Calendar
RSVP to policy@ellabakercenter.org for the zoom link
Join us for a virtual community gathering where we will be responding to letters we receive from people inside prisons and jails in California and across the country. We will be sending in our newsletter, legal resources, parole preparation packets, reentry help, and answers to people’s questions. There will be an “Intro” room for new folks, a problem-solving room, and a “Special Issue” room too! You can also plug into our Calls to Action before/after Mail Night this month. Virtual Prison Mail Night happens on the second Thursday of each month.
The climate movement is coming together to demonstrate that it is well past time for Biden to declare a Climate Emergency. At the XRUS Open House you can learn about the September 17 March to End Fossil Fuels. Please register for the Open House here.
144 activists from around the country are already registered, and one of the march organizers will give a presentation and answer questions, so we are expecting a lively and useful discussion.
Here is a preview of what will be covered at the Open House.
We all want clean water to drink. Fresh air for our children to breathe. Good jobs for our families. A planet where our lands and oceans thrive.
But while we breathe toxic air and swelter in the hottest days ever recorded on the planet, President Biden protects fossil fuel profits instead of people. From the Willow Project to the Gulf, Biden has propped up dangerous oil and gas projects and the corporations that value their bottom line over our future. It has to stop.
Fossil fuels harm our health, our families, and our lives. It’s never been more clear than this summer, with wildfire smoke and heatwaves choking us – fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis.
We deserve a world free from fossil fuels. And together, as a movement, we are taking back our future.
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
Please Join the Green Party of Alameda County for an Open Forum discussion of the Presidential Run by Dr. Cornel West.
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88083342274
As Chris Hedges writes “The Republican and Democratic parties have no intention of allowing independents and third parties into their exclusive club. A series of arcane laws and rules governing elections make it extremely difficult for outsiders to get on the ballot, receive exposure, raise money, comply with regulations that are designed to advance the interests of Republicans and Democrats or participate in public debates. Third parties and independents are effectively disenfranchised, although 44 percent of the voting public identify as independent. This discrimination is euphemistically labeled ‘bipartisanship,’ but the correct term, as Theresa Amato writes, is ‘political apartheid.’”
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/cornel-west-and-the-campaign-to-end
This Green Sunday will be an open forum to discuss Cornel West’s efforts to win the Green Party endorsement and bring some sanity and morality to the presidential debates. Dr. Cornel West is an outspoken activist, social critic, former professor at Harvard and Princeton, and author of more than 20 books. From Dr. West’s website: “I am running for truth and justice and as a candidate for president of the United States in the Green Party. I want to reintroduce America to the best of itself � the dignity, courage, and creativity of precious everyday ppeople. Join our movement for priceless poor and working people of all colors here and abroad.”
This Green Sunday will differ from most in that we will begin with a brief introduction to Cornel West’s beliefs through his writings, followed by a round-robin discussion of the benefits and concerns surrounding his candidacy, including its potential impacts on the Green Party. Please come join the debate and share your thoughts about Dr. West, especially any impact he has had on your political thinking and activism. Let us know whether you think his candidacy has the potential to energize and unite the Left as we battle the corporate controlled duopoly on policies of climate change, racism, militarism, imperialism, corporatism, surveillance, wealth inequality, healthcare, student debt, corporate bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, immigration, prisons, gun violence, police violence, sanctions, censorship and political corruption.
“The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.” — Dr. Cornel West
Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows at 7:00 pm, after a 30-minute break. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88083342274
Meeting ID: 880 8334 2274
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Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k39IUnw59
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.
Please email contact@oaklandprivacy.org a few days before the meeting to get up-to-date location information or obtain Zoom meeting access info.
(THE JANUARY 17TH MEETING, 2024 WAS MOVED TO JANUARY 24TH)
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for privacy, surveillance regulation of both corporations and the state, and government transparency, 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 in 2018 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 street surveillance, and fighting to ensure local governments adhere to State privacy and transparency regulations.
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:
Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/
Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy, and/or on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@oaklandprivacy
Our general meetings are held virtually on the third Wednesday of each month at 7pm.
This week we will be talking about commemorating Black August, CHP and automated license plate readers in Oakland, family campaigns for justice and more. Come to our general meeting to learn more about our work and how to support it!
Where: Online � Register to join us
Accessibility: ASL and Live Closed Captioning available.
Join the Alameda County DA Accountability Table on Thursday, August 17th, from 5pm-7pm at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to hear what issue experts with lived experience have to say about mental health services as a crucial component of violence prevention and intervention.
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.
For our August and September meetings we are reading End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin.
For our August meeting we’ll be reading the first two sections, which is about half of the book.
For the September meeting we will finish the book.
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it’s very hard to exit.
In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.
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, Cannibal Capitalism, Debt, the First 5000 Years and Poverty, By America.
Non-violence: Should it be a Green Party value for the National, State, County, & City platforms? The Oakland Greens are on record saying that a large reason why we lose members is over the non-violence party platform idea. Is the idea of non-violence a turn-off to people that have been subject to institutional violence? You are invited to have this discussion with us; virtual doors open at 6 PM with the best pre-show music diversity, with the discussion beginning at 6:30 PM PDT on ZOOM
Please register by Friday, August 18, at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/non-violence-should-it-be-a-green-party-platform-position-tickets-540412216487?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Speaker: Mehmet Bayram.
Turkiye has come to the end of its rope, living the “good life” without producing but borrowing constantly and selling off its assets, pennies-to-the-dollar. Now the country is in a total collapse with the bills becoming due and nothing to show from all the years of endless wasting away of the national resources under capitalism.
Neocolonialism was created to be like this. Imperialism holds the client states in constant disequilibrium, debt, and violence, yet nurtures the hope of sitting at the table with the big boys one day. Unless there is a workers’ revolution and a planned economy to reverse the downward spin, the theater of constant hope stages plays involving elections, change, leaders, economy, crises, borrowing, paying, tight measures, ups-and-downs, yet, while everything changes, nothing changes. Exploitation and resource transfers continue to feed the imperialist centers.
Turkiye fostered the idea of a change, a post-Erdogan regime, while the elections approached last May. Elections, no surprise to revolutionaries, were yet another scheme to spread the lie that there was a democracy. Once the charade was over, establishing a full-scale Islamofascism under an extended regime of apartheid was again in full swing. Islamofascism is only the latest “fascism du jour” of the neocolonial, dependent, client, continuous fascism that is the default regime under imperialist exploitation. Its agents in Turkiye, the lumpen bourgeoisie, were born under imperialist dominance and know nothing else. All they need is to find a master that will treat them better, while they facilitate the resource transfer and labor exploitation. However, as the leash shortens, the docile lumpen bourgeoise flirts with whoever throws them a splinter of a bone, be it Russia, China, or the UAE. This only exacerbates the turbulent, violent, brutal system of theft under fascism and apartheid. Welcome to the modern Turkiye.
Mehmet Bayram, a journalist, has been visiting Turkiye for the last three months and will report on the daily life, politics, apartheid, and relations during the societal collapse of Turkiye.
Join Zoom Meeting
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
NOTE DIFFERENT TIME FOR AUGUST 30th EVENT!
There is a pathway to MediCal for All.
The average California family faces $7,545 in out of pocket health care costs every year.(1) The costs are skyrocketing, and California now spends more on health care than any other state in the country.(2)
Single payer health care has never been more needed! That’s why Courage California, CARA, and Health Care for All California are partnering to give you the latest updates on California’s progress toward MediCal for All.
Join us for a virtual town hall, during which we’ll talk about the state of healthcare in California and the pathway to single payer in the state.
RSVP and submit your questions HERE for the CA Single Payer Town Hall.
RSVP
We’ll talk about efforts to get every Californian covered, including the current bill SB770. We’ll hear from healthcare advocates from the Health4All campaign and the Healthy California Now coalition, both of which Courage California is an active member of.
ASL interpretation will be provided by Pro Bono ASL, and Spanish translation will also be available.
Health care is one of the state’s biggest concerns, and we want our members to be empowered with the knowledge they need to take action. We hope you’ll join us!
One tap mobile
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kebt
A healing portal is a co-created space for communal healing intended to interrupt the impacts of state violence. This month we especially invite our youth partners to join us
Mary Louise Patterson speaking on her book, Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond
Dr. MaryLouise Patterson is a retired general pediatrician from Weill-Cornell Medical College and New York Hospital in New York City. Born in Chicago to two labor and community activists who were longtime members of the Communist Party, Louise and William Patterson, she grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her medical degree from Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow, USSR and a Master’s of Public Health, from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the first African-American woman to graduate from medical school in the USSR.
Upon returning to the US she joined the Communist Party, recruited by a childhood friend who was also a red diaper baby.
Like all of you over the many decades she’s put her shoulder to the plow and participated in hundreds of activities for freedom, justice, peace and socialism.
In 2016 a book she co-authored with Evelyn Louise Crawford, entitled “Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond” in which we attempted to show Langston’s belief that a better world was a worker’s world had never died.
She’ll start with showing a 17 minute video that introduces an audience to her parents, her co-author’s parents and their 40+ year relationship with Langston Hughes. After which she’ll discuss her upbringing in the home of African American communists and their relationship to Paul Robeson, many African American artists, the Black Panthers and more.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81133350622?pwd=dUUyUWppbWt6djVTaElISUhocXpSUT09
Meeting ID: 811 3335 0622
Passcode: ICSS2717rs
One tap mobile
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+16699006833,,81133350622#,,,,*5892135124# US (San Jose)
Dial by your location
+1 669 444 9171 US
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdVC04xvn9