Calendar

Join us for the “#SaveThePostOffice Saturday” day of action!

Saturday, August 22 is “#SaveThePostOffice Saturday!”

At 11 a.m, we will show up at
the Berkeley Main Post Office, 2000 Allston Way
to save the post office from Trump and declare that
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy must resign.

Join us and Move-On Saturday
to rally for our post offices and postal workers.

See you there!
Hali Hammer and our
Save the Post Office Committee.

Economist Jack Rasmus Speaking About “What Lies Ahead”

The response to COVID-19 by those in power has been a total disaster. They’ve focused on maximizing their profits while turning a virus into a health crisis that has killed over 140,000 people and sickened millions in the U.S. The overall economic impact from this pandemic has been devastating for tens of millions of working people. The continuous attempts to reopen the economy have meant workers have had to do more work for lower wages while risking our our health and our lives. And the reopening of public schools without necessary testing, tracing and safety measures would only further put the lives of students, education staff, teachers and families at risk.

Economist, Jack Rasmus, provides a clear analysis of the current situation and what the prospects are in the near future.

Dr. Jack Rasmus, Ph.D in Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College in California and is the author of numerous books and articles about the economy. Some of his writings can be found at: https://jackrasmus.com/, http://kyklosproductions.com/, and at ZNet
and Counterpunch.

Link to Facebook event

To Join the Zoom Event (opens at 3:50pm (PDT) on day of event):

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Meeting ID: 861 3463 3576
Passcode: 899716

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The People’s Park Committee invites you to a physically distanced free concert performance and live stream on Sunday, August 23, from noon to 3:30pm, featuring the music of Brontez & The Younger Lovers, Danny James & Pear, Cass McCombs, 2 Lazy Boys, Bella, the Funky Nixons and others.

The concert takes place at People’s Park and live streaming happens at the Berkeley People’s Park Facebook page.

Democratic Socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib are raising the expectations of millions of people across the United States and bringing them into a political awakening. The membership of DSA, the largest socialist organization in the United States, is rapidly growing by the thousands. Millions of everyday people are calling for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, and more.

But what is democratic socialism? What does it mean to be a member of DSA? And how do socialists look at the crises of police brutality, economic recession, and COVID-19?

Let’s talk about it.

This event will be held on Zoom! Join here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83930797718?pwd=NVZzOUdVQzc4SmhTWnhoZGZaYmt0dz09
Passcode  MEC

Join us to discuss what our political moment calls for, meet new people, and get plugged into our fight for democratic control of the things that we need for all of us to live a dignified life.

• To observe the meeting by video conference, please click on this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87198066230

at the noticed meeting time.

Selected agenda items:

• Update from Interim Police Chief
• Crowd Management After Action Report from Public Demonstrations
  OPD will provide a report on a crowd management that occurred during the recent public
  demonstrations and any updates to policy that will be made.
• Reimagining Public Safety Task Force Creation
• Pawlik Report from Federal Monitor
• Use of Force Ad Hoc Committee Public Engagement

You have a constitutional right to film the police as they perform their duties in public- but how?!

About this Event

This interactive training is meant as an introduction to your constitutional rights as they pertain to policing and strategies for filming and documenting the police, and is ideal for those looking to assert their rights on the streets! This is also meant to give you tools so you can better advocate for your rights and the rights of others. Sliding Scale donations start at $0.

The way that you choose to interact with the police is a very personal choice, carrying different risks based on your race, gender, class and more.

The information in this training is meant to empower you and offer you choices when confronted by the police. It is not meant to replace your lived experience or tell you what is right in every situation. Only you know that.

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO FILM. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

1. Introduction and Principles of Copwatching
2. Legal Rights and how they play into filming the police
3. Three Types of Stops, Violations, and Police Misconduct
4. Copwatching Techniques
5. How to Film
6. Notes on Getting Arrested, COVID-19 and Curfews
7. How Can You Fight Back

Brought to you by Berkeley Copwatch (founded 1990). For more information on our history as an abolitionist and community-centered, all-volunteer organization, please visit our website.
DONATE NOW!

Check here for connection info

Noted historian and criminologist Tony Platt will share his long research and insights into the carceral state known as the USA. Tony Platt has been involved since the 1960s in issues relating to criminal justice, race, inequality, and social justice in American history. He taught at the University of Chicago, Berkeley, and California state universities. He is currently a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Center for the Study of Law & Society in Berkeley’s Law School. A founding member of the editorial board of Social Justice, Platt blogs on history and memory at http://GoodToGo.typepad.com. In addition to books and scholarly journals, he has published in a wide variety of popular sites, including National Public Radio, Los Angeles Times, History News Network, Truthdig, Huntington Post, The Guardian, and San Francisco Chronicle.

   From teaching criminology with David Du Bois, editor of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper, and organizing California’s first major conference on prison activism in the 1970s, to more recently speaking out about the damaging social legacies of eugenics, Platt’s experience as a political activist and public intellectual informs his research and publications. In the 1970s, he was co-author of The Iron Fist and The Velvet Glove, a book that challenged prevailing conceptions of American policing. In his latest book, Beyond These Walls: Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States (St. Martin’s Press, 2019,   https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250085115), Platt draws upon a lifetime of research and commitment to social justice to articulate

THE OCCUPY OAKLAND POTLUCK BEFORE THE GA ON THE LAST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH HAS BEEN INOPERATIVE SINCE THE PANDEMIC STARTED AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE INOPERATIVE FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE.

(Due to technical problems with the calendar events are nearly impossible to remove, hence this notice)

Anyone wishing to get notices about the GA, which is currently being held online every other Sunday, can email

occupyoakland@lists.riseup.net

and request to be put on the list.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82465546845

Agenda items:

4. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Forensic Logic Impact Report and proposed Use Policy –
review and take possible action.
5. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Exigent Circumstances Use Reports – review and take
possible action.
6. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Live Stream Use Reports – review and take possible
action.
7. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance Amendments – Hofer/Patterson/Gage – review and take
possible action.

a. Prohibition On Predictive Policing And Remote Biometric Surveillance Technology
b. Annual Report metrics and due dates
c. Additional cleanup language

8. Sanctuary Contracting Ordinance – CPO – Annual Report – review and take possible action.

In America, this report was met on the political Left by sustained calls for the abolition of capitalist exploitation of people and the planet. The rationale was that capitalism’s imperative for endless economic growth required massive amounts of energy, the vast majority of which is still produced through fossil fuels. Some of the specific responses were reinvigorated support for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles by Indigenous peoples, surges in attendance at climate strikes, and great support for proposals like the Green New Deal by elected officials.

East Bay DSA will explore this theme in a Socialist Night School mini-series, co-organized with our Green New Deal Committee. These 3 events will explore what it means to be an ecosocialist, the Red Deal and Indigenous struggle, and how to fight for a Green New Deal after Bernie.

In this first Night School, we’ll get an introduction to ecosocialism, its history, and how we can organize as ecosocialists today from the local to the national and international levels. Our readings will cover a broad swath of socialist history, and we’ll get started with 2 speakers:

Becca Miller has been a member of Boston DSA for two years and is a core member of the Take Back the Grid energy democracy campaign. She recently started her second term on DSA’s nationwide ecosocialism working group steering committee, where she’s been working on a new member onboarding process. Becca works as a campaign manager to increase state funding for a program that helps SNAP recipients afford more fruits and vegetables from local farmers.

Benny Zank is a member of the East Bay DSA Steering Committee and has previously served as co-chair of the chapter’s Green New Deal committee. He has organized as an ecosocialist for several years building strong coalitions with other organizations in the Bay Area and works professionally on addressing environmental issues, like supporting the California Energy Code. Follow him @bread_by_benny.

Priority Readings:

DSA Ecosocialist Working Group Principles

Care and Repair: Left Politics in the Age of Climate Change

Recommended Readings:

Karl Marx on the materials of production

An Ecosocialist Manifesto

We are asking OUR HOUSED neighbors to contribute hygiene supplies, canned food, bottled water, rain gear, tarps, garbage bags, $$ et al to be redistributed on Sunday Sept. 13th to encampments in North Oakland dealing with the COVID 19. We will sanitize and package your donations add a hot packaged meal and fresh fruit to the care kits to be distributed to North Oakland Encampments and surrounding encampments.

In order to properly sanitize and maintain social distancing we are collective the materials on Sept. 4th, 5th & 6th and aiming to distribute 500 hot meals and care kits on Sept. 13th. Overflow resources will be distributed by sister orgs throughout Oakland.

We are asking OUR HOUSED neighbors to contribute hygiene supplies, canned food, bottled water, rain gear, tarps, garbage bags, $$ et al to be redistributed on Sunday Sept. 13th to encampments in North Oakland dealing with the COVID 19. We will sanitize and package your donations add a hot packaged meal and fresh fruit to the care kits to be distributed to North Oakland Encampments and surrounding encampments.

In order to properly sanitize and maintain social distancing we are collective the materials on Sept. 4th, 5th & 6th and aiming to distribute 500 hot meals and care kits on Sept. 13th. Overflow resources will be distributed by sister orgs throughout Oakland.

There are increasing concerns as to what will happen before, during, and after our November election so this is an opportunity to express our concerns. Our group discussion will be introduced by Gene Ruyle and other ICSS members with ample opportunity for discussion. Be prepared to voice, and defend, your views  For background, we will post a list of recommended sources in early September, for example in Democracy Now, the New York Times, and elsewhere ss they develop. ICSS member Sharon Rose will moderate.

LOG-IN INFO

The meeting will be opened up, as usual, at 10:15 for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc. We intend to start the presentation as close to 10:30 am as possible.

Check here for Zoom connection info before the meeting: https://icssmarx.org/icss-sched-latest.html

This Labor Day weekend, join the EBDSA Labor Committee for a screening of Harlan County, USA, and learn about our newly-launched Jobs Program!

This Oscar-winning film documents the struggles of Brookside Mineworkers while striking for safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages.

Following the screening, we will discuss the film and how the Jobs Program aims to build working-class power through strategic workplace organizing.

RSVP here for Zoom link