First – we need you to show up to support our unhoused nneighbors in West Oakland who are being displaced starting next Monday, April 10!

We got word last week that unfortunately the City of Oakland will be moving forward with evicting the last remaining residents of the Wood Street community in West Oakland. They claim to be clearing this lot to build “affordable” housing, but the reality is no one who is currently living there will be able to afford the proposed housing.

The expansive Wood Street settlement at one time stretched for more than 25 city blocks with an estimated 300 people living there; some residents have been there for nearly a decade! The Wood Street Commons, home to upwards of 60 people, is the last remaining segment of the settlement, and is now facing displacement with no permanent shelter options available.

When: Monday, April 10 – Friday, April 14 and Monday, April 17 – Friday, April 21; Starting at 8:30am and ending around 5-6pm every day
 

(Critical mass is needed first thing Monday morning and for press conference at 10am, Monday)

Meeting location: There will be a resource table close to the site (near 18th & Wood St) where you can drop off donations and find a point person who can give volunteers further direction

Instructions: Residents are in need of witnesses. Bring charged phones and battery pack if you have them. Be prepared to document. If recording, please focus the view on law enforcement and city workers. Wearing closed toed shoes, gloves and face mask recommended. Bring water, gatorade, ready-to-eat snacks, and heavy duty trash bags to donate at the resource table. Donations of cat carriers, dog leashes & collars are also welcome. Please try to park a few blocks away to give space for residents to move.

Secondly – Landlords are mobilizing against permanent teenant protections and your voice is needed on Tuesday, April 11!

Black renters are TWICE as likely to face eviction as white renters. The eviction moratorium will soon end in Oakland and we are calling on all tenants and allies to come out in person to Oakland City Hall to speak in support of strengthening permanent tenant protections.

Although this proposal is hardly radical and is more than fair to landlords, they are guaranteed to turn out in numbers to oppose it. If YOU are a tenant and the eviction moratorium has helped you, your voice is needed!

What: Show up to Oakland City Hall to Stop the Eviction Surge!
When: Tuesday, April 11
Where:

• Press Conference @ 1pm at 1425 Harrison Street, Oakland
• City Council Meeting @ 4pm at Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA 94612 (start gathering at 2pm)

Note: We’re asking for as many people as possible to show up to City Hall (*masks required*) and begin to take a seat in the chambers by 2pm�sadly, a fringe group of landlords and extremmists plan to pack the chambers to erase the voice of renters, so we must fill the chambers! Public comment will begin shortly after 4pm.

If there isn’t any way you can make it in person, you can also join at 4pm by video conference (Zoom), or by dialing (669) 900-6833, Meeting ID: 861 3539 1880 (if asked for a participant ID or code, press #).

Your community is counting on you to take action!

United in struggle and liberation,

Anti Police-Terror Project

OTU’s Mission

The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists dedicated to protecting tenant rights and interests. OTU does this by working directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacting legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and working with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares our core values and who believes that tenants themselves have the primary responsibility to work on their own behalf.

Monthly Meetings

The Oakland Tenants Union meets regularly at 7:00 pm on the second Monday evening of each month. Our monthly meetings are held in the Community Room of the Madison Park Apartments, 100 – 9th Street (at Oak Street, across from the Lake Merritt BART Station). To enter, gently knock on the window of the room to the right of the main entrance to the building. At the meetings, first we focus on general issues affecting renters city-wide and then second we offer advice to renters regarding their individual concerns.

If you have an issue, a question, or need advice about a tenant/landlord issue, please call us at (510) 704-5276. Leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will get back to you.

 Landlords are mobilizing against permanent teenant protections and your voice is needed on Tuesday, April 11!

Black renters are TWICE as likely to face eviction as white renters. The eviction moratorium will soon end in Oakland and we are calling on all tenants and allies to come out in person to Oakland City Hall to speak in support of strengthening permanent tenant protections.

Although this proposal is hardly radical and is more than fair to landlords, they are guaranteed to turn out in numbers to oppose it. If YOU are a tenant and the eviction moratorium has helped you, your voice is needed!

• Press Conference @ 1pm at 1425 Harrison Street, Oakland
• City Council Meeting @ 4pm at Oakland City Hall (start gathering at 2pm)

Note: We’re asking for as many people as possible to show up to City Hall (*masks required*) and begin to take a seat in the chambers by 2pm – sadly, a fringe group of landlords and extremists plan to pack the chambers to erase the voice of renters, so we must fill the chambers! Public comment will begin shortly after 4pm.

If there isn’t any way you can make it in person, you can also join at 4pm by video conference (Zoom), or by dialing (669) 900-6833, Meeting ID: 861 3539 1880 (if asked for a participant ID or code, press #).

Your community is counting on you to take action!

United in struggle and liberation,

Anti Police-Terror Project

TOMORROW, 4/11, 4:15 PM, Grand Lake Theatre: Free screening & discussion of Birthing Justice, a feature length documentary highlighting the issues fueling the maternal health crisis within the African American community.https://t.co/lij0h1E4qq

— Supervisor Keith Carson (@Keith_Carson) April 10, 2023

Please email contact@oaklandprivacy.org a few days before the meeting to get up-to-date location information or obtain Zoom meeting access info.

Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay and nationwide.

We fight against spy drones, facial recognition, tracking equipment, police body camera secrecy, anti-transparency laws and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones; we oppose “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” —  to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government, and attempts to hide what government officials, employees and agencies are doing.

We draft and push for privacy legislation for City Councils, at the County level, and in Sacramento. We advocate in op-eds and in the streets. We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and believe no one is illegal.

Check out some of what we worked on in 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Oakland Privacy originally came together in 2013 to fight against the Domain Awareness Center, Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OP was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network.  We helped fight and helped win the fight against Urban Shield.

Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance (we got the strongest surveillance regulation ordinance in the country passed in Oakland!), supporting and opposing state legislation as appropriate, battling mass surveillance in the form of facial recognition and other analytics, mass aerial surveillance, ubiquitous license plate readers, and pushing back against ICE.

On September 12th, 2019 we were presented with a Barlow Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for our work, and on March 16th, 2021 s James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists.

If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:

contact@oaklandprivacy.org

Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/

Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy

“WATCHING YOU WATCHING US”

Oakland Privacy works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment.  Oakland Privacy drove the passage of surveillance regulation and transparency ordinances in Oakland and Berkeley and is kicking off new processes in various municipalities around the Bay.  To help slow down the encroaching police and surveillance state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.

Mark your calendar and c’mon down to Richmond City!
David Solnit is hosting an art build for People’s Earth Day 4 Water Justice (4/23 at Lake Merritt)

What: 1-2 banners, signs
=> RSVP to action@sunflower-alliance.org required (it’s a gated space, we’ll need to contact folks to let them in).

Tomorrow & every Friday on the corner of 6th & Bryant.. Join the mommas even if it’s for 5 minutes or the full hour.. Or drive by & honk your horn in solidarity.. 1pm to 2pm.. Mothers on the march against police terrorism.. ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/wRDngzGEmt

— QUIP (@EQUIPTO) March 23, 2023

Volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members welcome!

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Last month we were honored to host partners, community members and impacted family members for a beautiful weekend dedicated to healing at The People’s House.

Special thanks to impacted families for trusting us to be part of their healing journeys, and to our healers who created such a warm, calm, and peaceful space.

Our aim is to offer healing services at The People’s House every 3rd weekend of each month, which is coming up in just over a week.

We invite volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members, and local Black, Indigenous and other people of color to join us at our upcoming healing portal at The People’s House! **This April we are also appreciating our local librarians with an hour of healing dedicated to them.**

A healing portal is an intentional space meant to interrupt state violence and make room for healing, community care, and wellness. We’ll be offering healing services including acupuncture, massage, reiki, auricular therapy, talk therapy, and more!

Note: Masks are required indoors at The People’s House. The space is wheelchair accessible. Children are welcome to receive services with parent or guardian present.

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.

For our March, April and May meetings we are reading Debt: The First 5000 Years  by David Graeber (Warwick, Amazon).

For  our March meeting we’ll be reading the first five chapters.
For  the  April  meeting  we  are  reading  chapters  6 through  9.
For our May meeting will are reading the remainder of the book.

Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.

So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong.

We are still fighting these battles today.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More, and Cannibal Capitalism.

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

Ann Garrison will discuss US foreign policy and struggles for self-determination in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the African Great Lakes Region. She spent the spring of 2022 in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Our sppeaker is Ann Garrison, a Contributing Editor to Black Agenda Report, and a contributor to The Grayzone, Counterpunch, the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, LA Progressive, and Pacifica Radio.  In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region.
Ann has invited an Eritrean scholar, Elias Amare, to join her.

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East Bay DSA has just *1* more general membership meeting before our annual chapter convention, and this is it! We’ll discuss how to run for Steering Committee, how to run for delegate to the national DSA Convention, and preview key topics that we will debate and discuss our chapter convention. This general membership meeting also falls at an important moment for teachers in Oakland Unified School District: the District has threatened to cut crucial school support staff while maintaining wasteful and bloated administration costs. OEA members are fighting back.

Join us on April 16th to learn more about how to support Oakland teachers, and to get ready for our upcoming local convention!

Since we won in City Council last year, we’ve been hard at work making sure the City of Oakland uses public land for public good. As a result of that hard work, we are currently in an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to build a people’s proposal on the E. 12th remainder parcel.

It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, and though the work isn’t over, there is a lot to celebrate. So we thought we’d invite you to come join us to do that. RSVP here for a reminder.

We will be gathering on Sunday, April 16th for a celebration! We’ll bring refreshments and good vibes; you bring a friend, neighbor, or family member and your best ideas for the E. 12th parcel. In addition to celebrating our victories, we’ll do some updating to the visioning work we did together in 2015.

RSVP here for a reminder about this event.

Please share this invitation with people you know in the neighborhood! Everyone is welcome.

NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:

occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If for some reason the amphitheater is being used otherwise and/or OGP itself is inaccessible, we will meet at Kaiser Park, right next to the statues, on 19th St. between San Pablo and Telegraph. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)

On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over six years, since October 2011! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally. Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.

At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.

General Assembly Standard Agenda

Welcome & Introductions
Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
Announcements
(Optional) Discussion Topic

Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.

Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area

San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 18 marks 3 years since San Leandro PD officer Jason Fletcher murdered Steven Taylor while he was having a mental health crisis. Since his death, his grandma Addie Kitchen has been leading the community efforts for justice.

The next court date against Fletcher is on May 12. Join the family and community of Steven Taylor tomorrow at the future site of the Steven Taylor Pavilion (San Leandro Marina) to celebrate life, justice, and community healing.

=====================================================================

Alameda County has a new District Attorney, Pamela Price. She ran on a reformist platform, and one of her first acts as DA was to reopen eight cases of police abuse in Alameda County. Unfortunately Erik Salgado’s case was not one of the cases that was reopened.

22-year-old Erik Salgado was murdered when plain-clothed California Highway Patrol officers in an unmarked vehicle shot 40 bullets into a car in East Oakland on June 6, 2020. Erik Salgado’s girlfriend, Brianna Colombo, was also in the car and injured. The lives of the officers were not endangered in any way when they recklessly opened fire in a residential area, on the same block as Elmhurst Middle School.

Please join the family of Erik Salgado by adding your name to the petition calling on DA Price to reopen the investigation into the murder of Erik Salgado by CHP!

Erik had his whole life ahead of him and had so much to learn and grow. There’s not a day that goes by that his loss hasn’t been felt in the life of his daughter Liliana, Erik’s parents, siblings, and the whole family. Price has said that her tenure is “the start of the reckoning Alameda County has asked for holding people accountable for their misconduct.” That reckoning cannot happen without Justice for Erik.

Tomorrow & every Friday on the corner of 6th & Bryant.. Join the mommas even if it’s for 5 minutes or the full hour.. Or drive by & honk your horn in solidarity.. 1pm to 2pm.. Mothers on the march against police terrorism.. ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/wRDngzGEmt

— QUIP (@EQUIPTO) March 23, 2023

 
The loss of socialism is not as permanent as it appears and until capitalism’s inherent contradictions are resolved, its resurgence is not as improbable as Dugin suggests.  Until then, we as Marxists should not dismiss those who have picked up the mantle of anti-imperialism since the demise of the former Soviet Union, no matter which political form it takes shape.  By denouncing Dugin as a “fascist” and treating his work as unworthy of serious consideration, one is only showing that he is right to say that Marxism has become irrelevant in today’s world and Western capitalism is here to stay. The challenge has been issued, it remains to be seen whether we are up to it.

Speaker will be Max Parry, an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com

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