A Victory—”If You Can Keep It.” Please note: This is the lead article in a series in this edition of Berkeley Speaks on the topic of Flock contracting, mass surveillance, and the defense of Sanctuary. This article assesses the May…
How did the movement prevail over Flock? What happens next? In the lead article in this series, “A Victory—if You Can Keep It,” Berkeley Speaks describes the biggest strength of the Stop Flock campaign: the combined force of the privacy,…
The danger of collaborating with the feds—not just with ICE. The No Flock campaign expanded the idea of Sanctuary beyond just non-collaboration with ICE. Last fall, on Council Member Lunaparra’s motion and at the urging of the Berkeley Immigration Collaborative…
What “mass surveillance” actually is, and how it is used against community members. Supporters of surveillance commonly make these arguments: It is true that surveillance is all around us, using our own personal technology against us to steal our private…
This Thursday May 7, 2026 at Berkeley City Council See below for details and background See here for press release for 4pm Press Conference and Rally! See also Berkeley Speaks pages on Resources for De-Flocking; Berkeley Leaders Who Do Not…
On March 24, 2026, Mayor Adena Ishii and Council Members Lunaparra and Tregub announced they would not support City of Berkeley contracts with Flock Safety. In a Berkeley Speaks exclusive, we present statements from Mayor Ishii, several council members and…
Comparison and comment On November 5, 2025, Berkeleyside.com published a revealing article by Alex Gecan titled “Civilian oversight of Berkeley police is hitting a wall.” Berkeley Speaks appreciates the Berkeleyside investigation. In our article below, we compare selected passages from…
by Tracy Rosenberg The 2025 California state legislative session wrapped up on October 13, 2025. As Berkeley Speaks readers know, we are in a time of a severe backlash to the justice concerns raised so effectively in the earlier years…
By Micky Duxbury In 2021, Maurice Monk lay motionless for three days in his Alameda County jail cell. Body camera videos showed sheriff’s deputies and nurses from Wellpath, the for-profit jail healthcare company, throwing his meals and medications through a…
May 2025 marks five years since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, spurring the national examination of race and policing, and a movement to reimagine public safety. As we’ve reported in this space in previous issues (see “Berkeley…