Calendar
We, Strike Debt Bay Area, are planning our Debtor’s Assembly, scheduled for February 2nd. We will also talk more about debt, The StrikeDebt Movement, the Rolling Jubilee (currently positioned to retire $10,000,000 in medical debt) and how we can help build a nationwide and even worldwide movement to fight the one percent’s stranglehold on the rest of us through debt obligations.
If you’d like to help plan the fight against student debt, medical debt, consumer debt, mortgage debt, sovereign debt and more come join us.
There will also be a fundraiser for Strike Debt Bay Area on Monday, January 28th, at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco at 7:30 PM.
Also Visit our website and our Facebook page.
Join the Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition and allies on Tuesday 1/15 to tell City Council that we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30. Make sure to fill out speaker cards online beforehand or at City Hall (http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/CityClerk/s/SpeakerCard/SpeakerCard/OAK032373).
If you can’t attend in solidarity with the JAB Coalition, here’s a petition for you to sign, voicing your discontent with the cities plans:
http://www.change.org/petitions/oaklanders-against-william-bratton-and-racial-profiling
As some of you may have heard, OPD has a new strategy to reduce crime in Oakland. This plan is to ask City Council for an additional $250,000 to hire Bill Bratton as a consultant for one year. They have happily announced that they are bringing in the man responsible for NYC’s dramatic drop in crime and the man who helped the LAPD work through their own federal difficulties after the Ramparts case.
Here’s what they’re not telling you about Bratton’s multi-pronged approach to crime reduction:
1) Bratton takes credit for implementing NY’s broken window policy. On the surface, the policy sounds great – if you repair minor damage then you don’t send the message that an area is worthless and thus raise civic pride and prevent crime. But Oakland has already instituted a new policy along these lines that exposes a key flaw. It is not the city that pays for this damage but home owners and business owners. Businesses and homes that fail to remove graffiti promptly can be fined. So it is the homeowner who is punished for the police’s ineptitude at preventing vandalism in the first place. Moreover, one can no longer simply leave the graffiti up and appreciate the art because the city sees it as counter-economic to have graffiti anywhere. Ultimately, broken windows forces civilians to take on police roles they already pay others to do regardless of whether they personally believe in the laws or not.
2) Bratton believes in a zero tolerance policy for all crime. This means harsher punishment and more policing of minor infractions (including public protest, public disturbance, vagrancy, public intoxication, smoking marijuana, etc). This sort of strategy takes a way a cop’s (meager) rationality and forces them to further criminalize the public. For those police who already have no problem seeing Oakland residents as criminals, zero tolerance encourages them to punish as harshly as they can to deter crime.
3) In a recent interview, Bratton talked up the importance of stop and frisk and compared it to chemotherapy (http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120322/manhattan/former-nypd-chief-bill-bratton-compares-stop-and-frisks-chemotherapy). That’s right. Bratton thinks the people being stopped are like a cancer, and the rest of the city (the innocent ones) simply need to endure the poison (in this case the unlawful stops and searches) in order to make the city healthy again. There is no doubt that bringing a de jure Stop and Frisk policy (to replace the already existent de facto policy) will only encourage police racism and police violence. Moreover, with recent comments by Fruitvale’s new City Councilmember Noel Gallo in which he proclaimed his own desire for a “search and frisk” policy, there is no doubt that the Council will be moving in this direction.
4) Bratton has also been vocal in his disgust with cities that have tolerated Occupy camps. In regard to NYC, he reportedly almost ran for mayor because he was so angry at how tepidly Bloomberg had responded to the Zuccotti Park Camp. Bratton despises the tents for the same reason as the broken windows and encourages harsh response to populist movements to preserve the status quo.
So what’s really going on here? The last two consultants, Frazier (who they chose) and Warshaw (who was forced on them by Judge Henderson), both wrote scathing reports of OPD that Deanna Santana tried to cover up and edit. So now they found someone to say exactly what she wants to hear. They’re not out of control, they’re too controlled. They’re not too violent, they’re not violent enough. Also, with the new Federal Compliance Director coming in with a clear mandate to stop Stop and Frisk as it already exists off the books in Oakland and to work against racial profiling, the Police and City Officials want to make it harder to change their backwards, racist policies. Oakland has become the epicenter of anti-brutality campaigns, so those who want the brutality to continue are bringing in their big guns. They know that in the wake of Oakland’s crime and murder spike, that the people of Oakland will be much easier to bully into whatever program they recommend.
We say no.
No to zero tolerance!
No to “broken windows” policies!
No to Stop and Frisk!
No to racial profiling!
No to Bill Bratton!!
Come out and tell the Public Safety Committee that we want none of this and that we will be heard. Get a speaker card, bring a banner, get rowdy. Remind City Council whose city this is.
Join the JAB Coalition and allies on Tuesday 1/15 to tell City Council that we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30. Make sure to fill out speaker cards online beforehand or at City Hall.
As some of you may have heard, OPD has a new strategy to reduce crime in Oakland. This plan is to ask City Council for an additional $250,000 to hire Bill Bratton as a consultant for one year.
Here’s what they’re not telling you about Bratton’s multi-pronged approach to crime reduction…
Stop the Injunctions Coalition writeup.
City Council Public Safety Committee Meeting Agenda (The 2nd item listed, labelled as Item #4).
“From the folks who brought you the West Coast Port Shutdown.”
We will be brainstorming our next major action, an attempt to raise holy hell over the fact that the minimum wage in Oakland is still $8.00, while in San Francisco it is $10.55 and in San Jose it is $10.00. Plus the fact that the city is willing to insist on its own workers and those with contracts to the city being paid a living wage but not private sector workers. Please come join us and add your voice!
We will also be discussing Labor related efforts such as the Mi Pueblo workers’ struggle, ILWU and ILA happenings, Drone Coalition actions, what’s happening with the SF19, and whatever else might be happening.
We will be in the ‘Outside Garden’ at the Pacific Coast Brewery.
PLEASE CHECK BACK HERE THURSDAY BEFORE YOU COME AS THE MEETING LOCATION MAY CHANGE
MEETING NOTE: THE MEETING IS NOT — NOT — AT THE USUAL PLACE. IT’S AT DAN SIEGEL’S OFFICE.
We are planning our actions for the new year in our search for Justice 4 Alan Blueford. We are making a difference! We can use all the help we can get! Come join us!
We are launching a campaign to convince California Attorney General Kamala Harris to indict officer Miguel Masso for the murder of Alan Blueford.
We are protesting the imminent imposition of Stop & Frisk within the confines of Oakland. We will have made our presence known, along with other groups, at the Oakland City Council Public Safety Committee meeting this past Tuesday, where they discussed the hiring of William “Stop&Frisk” Bratton as a high-priced consultant to further terrorize the denizens of the city. We will be discussing what next steps we should take.
We are formulating how we should interact with Judge Thelton Henderson’s Compliance Director for the Oakland police.
We are discussing how we can aide other families who are victims of police violence.
We are putting together support from Labor Unions, students, people of faith and everyone else who is opposed to injustice with respect to policing our country.
We are making a difference! We can use all the help we can get! Come join us!
The benefit will feature “Fighting For Our Lives,” a short documentary about the history of resistance to medical neglect at CCWF & VSPW plus presentations by prison survivors, information about the protest and sign-making. We’re so grateful for the community support!
More info at the Occupy 4 Prisoners website.
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
We are planning our Debtor’s Assembly, scheduled for February 2nd. We will also talk more about debt, The StrikeDebt Movement, the Rolling Jubilee (currently positioned to retire $10,000,000 in medical debt) and how we can help build a nationwide and even worldwide movement to fight the one percent’s stranglehold on the rest of us through debt obligations.
If you’d like to help plan the fight against oppresive student debt, medical debt, consumer debt, mortgage debt and government indebtedness to the one percent, come join us.
Counterinsurgency, Then & Now
Legal Techniques of Repression: From the War on Crime & the War on Terror to the War on Dissent
This month we will be discussing the application of unconstitutional techniques of repression beginning with an analysis of RICO laws (Racketeers Influenced & Corrupt Organizations) and gang injunctions, as well as the Patriot Act & the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and how these legal tools and logics are being applied to social movements today.
On Tuesday, January 22nd, join the JAB Coalition and allies and come on back out to City Hall as the full City Council weighs what to do now that the Public Safety Committee has recommended moving forward on the Wasserman/Bratton consultancy proposal. In addition, the 22nd will be the 2 year anniversary of the murder of Raheim Brown by OUSD police officers Barhim Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa. Please join us to come together for a rally to honor the lives of all of Oakland’s sons and daughters murdered by the police. The City Council meeting will begin at 5:30 and the rally will start at 5:00.
Although Wasserman vehemently denied that he or the City Council were in any way trying to bring Stop and Frisk or gang injunctions or youth curfews or zero tolerance policing to Oakland, it is impossible to deny that the choice of a contract with Bill Bratton suggests the opposite. Bratton was on air the night before the Public Safety Committee meeting proudly proclaiming yet again his support of Stop and Frisk and his belief that any city that doesn’t have a Stop and Frisk policy is “doomed to failure.” Wasserman also kept repeating the importance of community involvement and bringing the community together (and even seemed to take credit for the hundreds who came out to protest the Bratton contract), but neither in his time consulting with the OPD nor when he and the city announced a month ago that the Bratton hiring was a done deal (it wasn’t) did he ever bring the community in. How are we as a community supposed to believe what Wasserman says when he’s been so clearly dishonest this far?
Much more at the Facebook event page
We brought our solutions to city hall. The council heard the public loud and clear: NO MORE MONEY FOR OPD; invest the money in our schools, in our shuttered libraries, in youth centers and job programs. Unsurprisingly they have decided to hand more money in a broken and visibly racist police force. So in light of the recent and expected arrogance on the part of city council, we converge in the streets to voice our rage and to make it perfectly clear we will not allow ourselves to be further criminalized.
Most of us know that speaking to city council is a futile exercise, but one of the greatest parts about city council meetings is that we hear each other. We had so many beautiful and brilliant voices last night, but we don’t need their forum to speak to each other. Come to the plaza to rally and discuss how we can stop the violence of poverty in Oakland without them.
When we talk about stopping the violence, we are talking about eliminating the desperation that life under capitalism causes, and we are talking about ending the violence of the police occupation we live under.
Please join us for a discussion/GA at 5 pm to strategize as to what our course of action and response to this decision should be for this evening and into the coming years. Let’s remind them that we are ungovernable. Bring your ideas and your noisemakers.
“From the folks who brought you the West Coast Port Shutdown.”
We will be brainstorming our next major action, a livable wage campaign, part of which will be an attempt to raise holy hell over the fact that the minimum wage in Oakland is still $8.00, while in San Francisco it is $10.55 and in San Jose it is $10.00. Plus the fact that the city is willing to insist on its own workers and those with contracts to the city being paid a living wage but not private sector workers. Please come join us and add your voice!
We will also be discussing Labor related efforts such as the Mi Pueblo workers’ struggle, ILWU and ILA happenings, Drone Coalition actions, what’s happening with the SF19, and more.
The Healthcare Movie
Potluck at 6pm
An entertaining 65 minute documentary explaining how Canada got their beloved healthcare system. The Healthcare Movie is full of lessons that we can use in our campaign for single payer healthcare.
A discussion will follow the film.
Dear Friends,Please join us as we gather to remember Aaron Swartz. Speakers will include Danny O’Brien, Lisa Rein, Peter Eckersley, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Cindy Cohn, Brewster Kahle, Tim O’Reilly, Elliot Peters, Alex Stamos, and Carl Malamud; there will be an opportunity for brief remembrances.
RSVP.
Non-union fast food workers at the Oakland Airport continue to seek a fair process to decide if they want to form a union. They have called for a boycott of their shops, and have participated in several rallies over the past few months to bring attention to injustices and retaliatory firings. Workers have filed grievances at all levels of government, and met directly with Port Commissioners to stress the urgency of the situation.
This past week, the Port of Oakland concluded their investigation into alleged violations of the Living Wage Ordinance by several of the non-union employers. The Port’s investigation found many violations of the law, confirming the stories of nearly all of the workers who filed complaints. One positive result is that many workers will have the opportunity to cash out paid time off they should have received.
Hakima Arhab was terminated by the owners of Subway in what the Port found to be retaliation for filing a complaint. The only remedy recommended by the Port , however, is back pay for time she should have worked. So far, the Port is unwilling to demand that she be reinstated! What kind of precedent does that set?
The Port is unwilling to stand with Hakima. Will you?
A Foreclosure Defense Group Orientation and Training
Foreclosures, evictions, gentrification, massive displacement… These are facets not of a “crisis” but of a targeted, ceaseless attack, an attack of one class and its institutions upon another with communities of color taking the brunt of the assault.
The Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group forwards an anti-capitalist perspective built on community organizing, self defense and our experience and successes.
This Friday, January 25th, we offer an orientation on the local political terrain, on the forces at play in this current attack and an introduction to our vision, our work and how we get down.
We especially encourage to attend those many folks that have put in work around our recent fights and those who are interested in becoming more involved in these immediate and tangible struggles.
Presenters include
Darwin Bond-Graham, noted sociologist and journalist who has published extensively on the political economy of Oakland. (You might have seen him in the streets around Occupy Oakland as well!)
Anthony Panarese, longtime local community organizer and notorious pain in the ass of the local establishment, now a staffer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.
Core organizers with the Foreclosure Defense Group
Hope to see you there!
For any questions you can email us at foreclosure@occupyoakland.org or call the OOFDG hotline 510.207.0182
Join our statewide mobilization to Chowchilla to protest the unconstitutional overcrowding in California’s women prisons and show our support for our loved ones inside who are struggling to survive as the conditions worsen. As a result of the conversion of Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW), one of the remaining women’s prisons has now reached 179% capacity. A woman recently transferred to CCWF informed us that they were given clothes and bedding that “you wouldn’t want even your dog sleeping on.” Another person confirmed, “Everything we rely on to survive, including medical and legal, is highly impacted by overcrowding. Overcrowding is the issue. It causes everything else to come crashing down like dominoes.”
We need your help to show the U.S. Supreme Court, the government, and prison officials that not only are we witnessing this discrimination and abuse but we will not be silent! Join us in demanding an end to overcrowding! Our loved one’s deserve humane living conditions and their freedom! Bring them home!
Caravans leaving from MacArthur BART in Oakland at 10:30AM and Chuco’s Justice Center in Inglewood at 8:30AM. We will gather at 2PM at SE corner of Ave. 24 and Fairmead Blvd off Highway 99 in Chowchilla.
NEED A RIDE? HAVE A RIDE TO OFFER? Contact chowchilla.rally@gmail.com or 415-255-7036 x 314
More information at Occupy For Prisoners Web Site.
MEETING NOTE: THE MEETING IS NOT — NOT — AT THE USUAL PLACE. IT’S AT THE OTHER SEIU HALL IN EAST OAKLAND!!!
We are planning our actions for the new year in our search for Justice 4 Alan Blueford. We are making a difference! We can use all the help we can get! Come join us!
We are launching a campaign to convince California Attorney General Kamala Harris to indict officer Miguel Masso for the murder of Alan Blueford.
We are protesting the imminent imposition of Stop & Frisk within the confines of Oakland. We made our presence known, along with other groups, at the Oakland City Council meeting this past Tuesday, where they voted to hire William “Stop&Frisk” Bratton as a high-priced consultant to further terrorize the denizens of the city. We will be discussing what next steps we should take.
We are formulating how we should interact with Judge Thelton Henderson’s Compliance Director for the Oakland police.
We are discussing how we can aide other families who are victims of police violence.
We are putting together support from Labor Unions, students, people of faith and everyone else who is opposed to injustice with respect to policing our country.
We are making a difference! We can use all the help we can get! Come join us!