October 22nd Coalition in the San Francisco Bay Area October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation

On November 10 the Palo Alto City Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning racial profiling. In doing so they acknowledged the damage caused when Police Chief Lynne Johnson, commenting on a recent crime spike, said that she ordered her officers to question African Americans they see in Palo Alto to find out who they are. At a rally against racial profiling in front of Palo Alto's City Hall on November 9, several hundred people called for the police chief's resignation and a boycott of Palo Alto businesses.

The brand new documentary "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" will be screened on the evening of Saturday, November 8th at the Resource Center for Nonviolence. Independent media activists from Twin Cities Indymedia and other groups have released a new film which chronicles the events at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The documentary shows exclusive footage of the criminalization of dissent in St. Paul, interviews organizers now charged as terrorists under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act, and uncovers who ordered the violence against demonstrators.

This Halloween, Friday, Oct. 31, hundreds of Bay Area youth gathered with community members and families to denounce the atrocities committed against immigrant communities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The action was a response to ICE attacks against immigrant communities in so-called "sanctuary cities" like San Francisco and to a presidential election season that has seen neither major candidate substantively address the issues facing immigrant families. BART police shut down at least three stations - Richmond, Fruitvale, and Coliseum - from which groups of protesters were gathering to commute to the protest in downtown San Francisco. At least three protesters were arrested in Richmond.

On Wednesday, Oct. 22, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security raided more than a dozen homes in San Francisco, South San Francisco, and Richmond. Victims of the attack included a San Francisco immigrant family, reportedly all US citizens. On Thursday, Oct. 23, community members gathered in front of the ICE office in San Francisco to protest the violent raids.

On October 18th, both exterior surveillance cameras at the McDonald's on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz were stolen. A post to Santa Cruz Indymedia says the action was a follow-up to a similar event in August and also states that, "McDonalds is a major sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics which are flooding the city of Vancouver with increased surveillance and police presence."

For almost two months, the teachers union in the Mexican state of Morelos rose up against the "Alliance for Quality Education", a neo-liberal plan akin to "No Child Left Behind" that would pave the way to the privatization of education, among other things. They were supported by the people of Morelos in their marches, encampments in public plazas, and blockades of interstate highways. On October 7, 8, and 9, the army and state and federal police were sent in to brutally smash the movement.

Several hundred protesters, mostly students, took to the streets of Tijuana, Mexico October 4 in remembrance of the 1968 massacre of leftist students in Tlatelolco Plaza. At that time hundreds, perhaps thousands of students were killed when troops opened fire on a demonstration protesting the Mexico City Olympics. In Tijuana, the demonstrators chanted "ni perdon, ni olvido" (no forgiveness, no forgetting).

The Director General of Police of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Vishwa Ranjan, faced intense questioning at a Conference on Indian Democracy: Justice and the Law held at the University of California, Berkeley. He admitted that arresting documentary filmmaker Ajay T.G. may have been a "mistake," and signed a postcard supporting the release of imprisoned civil rights leader Dr. Binayak Sen.

Grand juries are one of the good intentions paving the road to our current legal system. Unlike a trial jury, which decides whether a suspect is guilty, a grand jury merely decides whether there's probable cause to prosecute a suspect on felony charges. The goal was to create a filter to catch unjustified felony cases and stop them at an early stage, so that the suspect wouldn't be wrongfully prosecuted (and have to spend unnecessary time in jail and unnecessary money on lawyers). But it all went very wrong.

The indynewswire show airs weekly on Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM, Friday mornings 10-12 noon, broadcasting news and opinion from independent media worldwide, focused on indymedia sites but also drawing from other websites. The October 3rd episode features discussion of sexual violence, patriarchy, and militarism across Mexico. This show is dedicated to Sali (Marcella Grace Eiler), found dead September 24th in San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca, Mexico.

On October 1st, green mesh fencing was put up again in Santa Cruz's Parking Lot #4 next to the downtown Farmer's Market. The market began at 2:30pm and by 3:00pm, many people were disappointed by the fencing around the trees and the absence of the sounds of drumming in the air. However, people eventually removed the fencing around the trees and a drum circle formed, playing music into the night.

Marcella "Sali" Grace Eiler, a solidarity activist with the struggle in Oaxaca and Chiapas, was found dead on September 24th in a deserted cabin twenty minutes from the village of San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca, Mexico. She was brutally raped and murdered. On different occasions and to different people, Sali mentioned that recently she had suffered political persecution and surveillance in Oaxaca. Many people believe that her murder is part of the widespread repression against the social movement and directed particularly at international observers.

In Santa Cruz last week, at least three individuals were visited by FBI agents and compelled to give DNA samples. The agents possessed court orders for their DNA in investigation of a "violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act." Another individual was served with a subpoena for a federal grand jury hearing.

From September 26th - 28th, a 10th-anniversary national conference organized by Critical Resistance took place at Laney College in Oakland. Critical Resistance is a group that has been fighting to raise awareness and abolish the prison industrial complex.

From SC-IMC's open-publishing calendar: "The police and the city council claim that the escalating issues at Wednesday's Farmer's Market are the result of complaints about the drummers. Instead of dealing directly with the complaints, they have turned the market into a police state. Please attend the City Council meeting this Tuesday at 3pm to support the request to rescind the poorly-written, ambiguous 15-minute parking lot law."

On September 17th, Jack and Wes were arrested at a gathering in Parking Lot #4 alongside the Santa Cruz Farmer's Market. According to reports published on Santa Cruz Indymedia, police initially went after and arrested Jack, a Food Not Bombs volunteer. Some people followed the police while drumming and demanding that Jack be released. Police reacted by arresting Wes, a drummer with Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra.

On Sept. 18th, the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court against the NSA on behalf of five AT&T customers to stop the ongoing surveillance of their telephone and internet communications. The plaintiffs are also suing the President, Vice President and other officials who ordered or participated in the warrantless wiretapping.

On Tuesday, September 16, a reportback with video from the mobilizations against the political conventions will be held in San Francisco at 7:30pm. "As the dust settles around the storm of protests surrounding the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Bay Area activists who were on the streets of Denver and the Twin Cities are coming together to talk about their experiences."

Following last month's raid of the venerable Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, UCPD is still holding the computers and data storage devices seized from the computer lab, Slingshot newspaper and other tenants for analysis by a forensics team. The San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) says it is working with EFF on a legal response on behalf of the Long Haul.

On September 3rd, police preempted the weekly gathering in Parking Lot #4 alongside the Santa Cruz Farmer's Market by occupying the space under the trees usually used by the drum circle and Food Not Bombs. Invitations were posted to Santa Cruz Indymedia calling for people to participate on September 10th at around 3:00pm in solidarity with drummers, other musicians and friends playing music together.