Advocating for Home Electrification
A volunteer-led nonprofit organization, 350 Silicon Valley Palo Alto, is fighting for climate justice. To achieve this goal, 350 Silicon Valley is running a variety of campaigns to promote home electrification and convince companies to divest in fossil fuels. Recently, 350 Silicon Valley Palo Alto spoke at a Palo Alto City Hall meeting in protest of the likely suspension of all Palo Alto’s electric reach codes. Additionally, it hosts events often in an attempt to push people to switch from gas heaters to electric heaters by showcasing the benefits of home electrification. Hilary Glann, co-leader of 350 Silicon Valley Palo Alto, hopes to show others how every person can make a difference when it comes to climate change, “If you take out your gas water heater and put in an electric one, it takes out as much carbon as if you instantly had 125 full grown trees,” Glann said.
Sit-in to Support Palestine
After 120 days, the Stanford Palestine sit-in officially ended on Feb. 17. During the protest, hundreds of Stanford students camped out overnight on the White Plaza, located in the heart of the university. The sit-in was run by a small group of Stanford students calling for the university to condemn the Israeli siege of Gaza. The protest gained a lot of support, even amassing over 3,000 followers on Instagram. Their objective with this protest was to pressure the university into publicly calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and to divest from Israeli apartheid. After multiple threats of a crackdown from Stanford, the leaders of the protest managed to negotiate two meetings with the university’s administration to showcase their ideas. Currently, the organization is gathering support for a petition that would bring divestment resolutions to student ballots. “We rally to demand our institutions to take a moral stance amidst genocide,” the group wrote on its Instagram post.
Protests for Israeli Democracy and Against Antisemitism
UnXeptable San Francisco Bay Area is a grassroots movement in support of reinstating values of democracy and social justice in Israel. This organization hopes to see the current Israeli government held accountable and a guarantee for democratic freedoms by maintaining the independent status of the Supreme Court of Justice. To spread this message, UnXeptable has been hosting protests and speeches around the Bay Area. In addition to this, UnXeptable is currently hosting a campaign called “Bring Them Home” in support of the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. UnXeptable have also created a network for Israeli families in the Bay Area to stay in guest houses if they are unable to return back to Israel. Tali Lehrer, a sophomore at Palo Alto High School who has attended gatherings in support of hostage families, comments about current issues surrounding Israel: “It’s really important to me that people understand that Jews are going through a very difficult time right now,” Lehrer said.
Editor’s Note: A previous printed version of this article included a misspelling of the source’s name and contained incorrect information concerning the nature of the protest shown in the photo.