Calendar
Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to survivors and victims of violence and police terror in Oakland.
The Baha’i community of Oakland is organizing this gathering for the community to connect, share prayers, writings and poems from all spiritual traditions, reflect and recharge and build coalitions interested in healing.
Come share prayers, quotes, poems, and favorite passages from your scriptures with us.
Join us for the Bay Area premier of
Growing Resistance
and panel discussion
Growing Resistance, takes you to ground zero of extraction in California and shows first-hand how the drought, fracking, and climate change are impacting communities and exacerbating existing health issues, water scarcity, and poor air and water quality.
As the film shows, the Central Valley’s history of resistance hasn’t faded. Communities are rising up against the direct impacts they face and a hypocritical Governor who claims to be a “climate leader.”
Don’t miss the premier of Growing Resistance followed by a Q&A with the film’s director and four other panelist who are helping lead this movement. You’ll hear from experts in the field of law, community organizing, and public health.
RSVP: Click here to purchase your ticket! (Tickets are $5 plus a small processing fee)
All proceeds will go directly to The Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) who are working in the Central Valley to ensure that all people have the right to live, work, play and pray in a healthy environment, regardless of their race, place or income.
The film interviews residents, activists, nurses, and lawyers to tell the story of extraction happening on farmland, near homes, and next to schools.
Get your ticket now for the premier of Growing Resistance in Oakland on March 13.
This is a crucial year to break California’s dependence on fossil fuels. Momentum is on our side and the time is now to double down on our efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Together we’ve built a strong movement and celebrated some crucial victories, but we still have to keep pushing. In May, we’ll be taking bold action against fossil fuels around the world and here in California.
Join us on March 13 to hear more and watch the film that tells the story of fracking in California.
Organize for a moratorium on no fault evictions and rent increases in Oakland! We have a housing state of emergency here.
Residents from a number of community groups attended the City Council’s Rules and Legislation Committee, calling on the committee to support a temporary “moratorium on evictions and on rent increases until the City has developed and implemented strategies that protect and expand access for Oakland residents to affordable housing.”
After listening to community speakers, the committee agreed to put the “state of emergency” on the agenda for the April 5 City Council meeting.
Backers of the resolution include a coalition of organizations and residents that came together as a result of a resolution first passed by the John George Democratic Club last Saturday and unanimously endorsed by participants at last Sunday’s Post Salon at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle.
Qilombo Community Center of the McClymonds neighborhood is supporting the resolution, along with the Oakland Alliance, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club and the Block By Block Organizing Network.
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 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. 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 four years! 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
In Rojava, Kurds brought a new life to an archaic communal form. Equality for women became a crucial aspect of a social revolution. See “Witnessing Revolution in Rojava” by Paul Z. Simons in current issue of News & Letters (newsandletters.org).
It is a contrast to the crucible of death that Syria has become at the hands of old counter-revolutionary nationalisms and imperialisms, the most vile of which is the Islamic State. All state players are united in trying to erase the revolutionary humanist challenge to Assad awoken by Arab Spring.
Can Rojava’s revolution afford to stop at Bookchin’s democratic confederalism, adapted by Ocalan as the opposite to the vanguardism of Marxist-Leninism? What about the revolutiona’s internal contradictions, for example, Kurd’s participation in Putin’s blitzkrieg against human forces fighting Assad in Syria? What do we need to finally break the cycle of revolutions that transfrom into their opposite?
In California’s Central Valley, there is a crisis. Not only are communities running out of water, but over the last few years, they’ve seen an increase in dangerous forms of drilling for oil and gas. To make matters worse, the historic drought fueled by climate change is exacerbating existing health issues, water scarcity, and poor air and water quality. Luckily, the Central Valley’s history of resistance hasn’t faded. Communities are rising up against a hypocritical Governor who claims leadership on issues that are hurting communities in California today.
Join us for a screening of Growing Resistance: Drought, Oil & Climate Change in California, a 28-minute film that shares the stories of communities on the frontlines who are rising up against not only the immediate health impacts of the oil and gas industry, but against the growing climate impacts that are disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable in the state.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with:
- Shadia Fayne Wood, Director and Coordinator of Survival Media Agency
- Linda Capato Jr., US Fracking Campaign Coordinator, 350.org
- Madeline Stano, Staff Attorney, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment
- Juan Flores, Community Organizer, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment
With filmmakers Emmitt Thrower and Leroy Moore, and also La Mesha Irizarry, Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, and David Perry.
The documentary “Where Is Hope: The Art of Murder” chronicles disabled victims murdered by police as well as the activists/artists who have fought and are fighting against police brutality against people with disabilities. Emmitt H Thrower, a retired NY City cop turned artist/filmmaker, Leroy Moore, founder of Krip Hop Nation, La Mesha Irizarry, founder of the Idriss Steeley Foundation, and Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of Poor Magazine intend the film as a tool to facilitate forums with discussions around this topic.
Thrower, Moore, Irizarry and Gray-Garcia will be joined by disability rights journalist and history professor David Perry.
This event is free, open to the public and wheelchair-accessible. Please refrain from wearing scented products so that people with chemical sensitivities can join us. If you need any other disability accommodations in order to attend, including communication services, please contact Susan Schweik at sschweik@berkeley.edu.
Sponsored by: Disability Rights Education Defense Fund (DREDF); Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, UC Berkeley; Haas Institute Disability Studies Cluster, UC Berkeley; Nailah Suad Nasir, Birgeneau Chair, Haas Institute Educational Disparities Cluster, UC Berkeley
For more information on the film, check out the Facebook group
Where is Hope Documentary on Police Brutality Against People with Disabilities, at https://www.facebook.com/
Oakland has long been a center for highly polluting transportation activities. This has resulted in disproportionately high health impacts for the residents of West Oakland. Our goal is to systematically reduce the level of pollution caused by all these polluting activities, and we have definitely had some success. But we can’t afford to allow brand new pollution, in the form of coal dust, to further threaten our health.
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!Fascism: What It Is, and How to Fight It
With Gerald Smith
Secondly, Scientific Socialism has lost the allegiance of the most politically active members of the working class internationally.Faced with declining profit levels in the sixties and seventies, the ruling class has pursued a variety of strategies to enhance its share of national income, including exporting industrial production to less developed countries, which in turn undermines the bargaining power of the most organized sections of the working class.
In tandem with this, many of the most advanced capitalist states either overtly (Brasero program in the U.S., Gastarbeiters in Germany, etc.), or covertly (destabilization of third world countries and purposely lax enforcement of border controls, etc.) encouraged mass immigration of poorly paid and legally precarious workers from less developed regions, and bureaucratically distorted state-owned economies.
This in turn feeds resentment of increasingly beleaguered sections of the working-class, often providing a fertile recruiting ground for neo-fascists. Before a serious reactionary trend can be successfully eliminated, it is necessary to understand the phenomenon: its origins, its essence, its mutations.
Gerald Smith has a long history in the Black Liberation and Workers’ movements. He is currently involved with the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia, Liberated Lense, and the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality.
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
Meetings held Mondays at 7:00 PM
Excepting Monday March 7, when we will meet at 8:15 PM. Come one, come all!
VOLUNTEER NOW!!!
If you would like to go out on Copwatch shifts, work in our office, create art, become a Know Your Rights Trainer or help us out in other ways, WE NEED YOU! Send us an e-mail, subscribe to our email list, call our office or just come to our weekly meetings on Mondays, 2022 Blake Street, Berkeley or our weekly office hours on Wednesdays from 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
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.
Justice for Richard Perkins — Anti Police-Terror Project Successfully Demands Coroners Report for Perkins Family
On Friday, March 11th, at 9:00 am on the corner of 90th and Bancroft (Where Richard was murdered), APTP will host a press conference in partnership with families that have lost loved ones to police terror and celebrate this recent victory while also raising critical questions about collusion between the sheriff’s office and Alameda County police departments to hide evidence from families who have lost loved ones to state sponsored violence.
“We don’t understand why it takes community pressure to force the coroner’s office to release the reports,” said Cat Brooks of APTP. “These families are already suffering a great loss and grieving their loved one. They rightfully want to know what happened and that report is critical in putting the pieces together.”
Yet time and time again, the coroner’s office – which is essentially the sheriff’s office – delays getting this report to the families. Yuvette Henderson was murdered by the Emeryville Police Department in February of 2015. Eight months later, it took APTP in partnership with Henderson’s family, to force them to release the report. Similarly in the case of Alan Blueford who was murdered by OPD on May 6, 2012, the community had to demonstrate at the Sheriff’s office to get the report released to family.
“They know that these reports are critical pieces of evidence,” said Dan Siegel, head legal counsel for APTP. “The longer they delay giving it to the family, the longer it takes to assess the wrongdoing on the part of OPD.”
Friday’s press conference is also the launch of APTP’s campaign for more accountability and transparency with the Sheriff’s office in relation to reports following Officer Involved Shootings. APTP will make the following demands:
– Provide families that are victims of police violence the coroner’s report within 30 days
– Investigate collusion between the Sheriff’s department and the Oakland Police Department
– Recall Sheriff A. Hearn who has a long list of egregious behaviors
– Release the ENTIRE video series to the Perkins family and their legal counsel
– Bring in an outside investigator to investigate the murder of Richard Perkins.
Ada Henderson, Richards mother and Jamison Henderson, Yuvette’s brother will speak at the press conference.
BREAKING #Oakland city council forwarding exclusive agreement with UrbanCore for E12th parcel to full city council for 3/15 vote. #SaveE12th
— E12 Peoples Proposal (@PeoplesProposal) March 3, 2016
City Hall is failing too address Oakland’s housing crisis. While thousands of working class families of color see their rents rise or face eviction, our elected officials are selling off public lands to private developers.
After a hundred people testified last week in support of A People’s Proposal in a public hearing on the future of the E 12th parcel, City Council Members are attempting to undermine democracy and community by moving forward with an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement for the UrbanCore / EBALDC proposal for E 12th, a luxury tower that includes a token amount of segregated affordable housing.
Come out Tuesday March 15th at 5 pm to oppose the UrbanCore/EBALDC proposal, fight for A People’s Proposal, and let City Council know they must create real solutions to the housing crisis now.
We want to show up BIG and LOUD and are asking supporters to:
- Pack the room for open forum at 5 pm to show City Council members right away that we do not accept luxury housing on public land. Be prepared to speak!
- Sign up online to speak during the E 12th agenda item (item #3, sign up here) and urge City Council to vote NO on an ENA with UrbanCore/EBALDC and support A People’s Proposal
- Be prepared to support the incredible organizers who have been working hard on this campaign for over a year now.
E 12th is not just about one parcel, its about the entire housing crisis in Oakland. We are inspired by the brilliance and perseverance of so many Oakland residents and everyone’s incredible support. Join us as we continue to bring the call for development without displacement and accountability from our elected officials directly to City Hall.
#SaveE12th & #publicland4publicgood!
Join our keynote speaker, internationally acclaimed urban planner James Rojas of PLACE IT! for an interactive and inspiring evening re-envisioning our water infrastructure in response to climate change. We’ll use everyday objects and our creativity to design a different water future.
Invite friends, colleagues, and neighbors and keep growing our local climate movement!
Dinner served at 6 PM. RSVP: Email rebecca@ecologycenter.org by Thursday, March 10 to reserve a meal.
Join the Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against Stingrays (cell phone interceptors) being acquired by law enforcement agencies, against Urban Shield, and to advocate for privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, especially by Alameda County and the Oakland City Council. - We are also engaged in the fight against Predictive Policing and other “pre-crime” and “thought-crime” abominations, drones, improper use of police body cameras, and against other invasions of privacy by our benighted City, County, State and Federal Governments. OPWG originally came together to fight against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OPWG was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network, and its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC.
We were also the lead in having Alameda County pass the most comprehensive privacy and usage policy in the country for deployment of “Stingray” technology (cell phone interceptors).
Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s right not to be spied on by the government & if you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to:
oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe AT lists.riseup.net
For more information on the DAC check out
Reach out to aptpinfo@gmail.com if you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, etc.
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Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.
The Anti Police-Terror Project is a project of the ONYX ORGANIZING COMMITTEE that in coalition with other organizations like The Alan Blueford Center For Justice, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Community Ready Corps and Workers World is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.
We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.
JOIN US FOR A SHIFT: MASS COPWATCHING
· Friday March 11, 8 PM – 11 PM
· Thursday March 17, 5 PM – 7 PM
· Saturday March 26, 8 PM – 11 PM
Since October 2015, Berkeley Copwatch has been holding “mass copwatch” events that invite folks to join us for a shift. It’s been fun and very empowering to have a group of copwatchers patrolling our city and on the scene when police stop people.
This month we have three shifts scheduled. The Thursday shift will likely be a walking shift. Please join us; we will train you in the essentials of copwatching, how to document and how to stay safe!
Contact us at (510) 548-0425 or berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com to learn where we will be meeting.
We encourage all Oakland residents to attend the weekly No Coal in Oakland meeting.
Up until its February 16th meeting, the position of a majority of Oakland City Council members on permitting coal shipment from the city’s port may have been in doubt. Even now the proposal remains on the table. But at that meeting, council members took concrete steps toward banning coal exports once and for all. Thanks to the efforts of Mayor Libby Schaff, local clergy, State Senator Loni Hancock, and community activists, the Council has signaled its intention to enact an outright ban on coal exports. In fact, it passed a moratorium on the issuance of any permits for the terminal until the question has been resolved. Read details on the latest developmemts here.
(And for more background, see A Coaltastrophe Threatens Oakland on this website.)
Homes not Jails will be screening Shelter: a Squatumentary and hosting a panel of squatters 3/17 @ 8pm, @Longhaulinfo plz join us!
— homesnotjailsSF (@SFHNJ) March 7, 2016