Calendar
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
- Welcome
- Welcome Announcements
- Agenda Overview
- Forum
- Reports from Committees, Subcommittees, Caucuses, & Working Groups
- Action Announcements
- 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.
AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.
Hosted by the Marin Peace & Justice Coalition.
Potluck dinner is 6:30 PM followed at 7:30 by the screening of a portion of Jekyll Island: The Truth Behind the Federal Reserve”, directed by Bill Still. Guest speaker Laura Wells, the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for State Controller, will suggest alternatives to our present monetary system, including the option is a state-owned bank, such as the Bank of North Dakota.
More info is at: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/01/01/18748635.php
The struggle over the environment is a struggle over people’s relationship to the planet: who will determine that relationship, the 1% who want to profit from the earth or regular people?
Join a discussion of the environmental crisis, the problems with the market-based solutions pushed by politicians and business, and the potential for new popular movements.
Featuring:
Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism
Brooke Anderson, Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project*
The Public Safety Committee of the Oakland City Council will be discussing the Domain Awareness Center and a new contract for Schneider Electric to implement Phase II of the DAC (replacing SAIC, which was dismissed in part for being a Nuclear Weapons Contrator and in part for being general scum, having defrauded New York City of half a billion dollars)
Subject: Domain Awareness Center (DAC) Phase 2 Contract Award From: Oakland Fire Department Recommendation: Adopt A Resolution Authorizing The City Administrator To: 1) Negotiate And Execute A Professional Services Agreement With Schneider Electric Inc. To Provide Professional Services For Design/Build/Maintain Services Represented In Phase 2 Of The City And Port Joint Domain Awareness Center (DAC) Project For An Amount Not To Exceed $1,600,000; And 2) If Negotiations Fail With Schneider Electric Inc, The City Administrator Or Her Designee Is Authorized To Negotiate And Enter Into A Contract With Another Vendor On The DAC Phase Evaluations Ranking List, Without Returning To Council
Come tell the members of the Public Safety Committee what you think of the Orwellian dystopia that is the DAC!
Come pack the City Council meeting to continue pressuring our elected officials to Do The Right Thing.
Rezoning the Historic District around MLK park would make commercial use of five or six of Berkeley’s historic buildings, including the Post Office, illegal.
Rally: Beginning at 6:30 PM, possibly with the Light Brigade!
City Council Meeting: 7:00 PM
Expected time of beginning of consideration of Zoning Overlay: between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM.
Spaghetti Dinner for the 99% – dinner and program
Our Liberties, Our Voices, Our Lives! featuring
– JERRY MANDER, author and activist speaking on”Can Capitalism Be Reformed to Work for Democracy and Nature?”
– WILL DURST, political satirist
– KAREN MELANDER MAGOON & DEE ALLEN, Revolutionary Poets Brigade
– Local activists will be honored for their work for Peace and Protecting the Rights of People and the Earth
Join Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub.
We aim to have 2 monthly meetings, every 2nd and 4th Wednesday at 6:30 at the SUDOROOM. Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s right not to be spied on by its own governement & if you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to: oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
The entrance to the sudoroom is on 22nd Street, ring the buzzer and come up the stairs or take the elevator.
For more information on 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.
Download the printable flyer for the Feb. 4 Protest
TAKE BACK YOUR POWER: Investigating the Smart Grid
This week there will be two Bay Area screenings of the award-winning documentary, Take Back Your Power. Researchers, energy experts, doctors, environmentalists, and community members share their insights into the problems with ‘Smart’ meters and the ‘Smart’ grid, including damage to health, fires, invasion of privacy, and NO promised energy savings. There will be extensive discussion after the San Rafael screening. To learn more about this film, please go to http://www.takebackyourpower.net.
Prolonged Solitary Confinement and the
Constitution
Brown Bag Presentation by
Jules Lobel, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh
California currently holds several thousand prisoners in solitary confinement in what are known as Special Housing Units (SHU’s) throughout the state. Over 1000 of those prisoners confined in isolation at housed at Pelican Bay State Penitentiary SHU. These prisoners live in 80 square foot windowless cells. Their cells have solid steel doors perforated with small holes with permit some air to circulate and an extremely limited view into the hallway. The prisoners remain in their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day. They only leave their cells to shower, or for exercise in a somewhat larger cell that does get fresh air and very limited sunlight. They never see birds, trees, grass, and only rarely see other people. They receive no phone calls and can make no phone calls to the outside world. They have virtually no programming.
About 500 of these prisoners have been in solitary in these conditions for over a decade. Almost one hundred of them have lived in these conditions for over 20 years. Several years after Pelican Bay was opened, a class action lawsuit challenging solitary confinement as practiced at Pelican Bay was tried in federal court. The Federal District Court Judge refused to enjoin the State’s use of solitary confinement generally, but did hold that mentally ill prisoners, or those at risk for serious mental illness could not be placed there. Professor Lobel is lead counsel in a lawsuit that again – 20 years later- challenges California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement at Pelican Bay.
This talk raises questions of how we define the “cruel and unusual” punishment prohibited by the Constitution. Is solitary confinement cruel for constitutional and moral purposes only if it can be shown that the prisoner is either seriously mentally ill or will become mentally ill? What is the relationship between mental and physical pain imposed on prisoners for purposes of the Eighth Amendment? What makes a practice cruel – should it require a showing of serious mental or physical harm at all? What are “unusual” practices – are practices that we might recognize as cruel but are nonetheless widespread such as solitary confinement – unconstitutional? Should our society accept prolonged solitary confinement as a means to make prisons less violent?
Please RSVP to emui@law.berkeley.edu. Subject: RSVP – Jules Lobel Presentation.
Sponsored by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ewi.htm
—
Elaine T. Mui
Center Administrator
Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy
(formerly Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity)
Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
More information to come…
International Day of Action.
� Meet at Pelosi’s office at 7th and Market 4:30 pm to speak, hear, hand out flyers, etc.
� March down Market Street to Feinstein’s office at Montgomery and Market (McKessen Building)
� Call-and-response chanting, massive phone-call-ins from the street to Feinstein, Pelosi, etc.
and much more!
� Bring signs.
Meanwhile, call Feinstein and Pelosi to stop Fast tracking of the TPP.
Feinstein: (415) 393 – 0707
Pelosi: (415) 556 – 4862
Call NOW!
Join us as we start a new year and plan a rally for February 13th demanding that Kamala Harris prosecute Miguel Masso for the murder of Alan Blueford.
Get up-to-date on the civil lawsuit that is proceeding against OPD and the City of Oakland.
JAB has denounced the Domain Awareness Center and may have a speaker at the anti-DAC rally on February 4th.
Come help us out in the fight for Justice 4 Alan and against police terrorism in general.
3:30PM Petition Drive to Restore Parking 50 parking places at the Bulb
430 PM Sunset Hike
3:30 PM: Drop by a table at the Albany Bulb parking lot to encourage people to demand that the city of Albany restore Parking at the BULB so the working class and their dogs and children can enjoy our park. Recently the City has put up NO PARKING signs along the north side of Buchanan Street, eliminating about 50 parking spaces frequently used by visitors to the Bulb. There is no good environmental or health & safety reason that this action has been taken, that road is very lightly trafficked, so there is no case for making it two lanes (going west only). The City is trying to reduce usage of the Bulb and isolate the residents from the community. At this point all the parking spots for the Bulb in the small lot near the porta-potty are filled all weekend long, causing recreational would-be users to drive around in circles, wasting gasoline waiting for a spot to become free, and blocking disappointed users from giving up and driving away to find another place to walk. The only parking alternative is to drive across the bridge over the freeway and fill up spots in the surrounding residential neighborhoods and walk back about a half mile crossing the railroad tracks through a hole in the fence to return to the Bulb. The City and the Sierra Club and other bourgeois groups have been arguing that the residents need to be evicted from the Bulb and the art must be destroyed in order make the area accessible to all community members, but this action dramatically restricting the heavy citizen use of the Bulb gives lie to that rationale. In fact, last Sunday there was an Albany police cruiser patrolling the parking for long periods, as well a a Albany fire truck traversing the dirt roads, apparently aimed at discouraging people from using the Bulb. What seems to scare the City and Sierra Club is exactly the popularity of the Bulb with visitors AS IT IS, uniquely unencumbered by numbing bureaucratic restrictions on artistic expression, camping or recreation, such as walking your dog OFF LEASH. There is to my knowledge no other place on the Bay where you can throw a stick for your dog into the water or create art from washed up debris. We stopped the City Of Oakland from extending parking meter hours a few years back. Recently this December 500 signatures and hundreds of Active Water Gate Residents forced the Emeryville Go Round bus Company to restore the Watergate Bus Stop. We can make the authorities respond to our demands here, as well. 500,OOO DOLLARS has been SPENT TO DESTROY the BULB. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO STOP THIS TIME UNLESS WE HAVE A MASS MOVEMENT. Call or email Orion to volunteer to collect signatures at other times at: ohohorion99@gmail.com (510) 541-3835 For more info on the Bulb see sharethebulb.org
At 4:30 or so after collecting signatures there wil be an Art Walk around the Bulb. This walk was inspired by a burning man funeral that took place at the Albany Bulb January 11th, over 100 people honered their comrade with a Norse-style boat burning and fire works ceremony. It was very moving.
IT COULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IF WE HAD LET THEM DESTROY OUR SPACE OCT. 1st 2012 EVICTION. WE HAVE WON SO FAR.
But many of you haven’t see the BULB I have seen. Please visit by yourself…or join my sunset walk on Sunday, Feb. 2. Heavy rain cancels.
DETAILS
Meet at the parking lot at 1 Buchanan Street Extension, Albany 4:30 pm Bring water. snacks, drinks, & flashlights.Visit the wonderful chair/throne built years ago and still there and inscribed “from me to you” and watch sunset from beach then take a 15 min walk to Osha Neuman’s “Crying Women Sculpture.” There we will share stories of the Bulb, future, present and past, & maybe music. Then go to Mad Mike’s Castle & look through the port hole and see the Golden Gate Bridge framed perfectly in the window. And come back on the Water Trail which has 100s of flag stones and finish at the MOSAIC HEART. The trip should be about 2 hrs. We plan to have minimum disturbance to our friends the residents.
Call me or email me or just show up. To get a preview of art go to:
Google ‘image search’ albany bulb
Orion (510) 541-3835
Check out some of Orion’s songs here:
Interview with Orion on KPFA News about new parking restrictions
GG speaking before Albany Shitty Council on homelessness and the Bulb
Join the Open University @ Occupy Cal for our initial meeting of the semester on Monday Feb. 3rd 2014 on the Mario Savio steps.
Campaigns:
1) Ax the Regents:
The UC Board of Regents is the root of all evil for the UC system. This board consists of 18 members appointed by the state Governor for 12 year terms, 7 Ex Officio members, and 1 Student appointed for 1 year terms. None of the board members are democratically elected and some are/will be on their second 12 year terms if we do nothing!
The individuals appointed/reappointed by Gov. Brown are all campaign contributors of his as the following article delineates and all have been heavily involved in the privatization, militarization and betrayal of Public Education.
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/17/local/la-me-uc-regents-20140118
2) BP Off Campus:
The BP-EBI deal is a $500 Million privatization scam which has diverted critical Energy research at Cal from truly sustainable sources to GMO microbes for rapid fossil fuel production patents for BP. Find all the details on our campaign website:
http://www.bpoffcampus.org
3) People’s History of Activism at Cal:
In an effort to prevent past activist mistakes and to create an institutional memory of all activism at Cal, the Open University has initiated an effort to compile, edit, and present an ongoing people’s history of activism at Cal. Find below one of such articles:
http://ergoat.blogspot.com/2013/11/occupy-cal-infiltrated-by-police.html
4) Cops Off Campus:
From the UCPD thugs that brutally beat peaceful student protesters at Cal on Nov. 9th 2011 or pepper sprayed peaceful students at UC Davis on Nov. 17th 2011 to the recent takeover of the UC Presidency by the secretary of homeland security (a.k.a. the chief federal cop) all presence of armed hired hands is an unprecedented disturbing. Most civilized countries do not allow the presence of armed police on school and university campuses. Then why would the #1 Public University in the world allow such a travesty?
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. The City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which will protect the Post Office against various commercial uses. We need to stay on top of it. The American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. Encouraging articles have come out just recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked and we need to be on the leading edge of that. And Barbara Lee has introduced even stronger language into legislation to stop the sale of Historic Post Offices.
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.
The Environmental Impact Statement released by the State Department on Friday does not take a stand on whether President Obama should approve the pipeline. That�s good and bad: on the one hand, it�s better than the previous reports, which gave much more support for the pipe — but on the other hand, it avoids the glaringly obvious fact that that a pipeline carrying 800,000 barrels per day of the world�s dirtiest oil would be a disaster for the climate, and the lives of Indigenous communities, farmers and homes along the route.
We�ve been in this place before. We may be here again. And what counts in moments like these is not the words in Washington�s reports, but rather the voices of people in the streets — that�s what changes the equation for the President.