Calendar

Hear histories and current news about one of today’s strongest grassroots social movements, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST). The MST is a movement of 1.5 million landless women, men and children, who have forced the Brazilian government to redistribute 20 million acres of farmland in Brazil through the occupation of large unproductive land estates. This year marks the 30 year anniversary of the MST’s founding, and in February there will be a one-week gathering of over 20,000 MST activists to discuss the future of the movement. The MST has invited a delegation of 10 U.S. activists to attend the conference, including several Bay Area Activists.

Speakers include members of the U.S. delegation to the MST’s upcoming National Congress:

-Becky Tarlau, Friends of the MST organizer and PhD candidate at UC Berkeley.
-Shango Abiola, The Black Riders Liberation Party
-Effie Rawlings, Occupy the Farm

Facebook event & RSVP.

Andrew Ross just wrote a “movement book” for Strike Debt – Creditocracy. He has been super active in working against student debt and in Strike Debt NY.

We are living in the cruel grip of a creditocracy where the finance industry commandeers our elected governments and where the citizenry have to take out loans to meet their basic needs. The implications of mass indebtedness for any democracy are profound, and the historical record shows that whenever a creditor class becomes as powerful as Wall Street, the result has been debt bondage. Following in the ancient tradition of the jubilee, activists have had some success in repudiating the debts of developing countries. The time is ripe for a debtors movement to use the same kinds of moral and legal arguments to bring relief to household debtors in the North, and to create an alternative economy, independent of the debt-money system,

From the book blurbs:

In this lucid and accessible book, Andrew Ross argues that we are increasingly oppressed by the rule of credit and that ever more people must go into debt just to access life’s necessities. But Ross not only names the problem; more importantly, he points toward solutions. Read this book and join a debt resistors movement.

From his Wikipedia biography:

Andrew Ross is a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. A writer for The New York Times, Artforum, The Nation, Newsweek and The Village Voice, he is also the author and/or editor of numerous books. Much of his writing focuses on labor, the urban environment, and the organization of work, from the Western world of business and high-technology to conditions of offshore labor in the Global South. Making use of social theory as well as ethnography, his writing questions the human and environmental cost of economic growth, has an activist, alternative globalization approach, and emphasizes principles of sustainability.
 
He has been active in the anti-sweatshop movement since the mid-1990s. From the late 1990s, he has turned his attention to the academic labor movement, both in the national AAUP, and at NYU as a vocal supporter of the graduate student union, and as a founding member of Faculty Democracy. In 2007, his co-edited volume, The University Against Itself, documented and analyzed the long strike at NYU in 2005 by GSOC-UAW (The Graduate Student Organizing Committee). A founder of the Gulf Labor Coalition, he has helped to organize campaigns to raise migrant labor standards in the United Arab Emirates. An early participant in Occupy Wall Street, he helped found the Occupy Student Debt Campaign and has been an integral member of the Occupy Debt Assembly and Strike Debt—a coalition formed in the summer of 2012 to help build a debtors movement. Strike Debt produced the Debt Resistors Operations Manual and organized the Rolling Jubilee.

He will also be speaking on Monday, the 20th in Oakland.

ATTENTION: The #DAC WILL NOT be on the agenda for the 1/21 #oakmtg. Admin plans to bring to Public Safety on 1/28, then to Council on 2/4.

per Dan Kalb
https://twitter.com/DanKalb/status/421360306829279232

So we won’t be holding a big demonstration on Tuesday the 21st, but a few folks will probably show up with a bit of chow for those that didn’t get the change-of-date message.  If folks are interested we’ll show a movie at the Plaza at 7ish.

Please join us to tell the City Council what you think on February 4th:

http://occupyoakland.org/ai1ec_event/dont-sell-people-oakland-dept-homeland-security/?instance_id=259287

Click to download full-sized printable flyer

Sponsored by the League of Women Voters Oakland:

How does a city like Oakland respond to residents’ demands for more effective crime prevention and reduction while protecting everyone’s civil liberties? What is the Domain Awareness Center and how will it impact Oakland? How much surveillance is enough — or too much — to enhance our law enforcement capabilities?

Bring your ideas and a friend or neighbor to discuss these important issues with knowledgeable resource people and fellow Oaklanders.

Hewlett Packard is developing and supporting a biometric ID system installed in Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank which categorizes citizens by their ethnic background. In the United States, HP is profiting from work with the US prison system and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through a contract with the US Department of Homeland Security ICE Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to speed up the internal process of deciding a person’s documentation status.

Come and learn from art activists about how to make creative and effective art installations and action props that can be used as we confront corporations who profit from suppression.

Surveillance, policing, prison and corporate complicity: let’s take action!

The Oakland Privacy Working Group will meet at the Sudoroom Wednesday Jan. 22nd at 6:30 to organize an action for February 4th at City Hall to stop the planned building of the DAC, an Oakland-wide surveillance grid to monitor the citizens of the East Bay.

The City Council will be voting on selecting a contractor to take over Phase II of the DAC contract from SAIC  (who was dismissed for violating Oakland’s Nuclear Free Zone Ordinance, which prohibits the city from knowingly doing business with any entity that is engaged in nuclear weapons work).  Apparently all the other alternatives have dipped their toes in the nuclear pool, as well.  The Oakland Privacy Working Group hopes to have a big presence in Oscar Grant Plaza in front of City Hall before we go in to the chambers to voice our opinions about building out this privacy-destroying networked spy hub. We are planning on a potluck at 6:15 in the plaza, bring goodies to share. There will be speakers and music, as well. Since the City Council never seems to address the DAC issue before the witching hour or later we will also have some movies in the plaza.

For more information on the insidiousness of the DAC and how it came to be in Oakland check out the DAC FAQ, the Oakland Wiki Domain Awareness Page and the Oakland Privacy WordPress.

Plans for the demo that need to be firmed up:

1. Facebook Event Page

2. Brass liberation orchestra

3. Music - Last bar fighter

4. Food

5. Movie

6. Sound System

7. Puppets

8. Speakers

   1. suggestions? Daniel Ellsberg?  Edward Snowden?  Batman?

   2. Fired after

   3. Anti Repression Committee

   4. press outreach

9. press release

10. press conference

Please sign the on line petitionetition to stop the DAC

Sign the on line petition calling for the DAC to be defunded. We got 4,000 signatures in about a week and need another 900 to reach our goal.

Click for printable PDF

Have you ever needed a document and not known where to find it? Have you ever been told you can’t access a document that you need? Or perhaps you want to request documents from a government agency but don’t know how or what you have a right to ask for.

Don’t fret, we have just the person to answer your questions.

Join the Bay Area News Group’s award-winning investigative reporter and author, Thomas Peele, for a free session on how to access public records. The workshop will provide information about laws governing the release of records as well as how to file Freedom of Information requests.

The session is part of the Independent Journal’s community engagement initiative, which also includes informal public meetings in communities across the county.

Reservations are necessary for the Jan. 22 public access workshop on a first-come, first-served basis. Each attendee must reserve a space. To sign up, visit this signup site.

For more information about the IJ’s community outreach and Peele’s talk, visit Editor Robert Sterling’s blog at blogs.marinij.com/notesonnews.

For details on Peele’s talk, also contact Martin Reynolds, Bay Area News Group senior editor for community engagement, at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com or 510-390-1779.

Jehane Noujaim’s THE SQUARE is a gripping portrait of the Egyptian revolution and the way it has been fought on the front lines with the game-changing weapons of cameras and social media. It is an epic documentary that captures the immediacy and intensity of the protests in Tahrir Square— from the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, to the ousting of Mohammed Morsi in 2013— through the eyes of the movement’s young activists. The Square will be showing all week at the Roxie Theater.

After the movie screening, we will be hosting a Skyped Q and A with Mostafa Ali, a journalist for Ahram Online and member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists.

Co-hosted by the International Socialist Organization
Co-sponsors: Arab Resource Organizing Center & Arab Cultural & Community Center

Pre-sale tickets available! $8 – regular admission. $10-$20 – solidarity price. Please speak w/ an ISO member if you’re interested or email sf.mission@norcalsocialism.org.

Facebook event & RSVP.

For more information:
Website: http://thesquarefilm.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSquareFilm
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSquareFilm
Trailer: http://bit.ly/1c7OUeG

International Socialist Organization: norcalsocialism.org || socialistworker.org
Arab Resource Organizing Center: http://araborganizing.org/
Arab Cultural & Community Center: http://www.arabculturalcenter.org/

The San Francisco Gray Panthers are very concerned about issues of mass incarceration, prison expansion, profiling of minorities and youth, and the criminalization of poverty. Particularly in San Francisco, with such extremes of wealth and poverty, it seems outrageous to build more jail space, when three-quarters of prisoners are there because they’re too poor to make bail.

We are helping to organize two important upcoming events to stop the new jail and we hope you will join us! The first was on January 18th. This one:

Thursday, January 23rd: Speak out at the San Francisco Supervisor’s Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee Hearing on the Jail Replacement Project.

The discussion will be led by a formidable cast of advocates including:

• Cindy Cohn, Legal Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Ms. Cohn serves as counsel in First Unitarian Church v. NSA and Jewel v. NSA, each seeking to stop the ongoing dragnet warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans.
• Daniel Ellsberg, the iconic whistleblower and national hero described by President Nixon as “the most dangerous man in America,” and co-founder of Freedom of Press Foundation.
• Norman Solomon, Journalist, media critic, anti-war activist, co-founder of RootsAction.org, founding director of Institute for Public Accuracy, and author of War Made Easy.
• Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, constitutional lawyer, grassroots organizer, independent columnist, musician, and poet.

Robert Jaffee, a volunteer attorney on the Hedges v. Obama case challenging indefinite detention without trial, will moderate the discussion. He and the panelists will discuss issues including:

Whether dragnet NSA surveillance is constitutional, and the dueling federal court rulings in December
The history of government secrecy, and how it relates to the mounting controversy surrounding NSA spying
How the NSA dragnet threatens not only to privacy, but also freedom and democracy
The role of the press, and the tremendous contributions of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others
Prospects for legislative reforms in Congress, and opportunities for grassroots action going forward
For more details about the forum, please contact Robert Jaffee at rjaffe2[at]gmail.

You can also RSVP on Facebook, though you don’t have to RSVP to attend.

Proceeds will benefit the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

A full day educational program to mark the anniversary of the ongoing Egyptian revolution. In Egypt, the 25th of Jan this year is going to be a day of action against the continuity of military rule and the atrocities committed by the coup regime.

The program will start from 3 pm and will be all night long until the last person leaves, so you’re welcome to stop by any time!

Program details:

-Film screening of rare footage highlighting different stages of the Egyptian struggle.

– Skype conversations with Egyptians in Egypt and abroad to hear their perspective on the situation.

– A talk by Shimaa from Tahrir Square, an eyewitness to the Egyptian movement who’s currently in Oakland, CA.

– An open forum and a Q/A session on the state of affairs in Egypt since 2011 and up to date.

Tweeted out by @OccupyUCBerk

Our next meeting for Politics of Debt will be next Friday, January 24th at the public school room.  We’ll take on the Keen vs. Krugman debate about the significance of banking for economics.  It’s something like a Modern Money Theorist vs. a high profile Keynesian.  See you there!

Here’s the article containing  links to most of the articles and blog posts – lots of them, too many to list, but they are presented in the chronological order that the debate took place, so they’re easy to follow.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46944145

There’s a tremendously important debate being waged across a bunch of different websites, including Paul Krugman’s at The New York Times, about how banking really works.

Original Keen article.

Public School event notice.

Addition:

Here is something to add to the reading list for this week:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/12/16/economy/oh-my-paul-krugman-edition

This is Keen’s reflection on the issue of banking and how it effects demand. He seems to think Krugman has quietly moved camps.

There are plenty more articles and books to read in the future and we will be furthering our understanding of Modern Monetary Theory as well as a recent school called the New Currency Theory.
E.g., this article from the real-world economics review which we can get into later:

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue66/Huber66.pdf

Come hang out with the coolest people around: The Berkeley Post Office Defenders. We’ll be continuing to gather signatures to Save the Post Office from privatization (we already got more than 1200…), talk to people, hand out literature and maybe listen to some cool bands.

Lie down on the grass at MLK park, get yourself a bite to eat at the Farmer’s Market, and make your day complete with a visit next door at All of Our’s Post Office.

Meet at the parking lot area first bench and “keyhole area” to rebuild the Albany bulb library which was mysteriously burned down recently.

The Bulb community and supporters will rebuild the Albany Bulb library 1pm to 3pm.
At 4pm we’ll have a pot luck and fire

More info on this issue sharethebulb.org

Through the end of January we will have General Assembly at the sudoroom on 2141 Broadway, Oakland, CA.

Here are instructions to access the room, the entrance is on 22nd Street:

https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Getting_there

This Sunday will be a Cryptoparty at the sudoroom, along with the third Sunday in January, these will be opportunities to update your digital profile so the government can’t easily track your every move.  More blather on this to follow this afternoon when I have a moment.

Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally and has equal decision-making power. Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly uses a participatory decision-making process appropriately called, “Occupy Oakland’s Collective Decision-Making Process.” Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.

Autonomous Action & the General Assembly
The bulk of the work of Occupy Oakland does NOT happen in the General Assembly. It happens in various committees, caucuses, and associated groups that report back to the general assembly. Everyone participating in Occupy Oakland should be part of at least one associated group. Occupy Oakland encourages autonomous actions that do not require consensus from the General Assembly. This encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.

General Assembly Standard Agenda

1. Welcome
2. Welcome Announcements
3. Agenda Overview
4. Forum
5. Reports from Committees, Subcommittees, Caucuses, & Working Groups
6. Action Announcements
7. General Announcements

WMDs in Syria and Iran today, and formerly in Iraq, have been pretexts for U.S. military intervention, not the motivation for intervention. Uranium enrichment has thresholds that play into those pretexts. The seemingly implacable opposition between the U.S. versus Syria and Iran, and formerly Libya as well, is not the result of any fundamental anti-imperialism in these Middle Eastern states, but rather the U.S. policy obsession for financial and military compliance.

Were it not for this U.S. obsession, the rulers of Syria and Iran would welcome foreign investment with open arms, though with protective limits, while they obliterate opposition of the left or right. Nevertheless, U.S.-led military intervention must be unconditionally opposed, while support is given towards building a secular democratic socialist alternative in presently authoritarian states.

Dr. Sharat G. Lin writes on global political economy, the Middle East, South Asia, labor migration, and public health. He is a contributing author to the book Studies in Inequality and Social Justice. He spent two months in Tahrir Square during 2009-2012, including during the initial uprising that overthrew President Mubarak. He is a research fellow at the San José Peace and Justice Center.

Join us for the film screening of Andy Kreamer’s inlightening documentary about life at the Albany Bulb. Come out and learn more about their way of life and their struggle. Also meet activists working alongside in Solidarity with Bulb Residents and how you can get involved.

The Postal Service has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!

The Postal Service has started to outsource Post Office services to Staples, replacing union jobs with low-paying, low benefit work.

And we’re fighting against both!

Come help us plan our next steps.  Come help us prepare for the City Council meeting on the 28th at Old City Hall  at which the Zoning Overlay Ordinance will be considered.

WE MAY BE WINNING!

AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.