Calendar
Come help us mobilize!
See this article for detailed information and background links on the sale.
The event will coincide with the earlier Helping Hearts 2 Heal event sponsored by the Alan Blueford Foundation Participants will proceed to ESAA for our From Ferguson, Florida, Georgia, Chicago to Oakland event. There they will be joined by other mothers and family members of slain youth, including the family Kendrick Johnson-Georgia, the family of Joseph Andrews-Tampa Florida, the family of Emmett Till-Chicago, the family of Marlon Brown-Deland Florida, the family of Jordan Davis-Jacksonville Florida, and families from California – Alan Blueford, Kenneth Harding, Ernest Duenez, James Rivera, Dinyl New, Mario Romero, and many others.
The program:
1. Introduction and Libation
2. Performance and presentation (Prosperity Movement)
3. ABPsi presentation
4. Report back from Ferguson (Ferguson youth)
5. Recognition of families from out of state
6. Families speak
Joining Us Elaine Brown, Only female chairman of BBP
Ferguson Youth from the front line
Also joining us Tef Poe of Ferguson
Hip Hop artist and activist from an area just outside of Ferguson, Missouri. Tef Poe has been organizing in Ferguson since the beginning of protests and is partly responsible for bringing the incidents to national attention via social media. Tef Poe has written for Time Magazine and was recently honored by The National Association of Black Journalists for his work in documenting the events in Ferguson.
This is a Love Not Blood Campaign sponsored Event
DEMONSTRATE ON MORNING OF TRIAL
THE STAKES?
OPEN ACCESS FOR ALL vs SUCCESS FOR A FEW!
Join us At the long awaited trial in the lawsuit of SF City Atty Dennis Herrera vs the ACCJC.
Join us On the street to demonstrate against the ACCJC and its corporate allies who are trying to downsize and change the mission of California Community Colleges.
Join us In the courtroom to let Judge Curtis Karnow know that San Francisco supports CCSF!
Please sign up for shifts at AFT 2121 website: www.aft2121.org/justice
Demonstration on Monday, Oct 27th, 7:30 am – 9:00 am
Court sessions start at 9:00 am daily
Read highlights of the long legal fight
.
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Occupy Forum presents
CRISIS HEAD-ON:
Prop G and CARES Campaigns
Attack Roots of San Francisco’s Housing Woes
Most of us have heard the grim statistics: Ellis Act evictions up 170% in the last three years; 10,000 San Francisco tenants have been displaced by the Ellis Act since 1997, and most of us know many people who’ve been evicted, often long time residents, and with low incomes so they can’t afford to stay in SF and must leave their community behind. And we also know how the tech boom has brought a wave of young, single people with high salaries to the city which has resulted in huge hikes in rents and house prices making housing unaffordable to people with low or even average incomes.
And while the tech companies take in astronomical profits every month, they aren’t the only ones raking in the dough. Real Estate companies and speculators have been making a killing with their investments in housing, often seeing at least a 25% return on their investment in a year. Much of the current crisis has been fueled by these large speculators who don’t live in the city, don’t intend to live in the buildings they buy and don’t even want to be landlords – their interest is purely profit. When their financial speculation includes our homes, we say “Enough is enough.”
While there have been several attempts to address this crisis, they have mostly dealt with small symptoms of the overall problem such as making in-law units rent-controlled. And neo-liberal politicians have approved every development in hopes that more expensive condos would somehow dilute the market — (this has been a complete failure). Efforts to reform the Ellis Act by State Sen. Mark Leno were defeated by Real Estate-funded Republicans. However, this coming election on Nov. 4, Prop G is on target to become the first significant legislation to address real estate speculation head-on.
Proposition G would levy a hefty tax on real estate speculators in San Francisco if they buy and then flip a mutli-unit building in less than 5 years. So Prop G would act as a significant disincentive for speculators to buy buildings, evict tenants and then resell them for huge profits. It’s supported by most progressive and moderate politicians such as Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, David Campos, John Avalos, Jane Kim and by groups like the SF Democratic Party, the SF Tenants Union, the Harvey Milk Democratic Club and many more.
Of course the real estate agents who profit so handsomely by selling our homes from under us aren’t going to let this huge source of wealth generation be slowed in any way and so the national, state and local realtors associations have put well over $1.5 million into the NO ON G campaign, providing them with ten times the budget of YES ON G which is mostly grass roots. They also know that this prop could be a trend-setter for other parts of the country which are also experiencing speculation-fueled increases in housing costs. We need all hands on deck to get this legislation passed and to cool the artificial boom in SF real estate.
Fred Sherburn-Zimmer is an organizer with Housing Rights Committee and a founder of Eviction Free SF. Benito Santiago is also an Eviction Free SF member who has successfully fought the eviction of he and his neighbours from their Mission area homes. Both are active workers for the YES ON G campaign and they will explain in more detail what the Proposition is and how it will significantly help reduce evictions and slow increases in rents and house prices.
Then Julien Ball of ACCE will discuss the current state of the housing crisis in SF and what other measures are being proposed such at ACCE’s CARES program. This is based on the City of Richmond’s bold plan to use eminent domain to take over foreclosed upon homes from banks when they won’t re-negotiate loans to keep people in their homes. ACCE is hoping to get San Francisco to join Richmond and adopt CARES to help the thousands of people whose homes are currently or may enter foreclosure here.
ACCE Action is part of Families for an Affordable San Francisco, a community labor coalition that’s been campaigning for YES ON J (increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour); YES ON G; and David Campos for State Assembly.
James Tracy, a long-time Bay Area activist and author will discuss the crisis and his new book on the topic Dispatches Against Displacement in which he promotes the vision of cities constructed, not just for profit, but “developed by and for the people who bring them to life and keep them running.”
Donations to OccupyForum to cover our costs are encouraged; no one turned away!
We are holding a followup to “Inside Urban Shield” based on the ideas that were thrown out and briefly discussed at that Community Forum. Please come to get involved: organizing and acting to most effectively influence things locally, nationally and at the state level.
Just a few of the many ideas that were proposed:
- Opposing the acquisition of the San Leandro tank with a demonstration.
- Attending Bay Area UASI meetings.
- Pushing for privacy legislation in Oakland.
- Cutting off funding to police organizations that violate human rights.
- Opposing California’s Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights.
- Looking at Richmond and Salt Lake City models of policing
- Using the series ‘Overcriminalized.” and the action kits that go with it.
- Opposing pre-trial detention.
On February 13, 2014, members of the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition were protesting at the State Building in Oakland. Anne Weills was there as a legal observer from the National Lawyers’ Guild. The protesters and Attorney Weills were arrested, driven to Santa Rita and placed in the custody of the Sheriff.
The sheriffs’ deputies demanded that the women take off their shirts in front of male deputies and other male prisoners. When Attorney Weills refused, considering the request to be sexual harassment, she was thrown into a solitary closet, denied access to a toilet. Then she and the other plaintiffs were then placed in severely overcrowded cells, which were filthy with feces, blood, urine, garbage and rotting food on the floors and walls. Women who were bleeding were denied feminine hygiene supplies.
They will be at the Board of Supervisors meeting to demand that the Board end sexual harassment and improve conditions at Santa Rita Jail.
At the press conference the four plaintiffs will describe their experiences.
Speak out at Berkeley City Council against renewal of Police Department Agreements with
Homeland Security/FBI programs!
The first Action Calendar item on the agenda is a Public Hearing on renewing
the Berkeley Police Department’s (BPD) agreement with Federal, local and State
law enforcement agencies.
To stop militarization of police departments we must demand that City
Councils not renew the agreement with the Homeland Security program, Urban
Areas Security Initiative (UASI), which gives grants to local police
departments for military equipment, such as tasers, drones, tanks and more.
Stopping UASI at our local City Councils would help to stop Police
Departments’ shopping spree at the annual URBAN SHIELD convention, stocked
with Homeland Security corporate merchandise.
Surveillance goes hand in hand with militarization. Ask the Council to also
vote to not renew the BPD agreement with the Northern California Regional
Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a data fusion center coordinated by the FBI’s Bay
Area Joint Terrorism Task Force, to which Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)
are sent: e.g. taking a photo of a building or taking notes, especially if
you’re of a suspicious ethnic/color group.
SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Liberty Defense)
———————-
Berkeley Copwatch
2022 Blake St
Berkeley, CA 94704
On October 30 people across the country will be wearing orange – as a powerful visible symbol of opposition to mass incarceration.
On campuses, in the streets, in high schools, at work, on public transportation – everywhere you go that day, wear orange. Gather in public spots in your city town or campus with groups of people in orange, challenging others to join you and be part of the crew.
We will be wearing Orange because it is the color prisoners are forced to wear – from the torture chambers in Guantanamo, to the infamous SSHU units in California, to the work gangs on Texas prison farms, to teeming youth detention centers coast to coast. We’re wearing orange and turning this around – orange will become the color of resistance, and knnown for that far and wide in society. It will help galvanize and give expression to our opposition.
This country has the highest incarceration rate in world history. 2.4 million people, a huge number of them Black and Latino youth are in prison. Black men are incarcerated at a rate over 6 times that of white men, and given on average much higher sentences for the same offenses. We live in a society that offers no future to masses of Black and Latino youth except prison and punishment.
This is unacceptable! Throughout October resistance has been mobilized to the slow genocide of mass incarceration and police terror The month was opened by taking the Pledge of Resistance in cities across the country. This was followed by sermons in dozens of religious institutions; symposiums at Columbia Univ, UC Berkeley and other campuses; more than a thousand people gathering for Ferguson October and now we’re coming off a successful mobilization for October 22, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. October 30 will be a day to make our resistance resonate further thruout society and deliver a message to one and all that mass incarceration and all its consequences must be stopped; and that we are determined to STOP it!
Be creative. Be bold. Be determined. Make a lot of noise, get a lot of attention.
WEAR ORANGE OCTOBER 30! STOP MASS INCARCERATION!
Bestselling author, trial attorney, and NBC News analyst Lisa Bloom reads from and discusses her new book, “Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to Repeat It”
What went wrong behind the scenes in the Trayvon Martin case? Why does America endure so many tragic shootings like this one? These are the questions at the heart of Suspicion Nation.
Bestselling author, trial attorney, and NBC News analyst Lisa Bloom covered the murder trial and was appalled by what she witnessed. Bloom now exposes the injustice, conducting new in-depth interviews with key trial participants and digging deeper into the evidence. Suspicion Nation outlines the six biggest mistakes made by the state of Florida that guaranteed it would lose this “winnable case,” and the laws and biases that created the conditions for this tragedy.
Read a transcript or Listen to an mp3 audio of Michael Slate interviewing Lisa Bloom on March 28, 2014 on the Los Angeles Pacifica affiliate KPFK. Lisa Bloom says: “I think that fifty years from now, people are going to look at this case as the Emmett Till case of the early 21st century.”
The only nonwhite juror tells her story of painful isolation in the jury room. Rachel Jeantel, the state’s star witness, reveals how poorly the state prepared her to testify and what went through her mind on the stand. The medical examiner reveals scientific evidence he wasn’t allowed to present. And a new examination of Trayvon’s school suspensions raises questions about racial profiling, all in a country divided over issues of race, gun laws, and violence. Suspicion Nation is a riveting courtroom drama that shines a bright light on a case we only thought we knew.
Music and Protest:
Music has always played a key role in protest movements. As part of the campus’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, the On the Same Page program has organized this panel, along with a concert (co-sponsored by Cal Performances) the same evening.
Waldo Martin, Professor, UC Berkeley History Department;
Kim Nalley, Jazz and Blues Vocalist; Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley History Department;
Mavis Staples, Singer;
Chris Strachwitz, Founder and President, Arhoolie Records
Mark Peterson, Professor, UC Berkeley History Department
Free and open to all on a first-come, first-seated basis
reception to follow event
“We were just trying to provide a dignified, safe and clean place for homeless people to use the restroom,” said Frances Moore, lifelong resident of North Oakland and founder of Auntie Frances’ Self-help Hunger Program.
On Tuesday, October 21, 2014, after months of harassment by newer residents in the North Oakland community of “Driver Plaza” where the Self-Help Hunger Program feeds poor and houseless elders and families of color every week, Oakland officials succumbed to pressure by newer residents and instructed the Porta Pottie company to remove the toilet from Driver Plaza.
Auntie Frances’ Love Mission and Self-Help Hunger Program was launched 5 years ago by Frances Moore, a life-long resident of South Berkeley/North Oakland who herself dealt with homelessness, hunger and poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. The Porta Pottie was rented by the Self-Help Hunger Program in March 2014 for a Black History Celebration to provide the houseless North Oakland community with a dignified place to use the bath room.
“When my mother and I were houseless no business or home would ever let us use the bathroom,” said Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, author of “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America,” and co-founder of POOR Magazine, who has been working alongside community members and groups like Phat Beets Produce to fight City-backed gentrification of the Love Mission and all of Oakland.
Several months ago, many residents not historically from Oakland that have moved into the area near Driver Plaza began harassing Aunti Frances and others at Driver Plaza for feeding and supporting poor and homeless people, as well as claiming that folks at Driver Park were defecating and urinating in public. Some newer residents began to launch more attacks on the people at Driver Park, claiming that the Porta pottie increased blight and criminal activity, despite it being an action taken for self-determined. In fact, the Porta pottie was fundraised for by Aunti Frances and the Self-Help Hunger Program, Driver Park residents, POOR Magazine and Phat Beets Produce. When Driver Park had no toilet, they were criminalized for relieving themselves in public. When they raised money to maintain a toilet and went to the bath room in a dignified manner, they had it taken away.
Oakland City Council Member Dan Kalb of District 1 in North Oakland and Oakland Public Works Agency refuses to support the life-long African-American community of this neighborhood, taking no action at all to ensure that residents have a dignified place to use the restroom, the same way people utilizing others city parks do. Marginalized in their own neighborhood by new residents and their different vision for Driver Park, people have begun speaking out, specifically the youth.
“All they wanted was a dignified place to use the bathroom, said Kimo Umu, 11 years old, student at Deecolonize Academy- an Oakland based school who have been supporting Auntie Frances Love Mission and Self-Help Hunger Program as part of their report on Bay Area gentrification for their Revolutionary Journalism class. Students and teachers of the Academy will be building a Porta pottie to install in the Oakland Mayors Office on Thursday.
Self-Help Hunger Program supporters say that It is important to work with neighbors new and old, but the city is putting the power in the hands of the privileged to decide what is best for a long-time working class, African-American community. What Kalb fails to acknowledge is that many people in the park are neighbors as well, and when he speaks about approval from the community he is not considering Driver Park users constituents or the community.
—–
POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE is a very grassroots, poor people of color-led arts organization providing media, education and art to very low and no-income youth, adults and elders of color locally and globally.
Co-sponsors/endorsers for this emergency press conference are the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, Manilatown I-Hotel Center, Deecolonize Academy and Healthy Hoodz.
Jack London’s The Iron Heel: a benefit performance
A Readers Theater, Puppetry and Music adaptation of the visionary dystopian science fiction tale of anti-capitalist rebellion & rise of authoritarianism.
This performance is a benefit for the Richmond Progressive Alliance & the Sunflower Alliance in their fight for the climate, health and safety of Bay Area communities threatened by big oil and for building a just, sustainable economy.
Featuring
Jack London’s great granddaughter Tarnel Abbott & great-great grandson, Devin O’Keefe.
Live Saxophone musical score by master musician Andrés Soto.
Introduction by Jonah Raskin, editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War & Revolution.
Please “join” the Facebook Event page here and invite friends.
But also order tickets to hold your spot and let us know how many to expect:
$10-20 (no one turned away for lack of funds). All proceeds after expenses to support local environmental/climate justice groups.
The one-night-only performance will start promptly and run approximately 1 hour 15 minutes with no intermission. The performance is in conjunction with the international Jack London Symposium, held this year in Berkeley.
“Battle of Chicago” from the Iron Heel canastoria by Regina Gilligan
Written by Tarnel Abbott & The Iron Heel Theater Collective
Art Director: Regina Gilligan
Puppetry Director: David Solnit
Readers Theater Director: Alicia Littletree Bales
And a special request
It’s Halloween so come in costume! Want suggestions? A police state figure, your favorite 99% rebel, or an incarnation of a post-capitalist future.
The Downtown Berkeley Post Office could be sold at any time now!
Come rally to show support and plan the resistance!
A detailed explanation of why it is now in imminent danger of being sold.
MOBILIZATION!
HELP STOP THE SALE!
Sat. Nov. 1, 2014 2000 Allston Way on the steps of the
Berkeley Post Office
It’s now in contract TO BE STOLEN!
The fate of the downtown Berkeley Post Office has reached a crisis point. The transfer of the building to private ownership may be only days away. For this reason, Berkeley Post Office Defenders call for a collaborative mobilization of all those who oppose the threat of privatization. Individuals and organizations will gather to share music, establish an ongoing direct action presence, and provide updates and support for political and legal action including:
– An injunction to Stop the Sale
– Postal banking
– Preservation of historic public property
– Boycott Staples profitization of postal services
- Massive Rally, 10:30 am to 12:30 pm,
1ST Action: Sponsored by Save the Berkeley Post Office
For more information please go to www.savethebpo.com
- Jam the Sale, 1 pm till 10 pm
2nd Action: Coordinated by Berkeley Post Office Defenders, berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com
“Come play music! Bring instruments — including your singing voice, spoken word and dancing body. We will not allow our Post Office to be sold, and nothing can sustain persistent resistance like music. We will play until USPS stops pretending not to hear us say that our Post Office is not for sale!” You’re welcome to pre- schedule at http://tinyurl.com/mlxgpff
- Direct Action Presence, (bring your pillows)
3rd Action: in Collaboration with First They Came for the Homeless
www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
It’s time to establish and support a physical presence at the Downtown Berkeley Post Office. By taking direct action to defend our public goods, we affirm our reasons for living in community by sharing our energy and resources for the benefit of all. ___________________________________________________
Please help us mobilize for a massive live and media protest.
Contact us electionamend@gmail.com
Today, there is unprecedented momentum in the effort to stop fossil fuels and win climate justice.
However, with most of our attention focused on fighting short-term battles, we often forget to ask the question:What would the world look like if we won?
Change the Course, a new program from Rainforest Action Network, is an invitation to dig deep and think hard about what it would actually take to stabilize the climate and create a just transition to a post-carbon future.
We are launching a series of climate-focused workshops and visioning sessions — in cities across the country as well as through a new online platform. Through this program, we will crowd-source a detailed vision of what a sustainable and just future would look like — and develop the strategies and tactics that will get us there.
Our opponents in the fossil fuel industry have their own vision for the future, one defined by rising oceans and ever-increasing carbon emissions — a future where extreme energy practices fly in the face of science and common-sense, and where the worst impacts of climate change are shouldered by the communities least able to bear them.
It’s not too late to define the future we want to live in.
Together, let’s change the course.
Please join us at the upcoming Climate Leadership Summit to kick this project off. This 2 day event will bring communities together from across the region for an innovative visioning, strategic development and skills summit. We will strengthen and grow local groups and prepare our movement to take action together, with our end goals in mind.
This summit will take place on Saturday and Sunday from 1pm-6pm each day. RSVP now!
Nothing’s better for sustaining persistent resistance like persistent music
Why: To create a physical boundary of bodies and voices blocking the transfer of ownership of our public post office
The fate of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office has reached a crisis point.� The transfer of that building to private ownership may be only days away. For this reason, the Berkeley Post Office Defenders call for mobilization of all those who appreciate the danger of privatization. It is time to establish and support a physical presence at the Downtown Berkeley Post Office so that, with arms locked, we can block any poacher of our public property from taking possession. By taking direct action to defend our public goods, we will affirm our reasons for living in community by sharing our energy and resources for the benefit of all.
The Board of Governors of the USPS has done a skillful job of narrowing the focus of the objections to the sale of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office to the issue of two New Deal works of art contained therein. At this time, the position of the USPS is that they’ve done everything they can to satisfy the concerns of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (an agency formed by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966) and concerns of the City of Berkeley for the preservation of these artworks, even to the point of promising that the USPS will provide that protection themselves in perpetuity after the building is sold.
The Berkeley Post Office Defenders re-emphasize two objections that have been largely ignored in the struggle to save our post office:
- The sale that the USPS intends to process is one manifestation of the neo-liberal strategy of privatization, deregulation, union-busting, and the cutting of government services, pursued via the World Bank and the WTO, which in the last half-century have proved to to be so detrimental to the welfare of people living in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, the nations of the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and many others. Locally, the privately-owned Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) is trying to bankrupt the publicly controlled City College of San Francisco. The capital property of the USPS is a possession of the people of the United States as a public holding, meaning it is a component of national wealth and infrastructure, and the defense of that wealth is necessary for maintaining the viability of the national enterprise. The Berkeley Post Office Defenders oppose the privatization of publicly owned property everywhere it is threatened, and we have mobilized our opposition locally to shield the erosion of the material foundation of community, of which the Downtown Berkeley Post Office is an element.
- With regard to the public ownership of the New Deal artworks, the promise of the USPS to preserve them given its strategy of privatizatioon is a deception. By selling more than 300 of its properties since 2006, the Board of Governors of the USPS has undermined the capital foundation of the enterprise it is publicly charged with protecting. This insidious strategy follows the steps to complete privatization of postal services pursued by other countries the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany and The Netherlands. Given that the Board of Governors is selling the USPS out of business, it is their intention that, very soon, they will no longer be in a position to preserve the public ownership of anything.
The Downtown Berkeley Post Office is not only a monument to public organization, it is an organ of our common body; without it we grow weaker. The agents of privatization are chiseling away at the investment our ancestors made to the survival of democracy. Our post office was built by the sweat equity of our great-grandparents, and financed by their tax dollars. As such, the Postal Service has NO RIGHT to sell it. Berkeley Post Office Defenders DEMAND that this sale be halted and that the building continue to serve our – and our great-grandchildren’s – common good.
For more on the current status of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office: https://occupyoakland.org/2014/10/berkeley-post-office-contract-sold/
Berkeley Post Office Defenders: http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999?ref=br_tf
BPOD is affiliated with Strike Debt Bay Area: http://strike-debt-bay-area.tumblr.com/
For more on the Staples boycott:
The Seeds of Protest Bloom. Staples Boycott Goes National.
For background on the fight to Save Berkeley’s Post Office:
Those Damned Hippies, They’re Saving the Post Office
USPS mission:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/101
For more on the privatization of the USPS:
Saving the United States Postal Service as a Public Enterprise: http://tinyurl.com/ltqq7ng
Privatization Is Social Cancer; Saving the US Postal Service: http://tinyurl.com/mbcbzrf
Occupy the electoral process!!
YES on G
After our last OccupyForum, Addressing the Housing Crisis Head-On, we’ve decided to do just that:
OccupyForum will be joining the YES on G peeps at their headquarters the night before the election to do whatever it takes
to pass this local ballot measure and keep our brothers and sisters from being kicked out of their homes.
Prop G stops evictions by penalizing speculation and quick “flipping” of rental property.
(Only multi-unit properties that are bought and resold within five years will face surtaxes under the law.
Single family homes, condos, and owner-occupied housing will never be taxed under Prop G.)
Let’s throw our might against the rampaging capitalist speculators determined to turn all but the wealthiest out of our fair city.
(Over 10,000 SF tenants have been displaced by the Ellis Act since 1997.) Let’s fight the national, state and local realtors associations
(which have put well over $1.5 million into stopping it), and resist one of the Bay Area’s most detested corporations, PG & E,
(which just threw $180,000 into the fight to defeat G!)
Solidarity with our brothers and sisters to keep our homes!
YES on G is asking us to drop off polling location information for the western end of SF (transportation provided) and make phone calls.
The larger effort will start around 5 pm but volunteers can stop by any time after 10 am. Food will be provided.
Yes on G also needs volunteers on Saturday, Sunday and especially Tuesday, election day. Please contact Yes on G at:
Prop G will penalize flipping properties and evicting all the tenants; or in plain English (or Spanish),
“S T O P T H E E V I C T I O N S ! ” “ ! A L T O � A L O S D E S A L O J O S ! ”
�
Strike Debt In Action with Student Debtors
We invite you to join us at the Department of Education Public Hearing to support current and former Corinthian (Everest, Heald, and Wyotech) students who will be speak directly to DOE officials to tell their stories and demand debt cancellation.
Join online at: Corinthian.debt.is The Debt Collective tech team created this page so that those of us who can’t be in Anaheim in person can be there virtually. This website will go live an hour before the hearing with a livestream, chat, social media links, DoE twitter bomb and other virtual actions. Everyone who wants to support Corinthian students as they demand debt cancellation, meet here on Nov 4th: http://corinthian.debt.is
What’s the Background?
On September 17th, Strike Debt launched The Debt Collective, where we are developing a new platform for organization, advocacy, and resistance. We aim to build power to bargain with creditors or even to threaten a debt strike. As we build membership, debtors can join together based on region, type of debt, or lender.
Alone our debts are a burden; together they make us powerful.
People already get it. Denny in South Dakota emailed us to ask, “Is it possible there are others who have some of my issues in common? Is there an opportunity to collectivize this issue?”
Phil in California asked a similar question, “Do you have a collective group of Bank of America Mortgage debtors?” Denny and Phil’s questions show that people already understand what the debt collective can do.
People are ready to organize and begin demanding fair terms: fair interest rates, fair principal amounts, even the abolition of unjust debts.
Why Start With a For-Profit College?
The Debt Collective’s pilot project is with current and former students from for-profit Everest college. Everest, like other for-profit schools, targets students from low-income households, disproportionately from minority backgrounds. As Everest’s parent company, Corinthian, falls apart and its predatory activities are revealed, students are still expected to pay back their loans.
If Everest students join together, we believe they can win a full debt discharge. Their victory will help us demonstrate debtors’ collective power and other groups can be formed to follow their example.
What Will Happen at the Hearing?
On November 4th, we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate the power of debtors acting collectively at the Department of Education public hearing.
If you live in the Los Angeles area, we invite you to join us at the event.
If you don’t live in southern California but still want to support students, go here, starting at 12p PST, to help share students’ messages, see video clips, and watch the livestream of the hearing.
Please follow the Debt Collective on Facebook and Twitter.
Bay Area Book Launch and Conversation
Join us November 4th, for conversation, snacks, beverages, contemplation and celebration, for the Bay Area launch of “Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better“!
Author Maya Schenwar will read from her book and discuss the impact of prison on families and communities — and how people around the country are taking action to create a world without prison.
CURB will also have two special speakers there!
- Alex Berliner, new Organizer with All of Us or None a Project of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, will talk about her experience with having a loved one inside.
- Emily Harris, Statewide Coordinator of Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), will speak about the movement to reduce prison populations and close prisons throughout the state of California.
Join CURB members, allies, friends for conversation, snacks, beverages, contemplation and celebration!
See Michelle Alexendar and Angela Davis’ reviews of the book on our event RSVP.