Calendar
“From the folks who brought you the West Coast Port Shutdown.”
The OO Labor Solidarity Committee meets weekly, with every other meeting being held at Oscar Grant Plaza weather permitting. This week’s meeting will be held at Oscar Grant Plaza in the amphiteatre just outside of City Hall.
Topics may include discussion about the OOLSC’s next actions, the OO Occupy Everywhere Conference, support for organizing efforts by UNITE HERE at the Oakland Airport, support for the Alan Blueford coalition, support for the South African miners and other topics as they may arise.
Airport concession stand workers have been subject to workplace abuses such as not being paid the legally required ‘living wage’, no overtime when overtime is due, no vacation when vacation is due, firings for trying to organize a union, and plenty else.
UNITE HERE is the union which has organized the Castlewood Workers, sought and obtained aid for their cause from Occupy Oakland and its Labor Solidarity Committee, and recently won a huge court victory against the Castlewood Country Club for unfair labor practices.
THIS FRIDAY! Airport Action and Boycott Launch
Friday, August 31, 11am-1:30pm.
Oakland Airport Terminal 2.
Join UNITE HERE 2850 and airport workers for a Labor Day action at the Oakland Airport! Workers are launching a boycott against the following non-union airport businesses:
• See’s Candies • Auntie Anne’s Pretzels • Gordon Biersch • Jamba Juice • Subway • Otaez • Burger King • World Passage Duty Free • Silver Dragon • Tech Showcase
Stand up with the workers in demanding a fair process for deciding whether to join a union, free from intimidation.
While you’re there, you can meet Hakima Arhab and consider making a donation to support her and her family. She’s the cashier at the Oakland Airport Subway who was fired after she blew the whistle on her bosses by filing charges that Subway has violated various labor laws. You can make an online donation here or send a check to 1440 Broadway Ste 208, Oakland, CA 94612 (make checks out to UNITE HERE Local 2850, with “Hakima Arhab” in the memo line).
Also, check out our new airport campaign page and the 2850 Facebook page to learn more about the workers and their stories!
For questions or rides, contact Lian Alan at lalan@unitehere.org or 510-219-6491.
UNITE HERE Local 2850, 1440 Broadway, Suite 208, Oakland, CA 94612, Tel. 510-893-3181, Fax 510-893-5362
Check out the Poster for more info.
Check out a writeup of the event.
A Documentary Release Screening and Party.
Performances by SuperNatural, Jabari Shaw, Shareef Ali and the Radical Folksonomy.
Chevron profit was 26.9 billion dollars last year, yet they cannot stop leaks like the one that occurred on August 13th in Richmond.
Meet at Pt. Richmond Washington Park at 10:00 AM on September 3rd and march to Chevron!
OO’s Nomads are hosting a potluck BBQ at Snow Park at 2 PM on Labor Day, September 3rd. Bring a dish to share with your comrades & cronies.
OK, Labor Day is the establishment’s alternative to May 1st, International Workers’ Day, celebrated by progressives all over the world. May Day started as a commemoration of 7 anarchists unjustly sentenced to execution after being railroaded after an incident at a workers’ demonstration in Chicago in 1866. But even that attempted cooptation of workers’ own celebration of their solidarity had to be rung out of the ruling class after 13 workers had been shot down by US Marshals & about 12,000 army troops sent to crush the Pullman Strike in 1882.
But I guess Americans have to be grateful that their corporate masters give them any time off at all, the US government does not mandate it, and indeed, a quarter of American workers get no paid vacation time, not even the miserly number of often-paid national holidays. At least 24 industrialized nations mandate a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation, in addition to more generous allocations of national holidays. Brazil, France & Finland guarantee 6 weeks of paid vacation. But in this ‘No-Vacation Nation’ many workers are afraid to even take off the 2 weeks of vacation time their companies might offer them because so few legal protections are in place to prevent them from being laid off. Besides, with the ever-increasing pace of work many employees are afraid they wouldn’t be able to cope with the backlog of work awaiting them when they returned from holiday. And with the increasing prevalence of electronic gizmos tying Americans to their jobs 24/7 taking time off often just means working from somewhere other than the office. Americans have less vacation time than citizens of any other advanced economy, working an extra 350 hours a year more than Europeans (the equivalent of 9 full working weeks). Even in Japan, where they have a special word for working yourself to death (Karōshi), the government mandates 25 days of paid time off of work each year.
Anywho, it should be more fun than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Why not attend the Chevron march
at Point Richmond and make a day of it?
New schedule and additional location!
Bi-Monthly meetings to organize and publish web content for occupyoakland.org.
We meet the first Thursday of the month at The Holdout, 2313 San Pablo Ave Oakland,CA 94612 @ 6PM
And the third Sunday of the month at 19th Street / Rashida Muhammad Street (one block away from 19th Street/Telegraph avenue) @ 2PM
If interested on helping us out, please come and join us!
Web@occupyoakland.org
Support SEIU 1021 Port Workers. Tell The Port of Oakland and Goldman Sachs: Stop the Greed!
— Goldman Sachs owns a major stake in one of the terminals at the Port of Oakland, and rakes in huge profits while paying no taxes and ripping off the City of Oakland over bond indebtedness.
–Goldman Sachs got bailed out while libraries, schools and parks crumble.
— The Port of Oakland generates a $35,000,000 surplus each year.
— Yet the Port of Oakland wants to cut real wages by 15%. More money for Goldman Sachs, less money for the rest of us.
The Coalition to Stop Goldman Sachs says:
“It’s time for a series of escalating actions.”
FREE FOOD
The web committee (such as it is) is meeting on Thursday, September 6th at 6PM at the Victor Martinez Biblioteca Popular at 1449 Miller Avenue at E. 15th in Oakland. At the start of the meeting we will spend a few minutes helping committee delegates figure out how to post articles to our web site, which is an underutilized resource, so folks who are interested in posting might show up. Bring a laptop if you have one handy, but we have a few netbooks there for the kids, slow, Linux, but they work and should be adequate.
“From the folks who brought you the West Coast Port Shutdown.”
The OO Labor Solidarity Committee meets weekly, with every other meeting being held at Oscar Grant Plaza weather permitting. This week’s meeting will take place at the SEIU 1021 Hall at 155 Myrtle St in West Oakland.
BUT SEE THIS EVENT, WHICH IS TAKING PLACE BEFOREHAND. ALSO, THE OOLSC MEETING TIME HAS BEEN PUSHED BACK TO 6:30 PM TO ACCOMODATE THIS ACTION.
Depending on how things develop at the event, we will either meet at the SEIU Hall, or decide to go somewhere else.
Topics include coordination with labor groups (union and non-union) around the Bay Area and nationally. This meeting may include discussion about the OOLSC’s next actions, The SEIU event that will have just taken place, the UNITE HERE organizing effort at the Oakland Airport, developments in support of the South African Miners, the Chicago teachers, and possibly other topics.
Again, See this event, and please plan to attend, even if you come late. Or try to stay in touch with someone who is attending as to exactly when and where the OOLSC meeting will happen and/or what is going on.
There will be free food at the SEIU action!
In the wake of the Marikana mine workers massacre, leftist groups of all stripes are calling resistance inevitable.
Come see former Black Panther Gerald Smith and Berkeley PhD student Zach Levenson and recent visitor to South Africa discuss the country’s history and what’s happening now.
Join us for a one mile march around downtown San Francisco, visiting at least four Bank of America branches and perhaps artistically decorating the sidewalks out in front.
We meet biweekly. We have multiple events we are planning for, including a BBQ in East Oakland on Sept. 15th, speaking at the next City Council meeting on Sept. 18th, and a speakout against police violence at the Eastmont Mall late in September, on Sept. 29th at 5:00 PM. Come help us out!
Please visit the Justice 4 Alan Blueford website.
Presented by Haiti Action Committee
Sunday September 09, 2012
$5-$20 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds. – 4pm
A talk by author Jeb Sprague, introduced by Nia Imara of Haiti Action Committee.
Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians.
The Green Party invites you to hear two speakers about the ongoing story of police misconduct in the East Bay.
Our first speaker is Jeralynn Brown Blueford, the mother of Alan Blueford, who was killed by the OPD under very suspicious circumstances. The Blueford family has formed the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition to get answers about why this young man was shot and killed. Andrea Prichett from Berkeley CopWatch will also speak. Andrea has been training people for 20 years to monitor police, document abuse, and organize resistance to police misconduct.
Help plan events for October 10th. First meeting will take place at Oscar Grant Plaza in the amphitheatre, at 6:00 PM, on Monday, September 10th.
The new semester just recently began at UC Berkeley and there is a lot of students who want to know about Occupy around the Bay Area. The purpose of the Info Table is to inform students about Occupy Oakland, Occupy the Farm, and Occupy Cal; what actions they’ve done, what plans are in the mix for the future, and how they can get involved.
Come join us, help out!
We invite you to join us for an inspiring evening of solidarity with the Colombian labor movement as we launch and fundraise for PASO International (Proyecto de Acompañimiento y Solidaridad).
Colombia suffers from the highest level of economic inequality in Latin America, with 2/3 of all workers in the informal sector. Unions defending workers’ rights face surveillance, threats, kidnapping, torture, and death. Over 1,000 Colombian union activists have been assassinated since 2000 (15 this year) and Colombia accounts for 63% of all union assassinations worldwide. Recent implementation of free trade agreements has put Colombian workers on the frontlines of the global resistance against privatization and other neoliberal economic policies. In the face of this exploitation and repression, Colombia has one of the most vibrant labor movements in the Americas. Fired General Motors workers recently inspired the world by encamping 24/7 outside the U.S. Embassy for over a year and sewing their mouths shut in hunger strike, and port workers, oil workers, teachers, food service workers, health care workers, palm workers, and miners are all in key battles.
Working with and at the request of Colombian unions, PASO is launching an on-the-ground international presence in Colombia and rapid response solidarity network. But we need your help!
Join us on Wednesday, September 12th for an evening of:
•A report on the Colombian labor movement from PASO solidarity oorganizers in the Bay Area from Bogota.
•A live Skype conversation with GM hunger strikers.
•Video documentation of recent labor struggles.
•An opportunity to fund on-the-ground accompaniment of Colombian labor leaders.
•A raffle drawing for beautiful prints of Colombian worker rights art and other goodies.
•Yummy food and beverages, of course!
In New York, on September 13th, thousands will BLOW THE WHISTLE and organize determined resistance to Stop & Frisk, mass incarceration, solitary confinement, police brutality, and the criminal injustice system.
In Oakland, meet at Bancroft & 73rd Ave at 4:00 PM to march to the Oakland Police Substation at the Eastmont Mall.
Stop Masss Incarceration National Website.