issues hotline. 1-800-218-9114. feel free to let them know locking out health workers seems pretty unethical, especially at a jail, where the patients have no other options.

this is another example of how privatization of jails and prisons not only hurts inmates, but also workers and everyone else involved.

stolen flicks

2010-03-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

also a 2008 video about the Monument Crisis Center. a good place, doing some good stuff. check them out.

Anarchist social event of the year

2010-03-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

the 15th annual anarchist social gathering of the year is this weekend!
the San Francisco anarchist bookfair!
along with a large number of tables, there will be an auditorium of speakers.
speakers include:
Yantra Bertelli, Terry Bisson, Ward Churchill, John Curl, Diane DiPrima, John Duda, Matt Hern, Owen Hill, Luis A. Fernandez, Peter Gelderloos, Andrej Grubacic, Owen Hill, Lierre Keith, Margaret Killjoy, Ernesto Longa, Carlos Martinez, Jason McQuinn, Keith McHenry, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, Cindy Milstein, Patrick Reinsborough. Kim Stanley Robinson, Penelope Rosemont, Sarah Talbot, Kristian Williams and John Zerzan.

and like years past, there will be an anarchist cafe on friday and the BASTARD conference on sunday.

Local march 4th actions

2010-03-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, Berkeley/Oakland and DVC were not the only local or semi-local student protests.

The Mout Diablo Unified School District had a number of early morning, noon and after school rallies at local high schools, including Clayton Valley. Many schools pushed up their routine fire/disaster drills to March 4th to show what a disaster budget cuts are.

About 75 parents, students, teachers and administrations gathered outside Dublin High School. At Alisal Elementary, parents, teachers and students began lining both sides of Santa Rita Road at 7:45 a.m. Most carried "Save Pleasanton Schools" signs.

CSU Monterey Bay held a walkout and rally.

watsonville held an after school rally downtown.

at UC Davis about 300 protesters attempted to break through police lines and get onto the highway. one person was cited and released.

the California Maritime Academy held a noon rally.

there was a rally on the steps of the state capital in sacramento.

CSU Fresno held a march and sit-in occupation.

In the Early morning, UC Santa Cruz was shut down. in the evening students marched through downtown.

I'm sure there were plenty other smaller rallies throughout the state, especially at high schools that were not posted onto the internet.
Finally, DVC professor Adam Bessie writes why he chose to protest by not walking out or canceling class. He explains why he believes the pulling of fire alarms at DVC was counter productive and undemocratic.

March 4th SDS protest at DVC

2010-03-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) put on a protest rally and march at Diablo Valley College (DVC) on March 4th, the national day of action for education.
Most of the day was spent at a rally outside of the student union building, with a band performing and many speakers addressing the crowd.

During the rally a small group of DVC students went over to College Park High School to show solidarity with local high schoolers. A number of high school students wanted to walk out and join the DVC rally, but were prevented from doing so by an armed police officer and school administrators. likewise, the DVC students were prevented from stepping onto the high school campus. However, the two groups of students were able to communicate and express solidarity with one another from a distance.

A number of fire alarms throughout the DVC campus were also set off, after which some people at the rally wanted to go and march through campus to gather more students to join them. the numbers at the rally were dwindling and the rally seemed to be going on for a really long time, especially since the band kept playing music between every few speakers. as soon as they started to march, a few older male bodied people, one of whom is a teacher, came running up to the marches yelling that they are not allowed to march; that the permit for a march was an hour later, and those attempting to march have to come back to the rally. many of those who started marching were scared back to the rally by these self appointed authorities.

finally, after the rally ended a permitted march through campus did take place, with a second, shorter rally at the quad. afterwards, many of the students went to the oakland and san francisco rallies.

photos:

budget cuts may affect the education system, but there sure seemed to be no lack of police presence:

This very loud and in-your-face alpha-male type of person was extremely upset that students would attempt to march before the rally was officially over:

At college park high school:

this is Professor Mickey Huff, one of the people telling the people who attempted to march before the rally was officially over that they are not allowed to do so:

Death and torture supporters in concord

2010-03-02T11:14:00.000-08:00

Most people in Concord may not realize, but we there is a local business which supports and takes part in perpetuating an unnecessary and cruel form of torture.
JEH Fur offers a range of services for fur owners, including storage, repair and resale of dead animal skins. they store over 2500 garments, most of which come from multiple animal pelts.

According to Humane Society International over 8 million animals are trapped yearly for fur, while more than 30 million were raised in fur farms. Many furs labeled otherwise are actually the pelts of dogs and cats, some of which are skinned alive.

I was in Portland a little while ago. that city has one fur store left, and it is being protested on a daily basis. other fur stores which went out of business give full credit to protesters for shutting them down.

the best way to understand someones oposition to fur is to look at where it comes from:

feel free to politely contact JEH fur and let them know how you feel about fur:

1647 Willow Pass Rd # 133
Concord, CA 94520

24/7 Voice Mail
800-370-3111
925.798.7100

TEL: 925-798-7101
FAX: 925.798.3650

Email: kris@jehfur.com

There is no excuse for wearing or owning fur. there are so many other alternatives. the amount of suffering caused by the fur industry by far outweighs any sort of benefit.

march 4th at DVC

2010-02-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

SDS-DVC (Students for a Democratic Society) is holding a student rally and march through campus to fight back against the fee hikes, and cuts in student services at DVC and campuses all around the state. This is part of the larger March 4th strike and day of action.

the rally will be from 11am-2pm on campus and will include speakers, live music, a literature table, and a march through campus. Many groups are represented at SDS-DVC through individual members, including the IWW, Contra Costa Radical Action, the Peace and Freedom Party, and others.

The new SDS chapter at Napa Valley College will be down here joining in our protest against Fee Hikes and cuts in essential student services.

we will see what happens around the country on march 4th. im not a student, and i dont really care too much about student politics, but i've been getting somewhat excited by the recent student actions, including the riot that happened at UC berkeley the other night.

get paid to ride your bicycle to work

2010-02-27T18:14:00.000-08:00

it would be nice if you didnt have to have a job to qualify, but if you bicycle to work you might be able to get $100/month for 3 months from 511contracosta. they are attempting to encourage car drivers to give cycling a try. i dont know how they would check that someone was actually a car commuter before hand. if i had a job i'd apply, but alas, the unemployed are not eligable.
anyway, click here for more details.

Gimme Something Better

2010-02-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk From Dead Kennedys to Green Day, an oral history of bay area punk rock compiled by Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor. As you ay have guessed by the title, the book is a collection of interviews with a few hundread people involved in the bay area punk scenes; from the very first punk bands to recent times.
Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor do a good job finding a wide range of people to interview. As anyone who knows anything about bay area punk rock can tell you, there is a bunch of radically different punk scenes in the bay area, many of which have nothing to do with one another. It's like the old joke about marxists; ask 10 different marxists to define marxism for you and you will get 11 different definitions. Punk rock can be like that too. Ask 10 different people what their experience with punk has been, and you will get a bunch of very different answers. It goes from heroin addiction to militant straight edge. From racist skinheads to anarchist crust punks.
I'm a real big fan of the oral history format. Blood of Spain: An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War is my favourite book about the spanish civil war. It truly captures the tragedy of that event.
Gimme Something Better uses a slightly different format in that the editors took bit and pieces of many interviews and mixed them all together by subject. So rather than having one long interview with punk A and then another interview with punk B, the editors took short parts of each interview and placed them right next to one another. It works well at times, but at other times can be slightly confusing trying to figure out what exactly each person is talking about.
It's a book I would recommend to someone who is into punk but younger, or not from the bay area. It has some great stories and descriptions of what things used to be like around these parts. For people who dont know anything about punk rock, but are curious, this book might not be the best place to start. Due to the format of the book, certain things arnt really well defined. It might be confusing.
You preview the book by reading excerpts that did not make it into the almost 500 page book on their website.
And unfortunately there isnt a big long chapter on concord punk! Maybe one day I will do a zine about the history of notable moments and bands from this area...
according to crazy in suburbia even walnut creek has a history of punks

For a time in the mid-1980s, a crew of teens, organized by a San Quentin Prison guard/club deejay, would party at Heather Farm Park almost monthly to the sounds of punk, post-punk, Eurowave, gothic rock, and hip hop—from The Cure to Two Live Crew.

This parties were called Primary, and they were designed for Central Contra Costa teenagers whose penchant for leather, eye-liner, multi-colored hair or Mohawks made them stand out in suburbia—and scare some adults.

Apperantly July 24th of this year they plan to have a reunion party.
punk rock has a lot to do with punk music. music such as that of Sewer Trout. Sewer Trout were a punk band formed in concord in 1985. then they moved to sacramento. this is what they sounded like:

open carry in walnut creek

2010-02-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

so the open carry folks cam to walnut creek and it wasnt a big deal. no counter protesters or anything silly like that. they brought their guns, and the media showed up and took some pictures and video.
im glad it happened and hope they keep at it, but i'm kind of over the group. i have a pretty firm set of political views, and i'm not really interested in going to single issue events where a lot of the people only share the same view as me only on that specific issue and disagree on a lot of other things i find important. case in point:

all the patriotic talk, all the cops or former cops in attendance, and hanging out at buckhorn grill just isnt my thing. i'm not a patriot (nationalist,) i feel at best uncomfortable around cops, and i dont eat meat. i'm not going to have a great time.
i'm glad they are doing what they i doing, and i wish them luck, but i think i'll stick to just going to shooting ranges with my leftist friends. or maybe next time i can sucker a few of my friends to dress punk as fuck and show up.
i bet the media would love to see some punx with guns.

ores rip

2010-02-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

the enemies, the concord punk band who moved to oakland and denied ever being from concord, playing 1999/2000 new years party:

abolish jails

2010-02-05T13:27:00.000-08:00

The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs; it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism, and, increasingly, global capitalism. - Angela Y. Davis

some great news about the prison industrial complex in california.
A law designed to thin California's bloated criminal lockups by shortening some sentences has prompted the release of thousands of nonviolent county jail inmates in recent days.
including about 90 inmates here in Contra Costa county. basically, certain nonviolent offenders get out a little earlier on good behaviour.

In the past, jail inmates who behaved themselves served as little as two-thirds of their sentence. Under the new law, some drug offenders, thieves and other nonviolent convicts can serve as little as half their sentence, receiving a day of credit for every day locked up.

the capitalist recession is tough on those of us who are not rich. it's tough being unemployed or underemployed, and most economists agree that even if there is a recovery, it is going to be a jobless one. and it seems like the federal goverment is more interested in keeping inflation low rather than improving employment.
but the recession also means less consumption, which is great for the planet and less money for the government to spend on police and prisons; less money for the war on drugs.
who knows, maybe if things stay the way they are, we will see less and less pigs on the streets and less people locked up in cages. if noting else, i'm sure all the people who got out of jail just now are doing better than they were a few days ago.

the bay area has a bunch of rad prison abolition and prison reform groups, such as east bay prisoner support, prisoners literature project, critical resistance, and prison activist resource center. they all do great work, and if you ever find yourself with some free time you may want to see if they could use more volunteers.

abolish prisons. free all political prisoners.

Concord City Council meetings on Naval Station redevelopment: 2/9 and 2/23

2010-02-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

from the Greenbelt Alliance

Now is the time to set the foundation for a world-class smart growth project in Concord that will ensure people won’t need to rely on cars to get to work, school, or shopping. The current plan for the redevelopment of the Concord Naval Weapons Station gets it about half right, and we need your help.

Greenbelt Alliance and the Community Coalition for a Sustainable Concord want to see the city take a stronger approach to addressing climate change, affordable housing, and natural resource protection.

Take Action! Let the Concord City Council know that you support removing the low-density zoning for estate homes, strengthening the guidelines for the Climate Action Plan, protecting Mt. Diablo Creek, and committing to good policies for affordable homes and local jobs.

What: Concord City Council meetings
When: 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 9 and Tuesday, Feb. 23
Where: Council Chamber, Concord Civic Center, 1950 Parkside Drive, Concord
Info: Read more at the Grow Smart Bay Area blog or contact Campaigns Director Melissa Hippard at mhippard@greenbelt.org or (415) 543-6771 x311

and from the CNWS Neighborhood Alliance

The city of Concord released the FEIR (Final Environmental Impact Review) on Jan. 15th. We will have an opportunity to comment at the Feb. 9th and 23rd city council meetings, with their decision expected on the 23rd.

Please visit www.concordreuseproject.org to review the report. Go to Responses to comments Draft EIR Revised (August 2009). The CNWSNA’s 16-page comment letter is #25 in the list of letters the city received in response to the DEIR. The city/consultant’s response to our letter follows our letter and that of Thomas & Associates.

Just two design plans are now being considered for the Concord Naval Weapons Station; the Clustered Village Alternative and the Concentration and Conservation Alternative. However, the City’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR, Jan 2010) did award the Concentration and Conservation Alternative as the superior alternative in the last paragraph of Chapter 17:

“As shown in Table 17-21 both alternatives have relatively the same number of significant environmental impacts and the same number that cannot be mitigated to a level that is not significant. Given that the potential significant impacts of the two alternatives are relatively equal, the quantitative and qualitative differences between he two are marginal. Because the Concentration and Conservation Alternative results in a smaller footprint, less traffic, and lower GHG emissions than the Preferred Alternative, however, it is judged to be the environmentally superior alternative.”

The Steering Committee for the CNWS Neighborhood Alliance supports the smaller Concentration and Conservation alternative. The C & C footprint on the ground is noticeably smaller and offers more environmental benefits, but this plan is still very similar to the Clustered Village alternative in number of jobs, new homes, population, with a slightly smaller increase in traffic. There is one more opportunity to express your views at the City Council hearing on Feb. 9.

The CNWS Neighborhood Alliance will comment at the Feb. 9th City Council meeting as we feel our very legitimate comments and questions regarding traffic, air quality, health, hazardous materials, biological impacts and more were left unanswered.

The city received 46 letters in response to the DEIR. We recommend reading all of the letters but if you were to pick a few due to limited reading time, we recommend reading ours as well as #22 Carpenters, #31 Greenbelt Alliance, #33 Human Impact Partners, #37 Save Mount Diablo, #38 Sierra Club.

Regarding the CNWS Tree cutting, our steering committee members have been in contact with the city and the US Forest Service. Due to these efforts, we were able to save some of the trees scheduled for removal. After talking with a local biologist who has toured the site, we understand that for the long-term health of the plantations, some trees need to be removed.

radicals in vallejo!

2010-02-01T23:16:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to plug The Northbay Uprising. They're a radio collective based out of Vallejo with a weekly radio show on Vallejo's community radio station OzCat, located downtown. Recently, the FCC approved their license to broadcast on the FM frequency which will be in mid February! The radio show covers local (meaning: Solano, Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Contra Costa, and Lake counties as well as West Coast or otherwise underground) news/music/poets, censored national news, earth/animal liberation, political prisoners, conspiracy theories, ecology, and many other things.

Brought to you by the Gathering of the Tribes affinity group, Northbay Uprising's mission is to provide a showcase for local music,talent, rants, views and news that would otherwise not be broadcast on the corporate radio, for all "liberated people" of the San Pablo Bay Area and beyond.

Hosted by the "Anonymous Duo", Northbay Uprising is infested with humor, raw energy, anarchy, dignified rage and awesome local talent. And it all goes down right here in the culture capital of the Northbay: Vallejo, California

listen to them online Thursday afternoons from 12-3 PM, and if you live in the vallejo area, listen to them on the air when they get that up and running. 89.5 FM KZCT.
and here i thought the only cool thing from vallejo was mac dre!

nazi killers, homophobic CBS and the wave

2010-01-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

it's gonna cost you $20, unless you sneak in, but tomorrow (monday) you can see the son of Alexander "Zus" Bielski, a Jewish partisan who fought in the forests of Poland during world war two. the recent movie Defiance was based on this story.

The Bielski's story hit the big screen with the release of Edward Zwick's film "Defiance" in 2008. Since then, Bielski has crisscrossed the globe, sharing his father's story and his own experience growing up with a hero.

On Monday, Bielski will stop in the East Bay for a 7:30 p.m. lecture sponsored by the Chabad of the Tri-Valley at the Pleasanton Masonic Center.

in other news, Super Bowl tv channel CBS is refusing to air this commercial:

CBS Standards and Practices has reviewed your proposed Super Bowl ad and concluded that the creative is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday

really? american football has got to be one of the most homoerotic sports out there, and they wont air this silly commercial? but they are allowing some crummy pro life ad.

and anyone who watches football knows the NFL loves to give air time to the military and "support our troops" kinda crap.
watching the raiders has been painful enough these last few years without all this right-wing nationalistic crap being shown during the commercials.

finally, a documentary film is being made about "the third wave." it was 1967, in a bay area high school when

Simulation was in vogue for introducing abstract ideas. One of the abstractions was fascism in World War II, and Jones decided to simulate it by turning his world history classroom into a one-day fascist state. It was a morning class of 25 or 26 sophomores, and Jones introduced discipline by having them practice marching into class in an orderly fashion and sitting at their desks with perfect posture and smiles.

Jones figured that was the end of it, but when he came in the second morning, they were all sitting with perfect posture again. They liked this game, and that is where the trouble began.

By the end of day two, participating students had developed a secret hallway salute, which caused enough campus curiosity that by day three there were 200 students or more, including kids who had heard about it at rival high schools Palo Alto and Gunn, jamming his classroom to be part of the Third Wave.

"Now it was not just a simulation," says Jones. "The Third Wave was becoming something bigger, and I was a victim of my own excitement. I loved the power of it and the adulation."

On the fourth day, Jones raised the stakes by telling his students that the Third Wave was part of a national movement. They were "the vanguard, the soldiers of the future" and they would hold a rally on day five to meet their national leader in a televised speech.

By then the Third Wave soldiers were in white shirts, and they crammed into a small auditorium. Jones turned the TV on to meet their new leader and it was nothing but white static. After a few confusing moments, a slide projector came on with images of Adolf Hitler indoctrinating his youth.

"I said, 'This is where we are going. We're no better and no worse than the Germans we've been studying,' " Jones says. "This is our future unless we understand the need for freedom."
Students were shocked

It was a hard lesson and a bit much for high schoolers. "Some are crying. Some are bursting out of the room," says Jones. "It had gone way too far. I was lucky I could bring it to an end."

That wasn't the only end he brought it to. Two years later, he was let go. Nobody said it was specifically because of the Third Wave experiment, but nobody said it wasn't, either.

It's another example of what i was talking about in my last post.
otherwise good or normal people can turn into monsters when put into certain positions, usually those of power.

more howard zinn

2010-01-29T01:12:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about socialism. … I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country… Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism.
-Howard Zinn

I'm still not able to get over how amazing and influential Howard Zinn was.
Daniel Ellsberg writes an obituary for antiwar.com in which he points out exactly what i mean when i say things like "all cops are bastards."
so Daniel and Howard Zinn are at this sit-down anti-war protest,

Then one of the officers came over to Howard and said, “You’re Professor Zinn, aren’t you?” Howard said yes, and the officer reached down and shook his hand enthusiastically. He said, “I heard you lecture at the Police Academy. A lot of us here did. That was a wonderful lecture.” Howard had been asked to speak to them about the role of dissent and civil disobedience in American history. Several other policemen came over to pay their respects to Howard and thank him for his lecture.

a little bit later

An order had been passed. The bloc of police in the center of the square got into tight formation and lowered their plastic helmets. The police standing right in front of us, over us, straightened up, adjusted their uniforms and lowered their masks. Apparently the time had come to start arrests. The supporters who didn’t want to be arrested fell back.

But there was no arrest warning. There was a whistle, and the line of police began inching forward, black batons raised upright. They were going to walk through us or over us, push us back. The man in front of us, who had been talking to Howard about his lecture a little earlier, muttered to us under his breath, “Leave! Now! Quick, get up.” He was warning, not menacing us....
The voice over our heads whispered intensely, “Move! Please. For God’s sake, move!” Knees in uniform pressed our knees. I saw a club coming down. I put my hands over my head, fists clenched, and a four-foot baton hit my wrist, hard. Another one hit my shoulder.

I rolled over, keeping my arms over my head, got up and moved back a few yards. Howard was being hauled off by several policemen. One had Howard’s arms pinned behind him, another had jerked his head back by the hair. Someone had ripped his shirt in two, there was blood on his bare chest.

It's like the Stanford Prison Experiment; maybe the police have great respect for the protesters; maybe they agree with them. but they are still the police, and they have to follow orders. by becoming police officers, they put themselves into a roll, where if they do not follow orders, they will get in trouble and possibly risk loosing their jobs.

It's possible there are plenty of good people who become police officers, and when not in the role of law enforcement they might be decent human beings. but as soon as they take on the role of police everything else goes out the window.

that is why we hate the police.

oh, and there's a documentary coming out of oakland about a year in the struggle for Oakland. This documentary takes us through the murder of Oscar Grant to the case of Lovelle Mixon as ordinary residents take to the streets in a hostile environment to combat injustice with video cameras.

Anarchist Historian Howard Zinn, Dead.

2010-01-27T19:56:00.000-08:00

The media are starting to write up obituaries for Howard Zinn; the historian, activist, teacher, writer, and radical. I expect anarchists will write their own versions in the coming days.

one of the last things Zinn wrote was a very short piece on how Obama's first year was an expected disappointment. His most famous work by far is A People's History of the United States.

If you are unfamiliar with it, i would highly suggest downloading (or buying) the audio for Heroes and Martyrs, a talk he gives about history, his life, anarchism, etc.
the downloads are here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/185618318/10_Heroes_And_Martyrs__Emma_Goldman.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/185654676/10_Heroes_And_Martyrs__Emma_Goldman.part2.rar

I would say him and Noam Chomsky were the two most influential radical/anarchist intellectuals of recent times. He will be missed.

the crazies come out of the woodwork sometimes

2010-01-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

some whack job wants to change the name of mount diablo to mount reagan, after the former republican president.

The proponent, a resident of Oakley, believes the word “Diablo” is “derogatory and profane” and should be changed. This is his second attempt to seek a new name for the summit; in 2005 the BGN did not approve his proposal to change it to Mount Yahweh (two other proposals, for Mount Miwok and Mount Ohlone, were considered and rejected at the same meeting.

yahweh of course meaning "god" in hebrew.
i think it's fair to assume this person is a crazy right wing religious nut job.
luckly we live in the bay area, which is sane enough to usually ignore these types of idiots. other parts of the state, such as riverside, are not so lucky. recently a mother got her child's school district to take all the copies of a dictionary out of the school libraries. the reason for the district to ban a dictionary from all their libraries? the dictionary had a definition of oral sex. these people are insane.

more walnut creek gun news

2010-01-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

so looking at the california open carry forums, i realize that some of the details of the walnut creek meetup have changed.
california pizza kitchen has banned open carry folks from all of its locations, so the open carry folks are not announcing the new location for their walnut creek meet up to the public. you have to send a private message on their forums to find out the location.
pete's coffee has also banned open carry people from all of their locations.

if you read through the forums, a lot of the members are (unsuprisingly) right-wing libertarian (extream capitalist) types. some folks are going around comparing a business not allowing them to carry a gun on their property with segregation. a pretty stupid comparison. for one thing, you can always take your gun off. a person of color can't become white whenever they feel like it.
I'm all for gun rights, but attempting to make gun rights similar to civil rights struggles shows a large amount of ignorance and privilege.
open carry forum member chewy352 went on to compare pete's coffee's ban on guns as akin to nazi germany. really? a stupid coffee chain telling people they cant have a gun on property is parallel to mass genocide? really? people of all political persuasions need to lay off the comparisons to nazism. it make you sound hysterical.

finally, the insanity of extreme capitalists comes into play

However, I believe the law prohibiting discrimination is wrong, and I intend to work to overturn it. While I realize it's not a popular view, I believe a business owner should be permitted to reserve the right to refuse service for any reason. It's a basic liberty issue. If I run a cafe that only serves white christians, then someone will do well who opens a cafe next to mine that serves all races and religions. The free market fixes the problem.

history shows tht this isnt true. people are not always rational. let us say you live in a town that is 90% white and 10% black, but that a lot of the white people are racist and want to be segregated from the black folk. if there is a cafe that only serves white folk, and you open up a cafe that serves both black and white folk, you might get business from the black folk, but most of the white folk wont come to you. even if a lot of the white folk arnt racist, if enough of them are, those who are not racist will loose social status and will loose in other ways if they start associating with black folks.
humans are not always rational. racism exists and is sometimes the norm in a society. it is often costly to go against social norms.

capitalist arguments work well in theory. but so does just about everything else.

anyway, there's a cool idea to carry gun holsters with bananas in them and go into peets or california pizza kitchen. i think it's a creative little protest, and i bet the media would eat it right up (pun intended! waa waa...)

speaking of guns

2010-01-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

PZ myers friday evening.

it looks like the open carry gun folks are coming to have lunch in walnut creek. their plan is feburary 6th, at 11am at California Pizza Kitchen. good for them. the more people exercising their right to bear arms, the harder it will be for the government to take away those rights. allowing the government to have a monopoly on gun ownership must be the most naive thing in the world.

i dont know if they are at all active anymore, but the anarchist black cross federation had a tactical defence caucus which was all about teaching leftists firearm usage and safety. they made a video which the FBI did not like at all.
in 2005, the head of the FBI testified before congress:

The potential for violence by anarchists and other emerging revolutionary groups, such as the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF), will continue to be an issue for law enforcement. The stated goals of the ABCF are "the abolishment of prisons, the system of laws, and the Capitalist state." The ABCF believes in armed resistance to achieve a stateless and classless society. ABCF has continued to organize, recruit, and train anarchists in the tactical use of firearms.

also, check out anti-authoritarian gun club.

get guns. learn how to use them.

two kinds of war

2010-01-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

the mount diablo peace and justice center has put out a statement on the war in afghanistan. the nice thing about being an established and somewhat well known organization is that when you put out a statement, the media will pick it up and make a news article about it. good for them. less established organizations have to put on spectacular protests in hopes of getting mention in the media.

on the social war front, a couple of walnut creek banks were robbed. in oakland, a couple robbing a walgreens got shot at by CHP officers. one of the robbers shot back and hit one of the pigs before being shot and killed. the other robber got away. a few hours later, another walgreens in oakland got robbed.
there was a time, when certain anarchist groups would rob banks to fund their political activity. it used to be that when police attempted to arrest anarchists, the anarchists would pull out guns and there would be a fire fight, sometimes to the death. i dont know if those were the best tactics to use, but it just sounds to much more romantic than working a shitty job or getting sent to jail.

Walnut Creek loves acupuncture, herbs and other snake oils

2010-01-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

A while ago I pointed out show stupid new age woo stores such as Mystic Dream are. Now I will point out how stupid “alternative medicine” woo places like Lotus Acupuncture are. There’s a bunch of acupuncture, herbalists and chiropractors in the Walnut Creek area, and I’m picking on Lotus Acupuncture because theirs is the first website that came up in my search. I’m sure the rest are just as bad.
their introduction to Traditional Chinese medicine is as follows:

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a complete system of medicine that has developed over thousands of years ago and little has changed over the centuries. TCM is largely based on the philosophical concept that the human body is a small universe with a set of interconnected systems, and that those systems usually work in balance to maintain the healthy human body. This ancient holistic medical system understands that the body, mind, spirit and emotions must all be interconnected to restore balance in ones life.
TCM is based primarily on a theory of balanced energy in the body. The patterns of energy flow called "Qi" or vital energy through the twenty meridians of the body. Well-being of the body, mind and spirit will occur when energy flow is free and harmonious. When the body is in good health, energy flow is balanced and consistent. However, when energy flow is imbalanced or blocked it will result in pain and disease.

by their own admission, TCM is based on philosophy, not science. There is no proof of Qi vital energy. it is no more measurable than the soul or any other none existent spiritual idea.
medical science has made amazing strides over the centuries to better understand and heal disease, yet the practitioners of TCM love to claim that their practice is thousands of years old. just because something is old, does not make it good or true! Thousands of years ago people had no idea that disease was spread by viruses.
for ages, in europe people thought that the body had four humors and when you got sick, the humors were out of balance and needed to be adjusted. but eventually, medical science collected enough evidence to prove that humorism was not true. bleeding by leeches is not a common practice anymore. why would anyone believe that we get sick because vital energy is unable to flow through our body? ignoring scientific evidence and proven cures for diseases because they contradict your philosophical beliefs is stupid and dangerous.
there is also good reason to believe that acupuncture is not all that old at all

From studying the earliest documents, Chinese scholar Paul Unschuld suspects the idea may have originated with the Greek Hippocrates of Cos and later spread to China. There’s certainly no evidence that it’s 3000 years old. The earliest Chinese medical texts, from the 3rd century BC, don’t mention it. The earliest reference to “needling” is from 90 BC, but it refers to bloodletting and lancing abscesses with large needles or lancets. There is nothing in those documents to suggest anything like today’s acupuncture. We have the archaeological evidence of needles from that era – they are large; the technology for manufacturing thin steel needles appropriate for acupuncture didn’t exist until 400 years ago.

under their herbalism section, Lotuc Acupuncture claims that

Unlike most western medicine, Chinese herbal medicine has a low risk of side effects.

this is a flat out lie. if you go and look on any bottle of any herb sold anywhere in the United States you will see a disclaimer saying the FDA does not support the claims of the herb manufacturer. this is because, under law, herbs are considered dietary supplements, not medicine. this means that there is no need to prove the herbs work, and there is no need to test for side effects. the truth is not that herbs have a low risk of side effects. the truth is that there has not been any testing done to find out what the side effects are. they are there, but unlike pharmaceutical medicine, they are not tested for.
as the American Academy of Family Physicians stated in 1999

the adverse effects and drug interactions associated with herbal remedies are largely unknown. Ginkgo biloba extract, advertised as improving cognitive functioning, has been reported to cause spontaneous bleeding, and it may interact with anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents. St. John's wort, promoted as a treatment for depression, may have monoamine oxidaseinhibiting effects or may cause increased levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Although St. John's wort probably does not interact with foods that contain tyramine, it should not be used with prescription antidepressants. Ephedrine-containing herbal products have been associated with adverse cardiovascular events, seizures and even death. Ginseng, widely used for its purported physical and mental effects, is generally well tolerated, but it has been implicated as a cause of decreased response to warfarin.

oh, but it gets better, the Lotus Acupuncture website then goes on to make the claim that

According to the World Health Organization and the National Institutes acupuncture is beneficial to treat:

* Chronic and Acute Pain - Injuries, headaches, neck, shoulder, back & knee pain, tendonitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia,
* Digestive Disorders - Irritable bowel, colitis, constipation, diarrhea, gastritis, heartburn, food allergies, ulcers.
* Gynecological-PMS, painful or irregular menses, menopause, infertility.
* Pregnancy -pre and post-partum care, breech, labor and delivery.
* Neurological Disorders - Post-stroke recovery, Bell's Palsy, Parkinsons, Trigeminal Neuralgia, movement disorders, neuropathy,
* Respiratory Disorders - Asthma, allergies, bronchitis, sinusitis, sore throat, laryngitis, colds and flu,
* Immune Function - Recurrent infections, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, AIDS.
* Addictions - Addictions to nicotine, alcohol and drugs.
* Eye and Ear Disorders - Tinnitus, Meniere's disease, impaired vision.
* Psychological- Depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, insomnia.

i think the best response to this is by actual medical doctors such as Harriet Hall over at science based medicine

There are plenty of studies showing that acupuncture works for subjective symptoms like pain and nausea. But there are several things that throw serious doubt on their findings. The results are inconsistent, with some studies finding an effect and others not. The higher quality studies are less likely to find an effect. Most of the studies are done by believers in acupuncture. Many subjects would not volunteer for an acupuncture trial unless they had a bias towards believing it might work...

The biggest problem with acupuncture studies is finding an adequate placebo control. You’re sticking needles in people. People notice that. Double blinding is impossible: you might be able to fool patients into thinking you’ve used a needle when you haven’t, but there’s no way to blind the person doing the needling. Two kinds of controls have been used: comparing acupuncture points to non-points, and using an ingenious needle in a sheath that appears to have penetrated the skin when it hasn’t...
Guess what? It doesn’t matter where you put the needle. It doesn’t matter whether you use a needle at all. In the best controlled studies, only one thing mattered: whether the patients believed they were getting acupuncture. If they believed they got the real thing, they got better pain relief – whether they actually got acupuncture or not! If they got acupuncture but believed they didn’t, it was less likely to work. If they didn’t get it but believed they did, it was more likely to work...
Considering the inconsistent research results, the implausibility of qi and meridians, and the many questions that remain, all the current evidence is compatible with this hypothesis: acupuncture is nothing more than a recipe for an elaborate placebo

you can also go here and read a section of the book Trick or treatment: the undeniable facts about alternative medicine By Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst as to why the WHO report is highly flawed at best.

acupuncture and other ineffective forms of alternative medicine ("alternative medicine" is just a term for things that have no been proven effective and have not been adopted by the medical community) are not only stupid, they can be dangerous. Lotus Acupuncture claims that

Acupuncture is beneficial to people of all ages from newborns to the elderly in all stages of disease. Acupuncture can improve wellbeing, treat disease and prevent illness at all stages of life.

when people are led to believe that things like acupuncture are effective, they may not seek real effective treatment for their diseases. adjusting the imaginary Qi energy flow of your body will not fight off an infection as effectively as antibiotics. this is really irresponsible at best.

of course the Lotus Acupuncture website also has a testimonial page. folks who are into alternative medicine love anecdotal evidence. anecdotal evidence is NOT real proof of anything! legitimate double blind clinical studies are.

and of course, nothing offered is cheap.

Rates Consultation and Treatment

$95-Adults
$60-Children
Acupuncture Treatment

$75-Adults
$30-Children

like selling snake oil in days gone by, alternative medicine is a big money maker. seriously, it is a scam.

for other, better websites by those who know a lot more than i do about these things visit http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ and Quakwatch.org.

fine arts

2010-01-19T13:46:00.001-08:00

also, concord's very own pre-teen alf on heroin:

all politicians are thieves

2010-01-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

Concord's unelected mayor, Guy Bjerke, is now the Bay Area Manager of the Western States Petroleum Association.
that's right, the city's mayor is openly working for big oil businesses while serving public office. i guess it isnt a big surprise for anyone who knows anything about Bjerke. this is the same scumbag who was president of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, an advocacy group for developers while a part of Concord's Planning Commission.
he twice ran for city council and twice lost, but was none the less appointed to the city council when Michael Chavez died by the other members of the city council who deemed an appointment was appropriate because a democratic election where voters would be given a voice would be "too expensive."

It all just goes to show how corrupt the political system is, on all levels. you dont need to look nationally to see scum bag politicians working hand in hand with big money interests.

pacifism sucks, ghandi sucks, MTDPJ sucks!

2010-01-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

I went ahead and made the mistake of reading the latest issue of the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center's Peace Gazette. Oh man, where to begin?
I suppose at the begining. the first thing i see is the "action of the month" section. i would think that a section urging folks to take action would have something to do with making it a tad bit harder for the US government to wage wars and occupations. wrong! the peace and justice folks instead urge their readers to send care packages to the troops.

how in the world are you going to be against a war while at the same time supporting the troops who are fighting the war? it makes no sense at all.
look, i have friends in the military, some of whom are taking part in occupying iraq. i know them on a personal level, and support them in the sense that i want them to come home alive. i most certainly do not support them killing anyone or doing anything else that they and the rest of the military does. pretty much everyone i talked to who has been there has said they killed someone. it doesnt matter how close we were in high school, i dont support that in anyway.
if im not down with my friends killing people in iraq or Afghanistan, how the hell does anyone expect me to support all the troops i dont know? i dont know them, i dont know anything about them, other than they were stupid enough to sign up for the military. my guess is, most of them are assholes who id want nothing to do with. im most certainly not going to consider them heroes because they went off and killed a bunch of people for no good reason.

i'm not surprised that the peace and justice center support the troops. they are an upper class liberal pacifist organization. and none of those adjectives are a good thing.

they're the kind of people that drool over religious fundamentalist gandhi. maybe they do not believe all the accusations of racism that have been thrown at gandhi.
maybe they do not know that gandhi loved to sleep next to nude teenage girls.
Gandi was a crazy religious fundamentalist; there are much better role models for social change.
as George Orwell said in an essay on Gandhi

Anarchists and pacifists, in particular, have claimed him for their own, noticing only that he was opposed to centralism and State violence and ignoring the other-worldly, anti-humanist tendency of his doctrines. But one should, I think, realize that Gandhi's teachings cannot be squared with the belief that Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have. They make sense only on the assumption that God exists and that the world of solid objects is an illusion to be escaped from....
...Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly.

pacifism is ineffective and only works if you are in a privileged and comfortable position in society. if you are a member of the upper class, as the peace and justice center is, making social change isnt really that important. you are a part of the small minority of people in the world who benefit from imperialism, racism, capitalism, and war.

PZ Myers comes to california

2010-01-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

atheist biologist coming to northern california!

The Secular Student Alliance is proud to announce the PZ Myers Northern California Tour from January 20-28, 2010. The infamous author of Pharyngula will be speaking at venues from Santa Barbara to Sacramento and in between.

this includes a stop on friday the 22nd at UC Berkeley.
as they say in mexico "ni dios, ni amo."

illegal art

2010-01-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

zinelibrary.info has a scanned copy of If They Only Knew zine from concord. issue #3 has an interview with some graffiti writers from walnut creek.

Barry Pateman speaks

2009-12-30T15:14:00.000-08:00

bay area resident, Barry Pateman, of the Emma Goldman Papers and Kate Sharpley Library fame has a couple talks online. he is by far my favourite anarchist speaker. watch them. seriously, instead of watching some dumb TV show, or going to see some dumb hollywood movie, watch these.

Lester Rodney, 1911-2009

2009-12-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

Lester Rodney, the anti-racist communist sports writer died in Walnut Creek last Sunday.
In the 1930s and '40s Rodney used the communist Daily Worker newspaper to push for racial integration in baseball.

"Lester was very influential in keeping the issue alive at a time when even black newspapers concentrated more on the Negro Leagues assuming that was the way it was always going to be" said San Francisco State University history Professor Jules Tygiel author of "Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy."

He is yet another example of those on the Left who have been ahead of their times in their views against discrimination.

His writings consistently underscored a parallel few were willing to recognize, especially in sports: that the growing marginalization of the Jews and other religious and social groups by the Nazis in Germany and later Europe, had a too-close-for-comfort parallel in this country's marginalization of African-Americans.

In a less violent but no less prejudiced aspect, Rodney noted that most Americans were appalled - or at least discomfited - at the thought that deference to Hitler led to our American team leaving Marty Glickman off the Jesse Owens-led relay squad at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. But few seemed disturbed that America was denying its greatest black baseball players an opportunity to reach whatever success they could achieve here.

It truly makes me wonder, after reading the history of any sorts of rights struggle, how anyone can believe being socially conservative is correct. time and time again, on issue and issue, the Right has been shown to be wrong and over time society has accepted views from the Left; women's rights, civil rights, etc.
now, dont get me wrong, i'm no fan of the communist party. former member of the Communist Party, William Herrick in his autobiographical book Jumping the Line lays out what a bunch of scum the Party is. It's worth a read for anyone who believes that working with Stalinists is ever a good idea. (it isn't.) while Rodney left the Party in 1958, we should recognize the good that many communists have done on many different political fronts. such as agitating to end racial segregation in sports.

It sure would be cool if there were more leftist sports writers out there. the NFL for example is full of pro-war pro-army propaganda. and of course there is the insane racism of having teams called the Redskins. in europe, soccer is largely dominated by fascist fans. it would be cool if there were more teams like FC St. Pauli. and it would be cool if there were more sports writers like Rodney.

There is a lot of people and organizations that history has forgotten. the civil rights struggle has turned from an amazing movement with a huge amount of participants with very diverse and complex points of views and goals, into a handful of leaders. the history we as a society remember is glossed-over, simplified and only a small fraction of what really happened. It's nice to see that Lester Rodney's contribution has not been forgotten.

xmas

2009-12-23T23:47:00.000-08:00

At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail.
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

police news

2009-12-16T23:42:00.000-08:00

after oscar grant was murdered by BART police someone went online and wrote

The best pigs are dead (expletive) pigs and if any of you Oakland or BART pigs (expletive) are reading this your time is coming you pigs- (expletive) sooner than you think and this isn't a threat it's a (expletive) promise (expletive)!! I'm curious to know what it looks like up close to see pigs (expletive) get their brains splattered against a wall.

looks like the guy who posted that and a few other things online is going to serve 3 years in prison for making threats.

a concord dude was arrested for robbing video game stores. that arrest is very likely going to be his third strike, which means his life is over. he's going to be locked up in a cage for the rest of his life. for stealing a few nintendos? it's not like a felon can really find a decent job. whack.

Traditional Chinese Medicine kills sharks

2009-12-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

Alternative medicine is a huge market in the United States, and especially places like California. One type of "alternative" to standard medicine is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM.) There are a number of TCM practitioners throughout the bay area, including concord and walnut creek.
In this post i want to look at one really disturbing type of "medicine" that TCM promotes; shark fins. Shark fins are supposed to fight cancer, which is a bunch of BS. If it were true, western medicine would jump all over it and make a lot of money curing people who do have cancer. In fact, shark fins have been found to have large amounts of mercury in them, and that poses a health risk to anyone consuming them.
I wouldn't really care if people wanted to take ineffective medicines, but shark fins are different. shark fins are obtained by catching live sharks, cutting off their fins, and then throwing the live shark back into the water. take a look:

while i dont know if the local Chinese medicine shops sell shark fin products, it seems likely. and of course the assholes at http://seagateproducts.com/ go so far as to market Shark Cartilage For Pets! fuck them in the face. seriously.

walnut creek graffiti vandals interview

2009-12-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

so back in the day, when graffiti was a big 'problem' in walnut creek, and it was getting talked about by the city council and the news papers wrote stories about it, there was this cop clemente. he is still around, but all the graffiti kids have moved on. this cop was hilarious though. he was in charge of graffiti in walnut creek. so he would go busting every under age kid he could for smoking or drinking or any little thing he could find, and then offer to let them go, as long as they told him who X graffiti writer was. none of the kids ever snitched, so he never caught anyone.
but for a good while, people would go around walnut creek and write things like "wcpd officer clemente is a pedophile" or "clemente has AIDS." they printed up stickers with his pictures on them and the same message. it was pretty funny.
anyway, there is a zine put online that has an interview from those times with both some walnut creek graffiti writers and a cop, who i can only guess is officer clemente. worth the read.

history...

2009-12-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

remember when:
Walnut Creek police log: Tuesday, April 22nd 2007 VANDALISM — The words "No War" were spray painted on the doors of a vehicle with a U.S. government license plate...

or

Jan. 19th 1968 Walnut Creek - the windows of the police station were shattered when a bomb exploded outside of the building.

it happened....

way to not check the bicycle calendar guys...

2009-12-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

so as i mentioned a couple posts down, the walnut creek city councile will spend this tuesday talking about their city's bicycle plan.

well, that just so happen to be the same day and time that the Contra Costa Countywide Bicycle Advisory Committee is meeting. got this little note in my email today:

The Contra Costa Countywide Bicycle Advisory Committee is meeting on Tuesday, December 15, starting at 6 PM in the County Public Works Department building, 255 Glacier Drive, Martinez. This committee meets once a year.

The meeting will be to discuss the various applications that cities and the county have submitted for funding under the 2010/2011 Transportation Development Act, Article 3 (TDA).

This is a public meeting. Additional information may be obtained by calling Mike Carlson, staff to the committee, at (925) 313-2321.

way to not do a good job of publicizing the meeting or knowing what other folks are up to... what are we to do if we want to hear what walnut creek and contra costa want to do regarding cyclists? lack of communication?

at least there is nothing going on friday night, so everyone can attend critical mass!

Frend Hamptopn Jr. speaks at DVC

2009-12-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

a few weeks ago Fred Hampton, Jr., son of the Black Panther leader murdered by Chicago police, spoke at Diablo Valley College. He spoke about his father's murder, the Panther movement, and subsequent developments in the struggle against racism and imperialism. listen here:

at the same time, across the state universities have been and are being occupied.
As someone who studied there for a bit, I'm really interested to see what happens at SFSU. for the longest time the ISO has been the dominant leftist group on campus, but it looks like others are starting to take actions. the occupation of the business building had nothing to do with the ISO.

down with climate change, up with bikes

2009-12-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

Today tens of thousands in Copenhagen protest the world's governments's inaction on environmental issues such as climate change. Hundreds were pre-emptively mass arrested. 2600 solidarity vigils are taking place in 130 countries, including the protest at Chevron in San Ramon a few day ago.c
a bit over a month ago the city of walnut creek hired a consultant to help develop a climate action plan. they were given $677,700 from the department of energy to do this. the city will use $85,088 of that to write up a couple papers:

(1) Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy (EECS), a short-term, project based proposal detailing how the City plans to spend the remaining allocation of $592,612. The EECS will outline project costs, energy savings, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and the numbers of jobs created or retained.
(2) Climate Action Plan (CAP), a long-term companion document to the General Plan identifies strategies and actions for the Walnut Creek community to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.

climate change is going to have an effect on the bay area, so it is better than nothing.

That's how government works though. lots of bureaucracy, lots of planing, lots of reports and wasting money on things that a lot of times are obvious.
walnut creek also just finished their 90-page Bicycle Master Plan.
as the CC times reports

The City Council will have a study session on the plan at its meeting, 7 p.m. Tuesday, at 1666 N. Main Street in Walnut Creek.

The Bicycle Master Plan is intended to be a general strategy that establishes a vision for bicycling in Walnut Creek. The plan details existing conditions for local bicyclists, and points out that many roads are not bicycle friendly, bike parking is inadequate, and a there is lack of connections between existing local bike paths and lanes.

The plan offers many suggestions, including that traffic studies for major developments should address bicyclists' needs. The plan includes a map of proposed new bike trails and lanes. It calls for 37 miles of new bikeway facilities, more than double what Walnut Creek currently has.

Some of the major capital improvements include:

# Downtown and regional gap connector on California Boulevard from Mt. Diablo to Olympic Boulevard and Olympic to Newell Avenue.

# Pleasant Hill BART station connector from Bancroft Road to Las Juntas Way.

# Newell Avenue gap connector provides link to downtown, Iron Horse Trail, Kaiser Hospital and Las Lomas High School.

# Civic Drive bike lane from California Boulevard to Walden Road.

The cost for all the bike improvements hovers around $38 million. The plan points out that the city needs local, state and federal funding to make the wish list a reality — that's one of the major incentives for Walnut Creek to create a bike plan. To be eligible for state grants, a city must first have a plan, said Jeremy Lochirco, senior planner for the city, at a Park, Recreation and Open Space Commission meeting Dec. 7.

good for the city, but come on, 2 years and 90 pages to come up with this? really? me and some friends who ride bikes around town could have come up with something equally good in about a weeks time. instead of spending all that time reading the 90 page report (i bet they dont actually read it) the city government should just spend a few hours riding their bikes around walnut creek. they would get a much better picture of what needs improving.
it is neat to see where the bicycle accidents in walnut creek have happened though.

the truth is, instead of waiting for the government to give us bike lanes, we should follow new york's example, and just go paint our own.

on a final note, i hear there is going to be a critical mass bicycle ride this friday, the 18th, in walnut creek. meet up at 5:30 at walnut creek BART. they used to happen every month. then they stoped. we will see what happens this time.

perspective

2009-12-10T20:17:00.000-08:00

Concord's median income for a household was $55,597 in 2000. it's bound to be higher today.
Pleasant Hill's median income for a household was $80,737 in a 2007 estimate.
Walnut Creek's median income for a household was $88,522 in the same 2007 estimate.
Orinda's median income for a household was $187,637 in 2000.

think about those numbers for a second.

now, go to http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and see how they compare with the rest of the world.

now, explain to me how someone can justify having all that wealth while others don't get enough to eat.

graffiti vandals can be hard to catch

2009-12-10T14:11:00.000-08:00

and for your listening pleasures, some swedish hip hop.

no one is illegal.

2009-12-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

Possibly due to pressure from the INS bastards, Target in Walnut Creek decided to make sure all of it's overnight workers have proof that they are legally in the states. The store apparently only focused on the night-shift workers many of whom are spanish speakers. About 45 people lost their jobs that night.

"Forty-five people are without a job," said lawyer Rocio Avila of La Raza Centro Legal, a San Francisco legal group pressing Target for more information. "Many of the workers there were long-term workers. There was one gentleman who had been (at Target) for 19 years, and the average was five to six years. These weren't temporary workers, seasonal workers for the holiday season. These were loyal workers who had been there for a long time.

instead of being able to peacefully celebrate the holidays, these people had their lives turned completely upside down. it just goes to show, bosses and capitalists dont give a fuck about the workers and will ruin lives without a second thought.

governments draw these imaginary lines, and then tell us that if you live on one side of the line you are a part of one nation, and if you live on the other side of the (often changing) line, you are from another nation and have nothing in common. it makes no sense.
capital and money is able to move through borders without a problem, why arnt workers able to do the same?

abolish borders, abolish capitalism.

SDS presents capitalism at DVC

2009-12-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

so over a month ago the students for a democratic society over at diablo valley college held a discussion panel about the nature of capitalism. as Mickey Huff, instructor at DVC points out, the fact that capitalism should exist is usually taken as a given within our society. views that support capitalism are seen as objective, whereas those which critique capitalism are bias.
the panel was set up as 2 marixsts 2 capitalists and 2 anarchists.
the video of the debate is online. it is split up into 10 parts on youtube, all about 10 minutes long, which is a lot. part 1 is almost all introductions, so it isnt a big deal to skip.

part 2 is the marxist perspective. the main gist is that capitalism is failing and will fail and we need to have the working class take ownership of the means of production. he completely underestimates capitalisms ability to adapt. he also believes in central planning, which has over and over been shown to not work on any sort of large scale.

part 3 is the capitalist liberatarian ron paul supporter. as pointed out in the intro, views against capitalism are so rare within our society he totally makes a mistake of defining socialism as all property being state owned. you do not need to have a state to get rid of private property.
after he incorrectly assumes that socialism = government, he goes on to talk about how government doesnt do anything, it is the people who do things. the government just administers. it's true, the government doesnt build roads, workers do. but you can use the same exact argument against having a capitalist class! they owners dont produce anything, the workers do.
it's kind of funny watching him speak, because he just goes on about how terrible government is, which i agree with. he seems to not realize that it is possible to have little or no government and not have capitalism.
he also goes on to talk about how communalism doesnt work because there is no incentive. it's true on a large scale, but i do believe that in smaller scale societies, especially those where everyone knows everyone else, that would nto be true. there are other reasons people do things than just money such as love, social respect, friendship, etc.
now part 4 is where you should actually start watching. about 3:20 into part 4, cause thats when the anarchist starts speaking:

he starts off a tad slow, talking about the origins of anarchism, but once he starts going into how it is different from socialism he starts laying it all down.

they then go into Q and A, which is worth watching. that's when folks really start to debate one another. the types of questions asked also say a bit about DVC students.
if you got some time, go watch the videos. good job for putting this on DVC SDS.