…contrary to what Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones thinks. I don’t occupy Oakland, I live here. A better country starts with a better community. Blockading the ports takes money fro workers when they need it most. Many are recent hires who were unemployed. There are many things you could be doing to improve Oakland instead of hurting it with blockades.
Sure, I know volunteering isn’t sexy and won’t get your name in the paper, but we have lots of need here in Oakland, especially during the holidays. Here’s just one thing you can do:
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MAYOR’S TOY DRIVENEED YOUR SUPPORT
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| Recent census data is sobering about the level of poverty in our community. According to a recent media report, Oakland’s child poverty rate is now at 28 percent, up from 18 percent three years ago. That means that nearly 1 in 3 kids in Oakland are living in poverty. With the holiday season just around the corner, these kids need a spark of hope. And we need your help. We anticipate that the Mayor’s Toy Drive will need to serve 8,000 children this year-that’s 2,000 kids more than last year. To be sure that no child faces the holiday without some recognition, our goal is to raise an additional $25,000.
Please consider contributing a new, unwrapped toy or book to the toy drive, or better yet, make a donation to help give kids some holiday cheer.
Checks should be made out to: “Mayor’s Toy Drive” and delivered or mailed to the Mayor’s Office on the 3rd floor of City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland 94612, or donations can be made safely online atwww.oaklandnet.com.
Toys can be dropped off at the following locations during regular business hours:
- Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza
- 150 Frank Ogawa Plaza
- 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza
- Oakland Fire stations
- Oakland Police Administration Building, 455 7th Street
- Oakland Police Eastmont Substation, 2651 73rd Avenue
- Main Library, 125 14th Street
- César Chávez Library, 3301 East 12th Street
- Rockridge Library, 5366 College Avenue
- Elihu M. Harris State Building, 1515 Clay Street
- Port of Oakland, 530 Water Street
- Oakland Ice Center, 519 18th Street
- Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Boulevard
- Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Road
- EndGame store, 921 Washington Street in Old Oakland
- Grand Lake Café, 440 Grand Avenue
Thank you for supporting Oakland’s children this holiday season! Your donation is greatly appreciated.
For more information, call (510) 777-TOYS. |
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The Alameda County Food Bank needs your help, too.
Holiday Food & Fund Drive is Here! 
Now through Jan. 31
The Alameda County Community Food Bank serves 49,000 people each week—from Berkeley to Fremont, Oakland to Livermore. With demand for emergency food at all-time high, your support is needed to ensure our neighbors have the food they need this holiday season!
Help the Food Bank stock its shelves with high-demand non-perishable items by starting atraditional barrel drive.
Or start a Virtual Food Driveand see the Food Bank’s buying power in action — for every $1 you donate we distribute $5 worth of food!
Thank you for embracing the holiday spirit! Your support provides food—and hope—to 1 in 6 Alameda County residents.
Attention Volunteers … Together We Can! 
Now through December 31
Have you ever volunteered at the Food Bank?
If so, please join us for a special opportunity to amplify your generous time commitment. Through Together We Can: a Volunteer Fundraising Challengeall donations made by you – our corps of volunteers – will be matched dollar-for-dollar through December 31 to help families facing hunger.
We’re two-thirds the way toward our goal of $25,000!
Donate today – we’ll distribute $10 of food for every dollar you donate.
Thank you for your support!
10596
P.s. Even admin comments are being sent to moderation. I will try to post here when i figure out why this is.
We are trying to shut down the spam. Something is not working correctly and comments are getting backed up. The issue is ongoing. Please be patient, everyone working on this site volunteers and technical issues can take some time to resolve.
Hi Amanita,
thanks for being constructive in your criticism. Each of these suggestions are things that you and anyone else may participate in but they are neither mutually exclusive with or necessarily preferable to what Occupy Oakland has been/is doing port shutdown included.
we need to be clear the port owes restitution to this community it must become accountable to this community, we have a port in this city that drives global commerce but doesn’t pay for our schools that are being shutdown, we have a port that is poisoning west oakland where asthma rates and premature deaths from respiratory illnesses are astronomical, and childrens and highland hospital are both woefully understaffed and overburdened. the port authority has the power to force all trucking companies to be union contractors, instead they have allowed Goldman Sachs and SSA to continue obstructing drivers efforts unionize. the terrible conditions and fact that this action could hurt the truck drivers is because of the unaccountable institutions that are exploiting our community. if we want truck drivers on the ports of the west coast to get union representation, collective bargaining rights, benefits and job security, and all that that will mean for our communities than we have to show the Pacific Maritime Association, the Port Authority, and every Corporation that exploits the ports for profit that we can and will shut them down and it’s time they start meeting our terms, because our communities will no longer suffer at their expense.
toy drives and food banks are both highly problematic.
On a macro-level food banks don’t work, one need only look at the high levels of malnutrition/food insecurity in oakland to know they have not solved these problems, they replicate the enclosure of the commons and dependence on wages or welfare. this is why we need more gardens and subsistence farming in communities as well as direct action kitchens that provide thousands of meals a day like the occupy oakland kitchen did and is once again doing. this is going to be the only way to break the cycle of hunger and poverty gripping so many communities, we must take back the commons and our ability to produce and share the food of the land.
that said the port shutdown has the potential to be a boon for food banks because perishables get sent to food banks if they can’t get loaded on to ships and sent abroad, (link removed to get past moderators – if you google: -port shutdown windfall- the first link should be to the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, and an article about how a port shutdown was good for local food banks). This means if you want to support your local food bank – shutdown the port.
toy drives are not the most pressing issue in oakland. they reproduce desires predicated on a consumer society manipulated by images of status. the centrality of the toy as the object for orienting children’s attention is rooted in a middle class suburban myth of childhood that was constructed in the 1950s and has been highly destructive, producing high levels of entitlement, infantilization, obesity, and a deadening of the imagination, and alienation. the horror of the toy industry has become even more apparent with the rise of competitive x-mass shopping and the hype around black friday/x-mass toys. this is not to say that toys are bad in and of themselves, or, that we should ban toys, its to say that the commercialization of giving and the abstracted notion of community that arises out of this spectacle is self-defeating and lacks substance. no matter how many toys middle-upper class oaklanders/piedmontians give to “disadvantaged youths” it’s not going to change the structural problems that divide and brutalize this community. these acts of charitable giving do more to maintain the class system of domination and hierarchy than they do to disrupt them. the givers status in society as conscientious, and productive individual capable of sacrificing, even in these hard times, is secured, as is the lack and failings of the recipients (having received food stamps, and charity as a child i know how it feels for these class lines to be made explicit, while one is thankful for a coat it doesn’t come without strings attached).
i want every child everywhere to have a fulfilling and entertaining existence, but unfortunates its gonna take more than an annual toy drive from the mayors office. its gonna require access to food, water, clean air, open land, educational space that is fully supported by the community by whatever means necessary, enriching and diverse activities, stable employment and mutually enriching modes of exchange, good jobs where peoples individual and collective voices can be heard and can determine conditions of their labor. its going to require that we fundamentally reshape our priorities and values so that we don’t privilege corporations and commerce over our communities and their futures. the port and the bay should be a place that is full of life and under the control of the communities most connected to it, it should not be a through point for transnational capital to extract surplus value out of the workers and resources of the world while dumping all of the waste in our communities. So if you want a better future for the kids of oakland where they may actually have a say in what the world around them looks like than the best gift you can give them this year is to take back the city, create a community, defend the commons and shutdown the port.
wtf why cant i post anything?
why does every comment require moderation? why is spam still getting through?
okay so everything gets moderated now? wtf? there’s got to be a better spam filter – if that’s what this is intended to avoid.
Hi Amanita,
thanks for being constructive in your criticism. Each of these suggestions are things that you and anyone else may participate in but they are neither mutually exclusive with or necessarily preferable to what Occupy Oakland has been/is doing port shutdown included.
we need to be clear the port owes restitution to this community it must become accountable to this community, we have a port in this city that drives global commerce but doesn’t pay for our schools that are being shutdown, we have a port that is poisoning west oakland where asthma rates and premature deaths from respiratory illnesses are astronomical, and childrens and highland hospital are both woefully understaffed and overburdened. the port authority has the power to force all trucking companies to be union contractors, instead they have allowed Goldman Sachs and SSA to continue obstructing drivers efforts unionize. the terrible conditions and fact that this action could hurt the truck drivers is because of the unaccountable institutions that are exploiting our community. if we want truck drivers on the ports of the west coast to get union representation, collective bargaining rights, benefits and job security, and all that that will mean for our communities than we have to show the Pacific Maritime Association, the Port Authority, and every Corporation that exploits the ports for profit that we can and will shut them down and it’s time they start meeting our terms, because our communities will no longer suffer at their expense.
toy drives and food banks are both highly problematic.
On a macro-level food banks don’t work, one need only look at the high levels of malnutrition/food insecurity in oakland to know they have not solved these problems, they replicate the enclosure of the commons and dependence on wages or welfare. this is why we need more gardens and subsistence farming in communities as well as direct action kitchens that provide thousands of meals a day like the occupy oakland kitchen did and is once again doing. this is going to be the only way to break the cycle of hunger and poverty gripping so many communities, we must take back the commons and our ability to produce and share the food of the land.
that said the port shutdown has the potential to be a boon for food banks because perishables get sent to food banks if they can’t get loaded on to ships and sent abroad, (link removed to get past moderators – if you google: -port shutdown windfall- the first link should be to the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, and an article about how a port shutdown was good for local food banks). This means if you want to support your local food bank – shutdown the port.
toy drives are not the most pressing issue in oakland. they reproduce desires predicated on a consumer society manipulated by images of status. the centrality of the toy as the object for orienting children’s attention is rooted in a middle class suburban myth of childhood that was constructed in the 1950s and has been highly destructive, producing high levels of entitlement, infantilization, obesity, and a deadening of the imagination, and alienation. the horror of the toy industry has become even more apparent with the rise of competitive x-mass shopping and the hype around black friday/x-mass toys. this is not to say that toys are bad in and of themselves, or, that we should ban toys, its to say that the commercialization of giving and the abstracted notion of community that arises out of this spectacle is self-defeating and lacks substance. no matter how many toys middle-upper class oaklanders/piedmontians give to “disadvantaged youths” it’s not going to change the structural problems that divide and brutalize this community. these acts of charitable giving do more to maintain the class system of domination and hierarchy than they do to disrupt them. the givers status in society as conscientious, and productive individual capable of sacrificing, even in these hard times, is secured, as is the lack and failings of the recipients (having received food stamps, and charity as a child i know how it feels for these class lines to be made explicit, while one is thankful for a coat it doesn’t come without strings attached). i want every child everywhere to have a fulfilling and entertaining existence, but unfortunates its gonna take more than an annual toy drive from the mayors office. its gonna require access to food, water, clean air, open land, educational space that is fully supported by the community by whatever means necessary, enriching and diverse activities, stable employment and mutually enriching modes of exchange, good jobs where peoples individual and collective voices can be heard and can determine conditions of their labor. its going to require that we fundamentally reshape our priorities and values so that we don’t privilege corporations and commerce over our communities and their futures. the port and the bay should be a place that is full of life and under the control of the communities most connected to it, it should not be a through point for transnational capital to extract surplus value out of the workers and resources of the world while dumping all of the waste in our communities. So if you want a better future for the kids of oakland where they may actually have a say in what the world around them looks like than the best gift you can give them this year is to take back the city, create a community, defend the commons and shutdown the port.
Hi Amanita,
thanks for being constructive in your criticism. Each of these suggestions are things that you and anyone else may participate in but they are neither mutually exclusive with or necessarily preferable to what Occupy Oakland has been/is doing port shutdown included.
we need to be clear the port owes restitution to this community it must become accountable to this community, we have a port in this city that drives global commerce but doesn’t pay for our schools that are being shutdown, we have a port that is poisoning west oakland where asthma rates and premature deaths from respiratory illnesses are astronomical, and childrens and highland hospital are both woefully understaffed and overburdened. the port authority has the power to force all trucking companies to be union contractors, instead they have allowed Goldman Sachs and SSA to continue obstructing drivers efforts unionize. the terrible conditions and fact that this action could hurt the truck drivers is because of the unaccountable institutions that are exploiting our community. if we want truck drivers on the ports of the west coast to get union representation, collective bargaining rights, benefits and job security, and all that that will mean for our communities than we have to show the Pacific Maritime Association, the Port Authority, and every Corporation that exploits the ports for profit that we can and will shut them down and it’s time they start meeting our terms, because our communities will no longer suffer at their expense.
toy drives and food banks are both highly problematic.
On a macro-level food banks don’t work, one need only look at the high levels of malnutrition/food insecurity in oakland to know they have not solved these problems, they replicate the enclosure of the commons and dependence on wages or welfare. this is why we need more gardens and subsistence farming in communities as well as direct action kitchens that provide thousands of meals a day like the occupy oakland kitchen did and is once again doing. this is going to be the only way to break the cycle of hunger and poverty gripping so many communities, we must take back the commons and our ability to produce and share the food of the land.
that said the port shutdown has the potential to be a boon for food banks because perishables get sent to food banks if they can’t get loaded on to ships and sent abroad, http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Port-shutdown-produced-windfall-for-food-banks-1098575.php This means if you want to support your local food bank – shutdown the port.
toy drives are not the most pressing issue in oakland. they reproduce desires predicated on a consumer society manipulated by images of status. the centrality of the toy as the object for orienting children’s attention is rooted in a middle class suburban myth of childhood that was constructed in the 1950s and has been highly destructive, producing high levels of entitlement, infantilization, obesity, and a deadening of the imagination, and alienation. the horror of the toy industry has become even more apparent with the rise of competitive x-mass shopping and the hype around black friday/x-mass toys. this is not to say that toys are bad in and of themselves, or, that we should ban toys, its to say that the commercialization of giving and the abstracted notion of community that arises out of this spectacle is self-defeating and lacks substance. no matter how many toys middle-upper class oaklanders/piedmontians give to “disadvantaged youths” it’s not going to change the structural problems that divide and brutalize this community. these acts of charitable giving do more to maintain the class system of domination and hierarchy than they do to disrupt them. the givers status in society as conscientious, and productive individual capable of sacrificing, even in these hard times, is secured, as is the lack and failings of the recipients (having received food stamps, and charity as a child i know how it feels for these class lines to be made explicit, while one is thankful for a coat it doesn’t come without strings attached). i want every child everywhere to have a fulfilling and entertaining existence, but unfortunates its gonna take more than an annual toy drive from the mayors office. its gonna require access to food, water, clean air, open land, educational space that is fully supported by the community by whatever means necessary, enriching and diverse activities, stable employment and mutually enriching modes of exchange, good jobs where peoples individual and collective voices can be heard and can determine conditions of their labor. its going to require that we fundamentally reshape our priorities and values so that we don’t privilege corporations and commerce over our communities and their futures. the port and the bay should be a place that is full of life and under the control of the communities most connected to it, it should not be a through point for transnational capital to extract surplus value out of the workers and resources of the world while dumping all of the waste in our communities. So if you want a better future for the kids of oakland where they may actually have a say in what the world around them looks like than the best gift you can give them this year is to take back the city, create a community, defend the commons and shutdown the port.