Calendar
IMPORTANT Justice 4 Tristan meeting.
We need to figure out how care is going to work for Tristan while I am away (Ayr will be taking on A LOT) and we need to organize around the trial in a way that reflects our real politics. We know our power’s not in some courtroom, it’s in the streets! J4T needs help this Fall.
Please support if you can, stay tuned for upcoming news and events…
On July 31st after midnight the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to approve allocating $2 million to continue to develop the Domain Awareness Center that would integrate surveillance cameras from all over the Port of Oakland, the city, BART, AC Transit, traffic cameras, and other sensors into a local ‘fusion’ center that could effectively track private citizens movements throughout the region. Video and data feeds from all over Oakland are to be aggregated and monitored at the DAC, then analysed with license plate recognition software, thermal imaging and body movement recognition software, possibly facial recognition software, and more, all with absolutely no privacy or data-retention policies in place, or substantive debate at the committee or council level about the program.
http://oaklandwiki.org/Domain_Awareness_Center
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/oakland-moves-forward-with-citywide.html
The Oakland Privacy Working Group and others are continuing to organize against these encroachments upon our liberty and privacy.
The entrance to The Sudoroom is on 22nd Street a few doors west of Broadway, up some stairs. There is a buzzer if the door is not open.
BART Workers Call for United Labor Community Organizing Meetings
When BART workers went on strike July 1, the whole Bay Area was affected. BART unions are doing what they can to prevent another strike, but BART has hired a major union buster to put the workers on strike, then blame the workers in a highly visible battle to bring Wisconsin-style attacks to the Bay Area and drive down living standards for all Bay Area workers. The 60-day cooling off period expires Thursday, October 10 at midnight, yet BART management still refuses to negotiate, likely forcing the workers out again after that.
BART management is following suit with other bosses who try to pit the people who rely on public services against those providing the public services. BART cried poor and pressured workers to give up major concessions for the last eight years, though it was discovered BART had tens of millions in surpluses. BART’s records now show a $125 Million annual surplus, but they believe they can generate enough public hostility against the workers or keep them out on strike long enough that they are forced once again to take major concessions.
This struggle is not just about BART. We’ve seen the same attacks on the city workers of Oakland, Hayward, San Francisco, at the Oakland airport and Port of Oakland, and throughout the area. Workers who are more vulnerable – those without unions, or undocumented workers – face even greater struggles. The plan to close City College of San Francisco adds to attacks on current faculty and staff jobs by denying access to education and jobs for many future workers. BART workers represented by ATU 1555, SEIU 1021, and AFSCME 3993 invite all affected by and concerned with these struggles to help plan and organize to unite these fights against Wisconsin-style attacks and to defend decent jobs for the Bay Area.
Join us in an informal book review/class of Fred Goldstein’s book, “Capitalism at a Dead End”, published in 2012. The review will be led by Dave Welsh. Extra copies of the book will be available to use for the class and/or purchase, if desired. Light refreshments will be served. No prior reading required.
Workers World office – just buzz #411
wheelchair accessible
Draw the Line for the Next Generations- Join us on Friday, September 20th to draw the line against dirty tar sands energy and for the health and power of the generations to come! Bring pictures of the young people you care about, and let your community know how the Keystone pipeline and tar sands refining our threatening kids (and grown ups) health in the Bay Area and beyond. Elders will be holding a “line” for the young ones, youth will be chalking lines of poetry, and people of all ages are welcome to come, learn more about the issues, get involved in the campaigns, and spread the word.
People will be staffing a table with information about California solitary confinement conditions in solidarity with the suspended prisoners’ hunger strike.
Come on down and hang out and help pass out literature.
Come out to the new space, OutofLine in Emeryville for a film showing on the Albany Bulb followed by a discussion on how to resist the eviction and save this wild and rebellious space.
FREE!
Recently, the Albany City Council has moved to evict the almost 20 year old squatter encampment at the Albany Bulb and develop the area into a regional park. Dogs will be leashed, the art will be destroyed, and the people that live there, made homeless. Come out to discuss and plan!
Original announcement with color flyer on IndyBay.
Find the event closest to you or of most interest to you in the Bay Area here:
Over 70 events are already planned in states coast-to-coast, and this is shaping up to be an epic — not to mention beautiful — day of action. There are a bunch of neat actions planned: from a solar-powered barn going up in the pipeline route in Nebraska, to a tug of war between the fossil fuel industry and the climate movement in Boston, to a swimming party in a park in Jacksonville that might be underwater in the not-too-distant future — and many more to come.
Join us for food, entertainment and fun while promoting community awareness.
Stand Together for a better today and a promising tomorrow.
The United Nations International Day of Peace is celebrated around the globe on September 21st. Be a part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Peace Day rally and festival, demand a pardon for Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and other hero and shero whistleblowers, end mass incarceration, solitary torture and other abuses of the prison industrial complex, demand an end to the drone wars and the right to know what is in our food. Thank you Code Pink and many other supporting local groups such as Stop Monsanto and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition on Saturday September 21, bike, walk, skate or BART to the Civic Center BART stop at the United Nations Plaza in the heart of San Francisco from noon to six. Celebrate and demand peace at home and abroad. Community, music and unity — Peace San Francisco style. Thank you for being a part of the movement!
Thousands are expected to rally for Peace this September 21st, the United Nations International Day of Peace. Peace Day San Francisco, sponsored by Code Pink Women for Peace occurs on Saturday this year at the United Nations Plaza (Civic Center) in San Francisco. From 12:00-4:00 various musicians and speakers address whistleblowers, drone warfare, mass incarceration, the industrial food complex and more. Musical acts include Pamela Parker, Thunderground Collective, Clara Bellino, Drew Southern and other local performers. Speakers include: Daniel Ellsberg on whistleblowers, Terry O’Neill and Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women, John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Pamm Larry of Label GMO Campaign, Stephanie Tang of World Can’t Wait and Toby Blome of Code Pink.
Berkeley Post Office Defense et al will be holding a rally/concert/teach-in on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office in solidarity with the struggle in the Bronx, NYC to save their own Post Office. The Bronx defenders will be holding their own protest rally that day.
Come learn about the latest news in the struggle to save the Berkeley Post Office and prevent the privatization of Post Offices across the country. Enjoy the music and use the public commons as it should be!
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the weeks tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: It doesn’t rain in Oakland in August or September.
If you would like to help us monetarily with our work. We don’t need much, but we do keep a phone hotline active and do flyers and posters. Any little bit helps.
Resisting Empire on Jeju Island
On a small island on the Southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, for the past 7 years, a small group of villagers have been waging one of the most disciplined, dedicated, creative non-violent movements in the world.
Survivors of one of the most horrific genocides of the postwar era, they are struggling to prevent the Island, a UN designated biosphere reserve, from becoming a deep water military base that will uproot the traditional matrifocal culture, destroy a global ecological treasure, and destabilize the entire pacific region.
This Naval base, functioning as the lynchpin of the US Pacific pivot, will host US aircraft carriers, Aegis missile destroyers, nuclear submarines, and 8-10,000 troops, and turn the Island into a hair trigger for global confrontation.
This presentation, by activists working in solidarity with Jeju Island, will screen excerpts from “The Ghosts of Jeju”, chronicling the genocidal US intervention in Jeju Island in 1948, and the subsequent history of influence and manipulation. There will also be recent eye witness testimonies from the ground, to give a synoptic, historical view of the crucial local, cultural, ecological and geopolitical issues at stake.
For a good background summary, see:
Why Oliver Stone Came to Juju, Korea
Also KPFA show and Flashpoint
Schedule of all events at Niebyl-Proctor.
Help plan and organize our next rally on September 28th. Learn the latest about the fight the save the Berkeley Post Office and against privatization in general.
Occupy Forum presents…
How Do We Build A Better Economic System?
with Marco Vangelisti
Occupy Forum is excited to bring back lecturer Marco Vangelisti, who gave a riveting talk at the “What is Money???” forum in August. As a follow-up, Marco will be presenting the rest of his curriculum.
The current economic crisis is a recurring phenomenon of capitalism – a structurally unstable economic system. We will examine the current economic crisis in its historical context, how we dealt with the last major crisis in the 1930s and how we are (counter productively) dealing with it now. We will also look at the essential features of capitalism that makes it unstable and destructive to communities and ecosystems. Then, the systemic features of a new economic system that would be compatible with long term health of ecosystems and communities will be presented. Finally, we will explore the path from the current system to one that democratizes and localizes economic activity and anchors wealth and capital formation in the community.
Marco Vangelisti is a former Fullbright scholar in mathematics and economics at UC Berkeley. He is now involved with Slow Money, an organization concerned with steering financial investments toward small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Find more information about Marco at www.ek4t.com
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
Original notice from Occupy Bay Area United web page.
Publisher of the Pentagon Papers on 1971, Ellsberg’s revelations played an important role in helping end that war.
Ellsberg was been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful US interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.
Daniel’s biography: http://www.ellsberg.net/bio
Starting at 8 AM
Rally at 11 AM — Vigil at 4 PM
Twitter Updates @stopsfevictions
Like thousands of other working class San Franciscans, Mr. and Ms. Lee worked for decades in the city. Now elderly and caring for their disabled adult daughter, they are facing eviction by a real estate investor who bought their eight-unit apartment building in the once blue-collar Polk Gulch neighborhood. The investor has admitted that from the start, his business plan was to evict all the tenants and sell off the apartments. He has almost succeeded. All the other families have moved out and the Lees have also desperately tried to move. But as seniors on a fixed income with a disabled family member they faced a costly and doubly discriminatory rental market. They have applied to dozens of apartments without success. Yet their investor landlord has rejected their requests for help finding alternative housing and has asked the sheriff to force the family into the streets.
The Lee family’s story might be like thousands of others who have been quietly moved without public awareness. But overcoming their initial fears, Mr. and Ms. Lee have decided to take a stand: they are staying in their apartment and publicly protesting their eviction by the sheriff. With the support of the Tenants Union and others, they hope their fight will result in increased protections for all tenants and help for evicted tenants like themselves who need housing in the City.
Last month, a judge approved the eviction of the Lees without a trial, disregarding evidence that the landlord-investor misrepresented in his plans to evict the tenants in order to finance for his project. The court’s has allowed the landlord to proceed to request the sheriff to forcibly remove the family despite a pending appeal of that ruling. The sheriff is now scheduled to evict the family on Wednesday, September 25.