ActivismNewsPoliticsSF Bay Area

The Silly and Serious Leap Year Protest in Berkeley

The Bay's best newsletter for underground events & news

It’s a yeap year which can mean only one thing – a silly protest with an important message is coming to the streets of Berkeley on February 29th. Leap Day Action Night organized by The Slingshot Collective is not your traditional protest or even just a distraction keeping us from the biggest issues that are plaguing our world right now – it’s a strike and a rallying cry for a brighter future.

Leap Year Action Night – Image from the 2020 event

Life is too short and the world too beautiful to waste more time muddling through tedious jobs, polluted air and endless wars,” says the organizers of Leap Day Action Night.

Protesters will gather at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph in Berkeley and then hit the streets chanting their demands during their strike. It’s almost like a street party more than anything. There’s even a theme! This year, the teme is Medieval peasants storming the castle. There will be music, art installations and visits to oppressive locations and institutions. All along, the parade of protestors will be looking to spread joy and the message of freedom.

“Let’s build a world that’s awake and engaged — shift the focus from things and entertainment to firsthand experience,” says the Leap Day Action Night organizers.

What to Expect for Leap Year Action Night:

  • A full evening of roaming the streets of Berkeley while visiting, decorating, and non-violently disrupting oppressors.
  • Music! In the form of a marching band and/or mobile bike sound system.
  • Props! Expect others to bring their own signs, disguises, decorations, musical instruments, snacks, ladders, grappling hooks, rope, catapult.

Leap Year Action Night – Image from the 2020 event

Local Journalism for Working stiffs

We write for the poets, busboys, and bartenders. We cover workers, not ‘tech’, not the shiny ‘forbes 100 bullshit’. We write about the business on your corner and the beer in your hand. Join the Bay's best newsletter.

What are the demands?
The evening is a protest to support life, beauty, and joy, coupled with urgent calls to action against environmental destruction, inequality, and exploitation.

“For life, beauty and joy & against eco-destroying robber barons!
Keep fossil fuels in the ground
Free Palestine 
Everyone should have one house before anyone can have two
Free People’s Park 
Free the commons / protect and enhance public space
Stop making all that plastic crap.” 

It’s not just a leap into another year nor is it just a protest… Leap Year Action Night is a leap towards a brighter, more just future for all with a ton of fun mixed in!

Leap Year Action Night – Image from the 2020 event

About The Organizers, The Slingshot Collective

Slingshot is an independent publication. Since 1988, they have been publishing a free, independent radical paper in The East Bay and organizing calendars since 1995.

Find out more information here:
The Organizers: The Slingshot Collective
More information about Leap Year Action Night: About Leap Year Action Night
IG: @slingshotcollective
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Slingshotcollective
Twitter (X):  @slingshotnews

Previous post

A Photographic History of Dolores Park, Then and Now

Next post

25 Incredible Gig Poster Artists at Flatstock 91 in SF


Katy Atchison

Katy Atchison

Katy has lived in The Bay Area since the age of 3. While other kids were attending summer camp & soccer practice, she was raised selling wares at craft shows with her working artist parents and spent vacations in a small 1920s Montana log cabin. This has all given her a unique perspective on the ever-changing texture of San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area. Currently a blend of all that is The Bay Area - she's a web designer at a tech-company, artist and DIY teacher.