Feature Archives

For more than a century, the Redstone Labor Temple has served as a hub for labor, social service, and non-profit community groups in San Francisco. The owner of the building wants to sell and is asking for $25 million. At the price the owner wants, all of the leases would rise dramatically and existing tenants would, in all likelihood, be displaced. On 6pm, Wednesday, February 27, organizers are holding a rally and community event to honor 104 years of economic and social justice at the Redstone and to work for a community solution.

UPDATE 3/3: Oakland Education Association members vote to ratify new contract with OUSD, return to work on 3/4.

Oakland teachers are the lowest paid teachers in Alameda County. Students are under-resourced with only one academic counselor per 600 students and 21 nurses for all 37,000 students. Oakland teachers are demanding smaller class sizes, more student support, a moratorium on charters, no more school closures, and a living wage. To fight for those goals, teachers went on strike city-wide on Thursday, February 21. There are morning and afternoon picket lines every weekday. Teachers and allies request folks to join them on the line and show solidarity at mid-day rallies.

On January 12, several thousand teachers, students, staff and supporters marched and rallied in Oakland to defend public education and call for increased funding. The Oakland Education Association contract has expired and teachers are discussing striking in February. In Los Angeles on January 14, tens of thousands of teachers went on strike. Oakland teachers are promising a wildcat strike on Friday, January 18.

UPDATE Jan 25: Hours after staffing shortages forced LaGuardia Airport to cancel all incoming flights, Trump agreed to end the shutdown for 3 weeks.

As a result of Trump's government shutdown 70,000 to 85,000 low-income households already face possible higher rents or eviction. By the end of January, the shutdown will affect another 30,000 to 40,000 low-income households. If the shutdown continues past February millions of public housing and Section 8 renters will be placed at risk of higher rents or eviction because HUD does not have any funding to cover those programs in March.

Headquartered in Oakland, Kaiser Permanente is the state’s largest health care provider. For five days, over 100 Kaiser clinics and hospitals were affected by strike activities as mental health care employees called for the provider to step up levels of staffing. Approximately 4,000 psychologists, therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and addiction medicine specialists went on strike at Kaiser facilities throughout California.

The "Green New Deal" is a proposed program for moving America quickly away from a climate catastrophe and into an ecologically sustainable future, simultaneously creating millions of new jobs and addressing economic inequality. On December 11, the Sunrise Movement of young people demonstrated at Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office. The day before, over 100 protesters were arrested at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Strikers on the picket lines at Marriott hotels in San Francisco, San José and Oakland are determined to fight poverty level wages and increased medical costs as they struggle to live in one of the most expensive areas in America. Bay Area laborers who have walked are joined by workers in Boston, Detroit, and the Hawaiian islands who are striking against the world’s most profitable hotel chain. On October 20, over 3,000 workers and supporters marched in San Francisco. Of 300 who protested in San José that day, a contingent stayed to drum and chant through the night, keeping awake the few hotel guests who crossed picket lines.