It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network.
Another trucker, of Russian descent, said he understood revolution was sometimes necessary, pointing to the 1917 revolutions in Russia that overthrew autocratic Tsarist rule and the French revolution in 1789 that overthrew the ruling absolute monarchy.
This type of community picket action for political purposes has a long and venerable place in ILWU history. Back in 1939 longshoremen honored a picket line set up at the Port of San Francisco by the local Chinese community to stop a load of steel being sent to then-fascist Japan for its war effort, at that time focused on mainland China, but soon crossing the Pacific. Again it was used in 1977 against a South African ship in protest of that country’s apartheid policies, in 1997 against a ship loaded by scab labor in support of the dockers in Liverpool, England, in 2003 to stop a ship being loaded with war materiel bound for the just-declared war on Iraq, and most recently just a couple of years ago against an Israeli ship in protest of the Israeli military attack on the Turkish ship bringing medical and construction supplies to Gaza.
Valdez will be the stalwart of the OccupyCCSF for the next few weeks because, as he explained, finals are upon the students and the occupiers had to pack up and go study. Valdez said that he could afford to skip out on the rest of his classes and was committed to continuing the encampment “until the cops come.” He’s running a 50 foot extension cord from his tent to an outlet of Smith Hall, and so far, the campus police “have not provided resistance.” Valdez expects more students to return in January. So far, all the feedback he’s gotten during this occupation has been positive.
Forty-five protesters were arrested for illegal lodging in the pre-dawn raid. Their belongings were confiscated. No injuries were reported.
“The police came out of nowhere,” said a citizen journalist who documented the raid live on Ustream. “I was standing here, literally just a few feet from here when they [SFPD] came running from around the corner, up the side in a mass attack.”
In 1921, the California Legislature passed the Public Defender Act after Clara Foltz, California’s first female lawyer, spent years advocating for the creation of Public Defenders’ offices to provide legal assistance to poor people in criminal law cases. Later in 1921, responding to the Public Defender Act, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance creating the Office of the Public Defender.
Thirty-four states impose the death penalty, including California and there are 41 Federal capital crimes for which the death penalty can be applied. Each state has its own list of capital crimes. For example, in 1977 California reinstated the death penalty for first degree murder under special circumstances, including murder for financial gain, murder by a person previously convicted of murder, murder of multiple victims, murder with torture, murder of a peace officer, and murder of a witness to prevent testimony.
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