Author Archives: laborsolidaritycommittee

“You Can’t Shoot or Arrest a Wildfire.” So said truly one of many speakers during a seven hour meeting in Oakland on the 26th of February, 2019, at which Urban Shield had a heart attack. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors kept their word from a year ago and voted to end Urban Shield “as it is currently constituted,” approving recommendations from the Ad Hoc Committee it created that would give Urban Shield a new heart, a new name, and a new purpose. Thank the Board of Supervisors for their … Continued

After 5 years, Urban Shield may end on February 26 …. with your help. Since 2013, the Bay Area has been trying to transform Urban Shield from a highly militarized SWAT competition and weapons expo into a community-focused safety and resilence exercise And now we are almost there. The second Alameda County task force has completed its work and issued a long and thorough list of recommendations that include ending the weapons expo that features spying and crowd control gadgets, ending the violent SWAT competition to focus on training other first responders, and.directing $5 million in new funding to health … Continued

https://occupyoakland.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ad-Hoc-Committee-Recs-1.pdf The Urban Shield/UASI Alameda County Task Force charged by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors with creating recommendations to “end Urban Shield as it is currently constituted.” has finished its work. The full set of recommendations can be found at the link above. Here are a few of the recommendations: Eliminate the vendor show from the UASI-funded exercise. Eliminate the competition aspect of UASI-funded exercises while retaining standards-based evaluation of participants. All law enforcement scenarios shall include in the assessment criteria the participants’ capacity for de-escalation of risk of … Continued

Six years of protest, public comment and politicking have finally created a light at the end of the Stop Urban Shield tunnel. On January 14th, 2019, after five months of hearings, leg work and votes, the Alameda County Urban Shield Task Force finished its assigned task. The Task Force was voted into being by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors back in March of 2018 when the Board voted to “end Urban Shield as it is currently constituted.” It began work in September, 2018 and at its last meeting approved … Continued

by Tracy Rosenberg and JP Massar Closing the circle begun many years ago, the City of Oakland ended the Domain Awareness Center saga, quietly and on the consent calendar of the Oakland City Council, by passing the strongest community control of surveillance ordinance in the nation on May 1st, 2018. Beaten on the calendar for a surveillance regulation and transparency ordinance by Santa Clara County in June of 2016, and then Berkeley and Davis in April of 2018, Oakland was nonetheless ground zero of the battle against the Surveillance State … Continued

Join the 2018 revival campaign, fifty years in coming after Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts were cut down back in 1968.  Come one, come all to an organizational meeting to gear for forty days of action. “There will be mass actions including planned mass civil disobedience in the Bay in this New Poor People’s Campaign that is starting up 40 days of action from Mother’s Day this year. “ Join the Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for Moral Revival, for our East Bay Mass Meeting! All are welcome. Together, … Continued

  In recent weeks Oakland Privacy (Motto: “I’ve been watching you watch me…”), nee Occupy Oakland Privacy Working Group, formed in the summer of 2013, has had, in conjunction with other privacy and civil liberties advocates, some notable successes and catastrophe prevention interventions. – In early February the City of Alameda halted its police department’s plan to buy Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) equipment from Vigilant, a company which had come under fire for providing its data to ICE. – In early March Oakland Privacy revealed that ICE agents participated … Continued

It’s the sixth anniversary of Move-In Day, January 28th, 2012, the ill-fated attempt to take over the Kaiser Center as a community center.  Thousands of people marched through Oakland all day and into the evening, ultimately resulting in the infamous ‘kettle’ and mass arrest outside the YMCA on Broadway in Uptown. This photo is almost certainly from the battle of Oak Street, where the marchers, retreating from the Kaiser Center, found themselves inexplicably blocked by OPD attempting to down Oak toward the Lake Merritt BART from 12th St. Tear gas … Continued

On the day Homeland Security announced planning for a major immigration raid in the Bay Area in response to sanctuary city laws… U.S. immigration officials have begun preparing for a major sweep in San Francisco and other Northern California cities in which federal officers would look to arrest more than 1,500 undocumented people while sending a message that immigration policy will be enforced in the sanctuary state, according to a source familiar with the operation… …and the Department of Justice confirmed that it was looking for ways to arrest Sanctuary … Continued