What's News
Judge Rejects Execution Procedure
On December 16, Marin County Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal rejected the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's proposed new rules for the execution of prisoners.
The judge said that prison officials had violated state law by not justifying their decision to continue using a three-drug cocktail to kill condemned prisoners and offered no reasons for rejecting reasonable alternatives.
She also said that the department did not make documents related to the proposed new rules available to the public in a timely manner and had failed to evaluate the increased expense of the new procedures.
Executions have been on hold in California since 2006 after a federal judge ruled that the state's lethal injection execution process posed the risk of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The judge's decision comes at a time when a group of law enforcement officials, crime victim advocates and people exonerated from wrongful convictions are trying to qualify an inititaive for the 2012 ballot to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Use of Force Against Non-Violent Protestors at UC Campuses Criticized
Amidst cries for her resignation, Linda P.B. Katehi, the chancellor of UC Davis, apologized on November 21 to thousands of students and faculty rallying in the wake of massive outrage over campus police using pepper spray three days earlier on non-violent student supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A day after the pepper-spraying incident, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza defended her officers' tactics, saying that students had surrounded police who were trapped.
But video of the incident posted on You Tube contradicted the police chief's description. The university acknowledged as much in a statement saying, "Videos taken during Friday's arrests showed that the two officers used pepper spray on peacefully seated students."
Spicuzza and the two officers involved in the spraying have been placed on leave.
The violence at UC Davis followed controversy over law enforcement officers at UC Berkeley using batons to beat and jab non-violent demonstrators who had linked arms to prevent campus police and Alameda County sheriff's deputies from taking down tents around Sproul Hall, the campus' administration building.
Protestors had earlier set up tents in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement and to protest hikes in student fees.
UC police captain Margo Bennett tried to justify the police use of force by equating the students' linking of arms to violence, saying "The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence."
Students continued to occupy the plaza around Sproul Hall. But in an early morning raid on November 18, police cleared the area of about 40 protestors who were camping in the plaza.
For several months in 1964, Sproul Plaza was the epicenter of the Free Speech Movement, in which UC Berkeley students fought against university policies restricting political speech and activities on the campus.
Occupy Oakland Protestors Call General Strike
A week after law enforcement officers forced Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to leave their encampment in Oakland and used tear gas on protestors, supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have once again filled Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland and are calling for a general strike throughout the city on November 2.
During the day-long strike, protestors intend to march from downtown Oakland to the Port of Oakland, the fifth-busiest in the nation, and shut it down. They also plan to demonstrate at banks and corporations that refuse to close for the day.
Several unions have expressed support for the Occupy Oakland strike but have not formally called for work stoppages.
Former Marine Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a skull fracture when he was hit in the head by a police projectile during the early morning hours of October 25, 2011 when law enforcement officers cleared protestors from Frank Ogawa Plaza.
In July 1934, after police shot and killed a striking longshoreman and a volunteer cook in a union soup kitchen, longshoremen and their union supporters called for a general strike in San Francisco to support striking longshoremen.
On the morning of July 14, San Francisco was quiet. No street cars clanged down Market Street. No jitneys lined up to drive people to work. Restaurants were closed. No gas was delivered into the city.
The 1934 General Strike shut down San Francisco for four days; virtually every union heeded the call.
Though the General Strike could be sustained only for four days, the longshoremen stayed out for eighty days. They won signed contracts guaranteeing a 30-hour work week, a 6-hour work day, and a union hiring hall.
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