Calendar
Sponsored by ACCE:
In addition to Wells Fargo, there are a number of Big Corporations who are aggressively lobbying and spending money on politicians to deceive voters and in the name of more profit to hold back the recovery. We will be targeting a company that has been holding back our campaign to fix the housing crisis.
HALLOWEEN ACTION at the OAKLAND AIRPORT!!
Ghosts and zombies are scary – organizing your workplace shouldn’t be!
Non-union fast food workers at the Oakland Airport are fighting for the right to organize without fear. They want their restaurants to sign card check agreements – so they can decide freely whether to join a union, without retaliation or intimidation from their bosses. This Halloween, come stand with them!
Costumes not required, but highly encouraged!
Featuring face painting and Halloween snacks!
For questions or rides, contact Sarah Norr at 510-502-5344 or snorr@unitehere.org.
Sponsored by ACCE:
Join us for a big mobilization to Protect San Francisco City College. Our week of action will culminate in a march to deliver several thousand postcards to Mayor Lee asking him to protect City College. We need our City College to keep its broad mission and protect educational access for low-income and immigrant communities, veterans, older adults, displaced workers, and so many others.
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the weeks tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
The Post Office has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!! Come and help plan our next actions in defense of our post office and against privatization.
Four weeks ago we learned that perfidious Post Office Executives, who only the week before had sent a letter to the Berkeley City Council offering to negotiate until at least November 12th, had had CBRE (Richard Blum’s company) list the downtown Berkeley Post Office for sale.
Check out the video of Peter Byrne’s talk at our recent Save the Post Office Rally!
March to The District Attorney’s Office, 600 Administration Drive, Room 212 J Santa Rosa.
WE HAVE ONE DEMAND, for now. We demand Erick Gelhaus be immediately fired, arrested, and Indicted for the Murder of Andy Lopez. We will march to the District Attorney’s OFFICE on this coming Tuesday, the 5th, planning to leave downtown around 1:30. We need everyone that can be there, there. Justice cannot wait!
To all students: Do not let people attempt to quite your voice. It is your voice that is fueling this fight for Andy. It is your voice that has the power to lead to change. It is your voice that needs to be heard!!!
The District Attorney is the one that will decide if Gelhaus is to be arrested. For that reason, we must unite, and stand on the shoulders of “outside agitators” and take our message to the doorstep of the D.A., Jill Ravitch, “Jailhouse for Gelhaus !!!!”
JOIN US IN SANTA ROSA ON TUESDAY NOV 5TH, AS WE FIGHT FOR JUSTICE FOR ANDY LOPEZ. HIS MURDERER STILL FREE ON THE STREETS AS ANDY’S FAMILY’S LIFE IS FOREVER SHATTERED BECAUSE ERICK GELHAUS DID NOT EVEN GIVE ANDY 10 SECONDS TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING BEFORE HE WAS MURDERED IN HIS OWN NEIGHBORHOOD.
WE DEMAND A MURDER INDICTMENT FOR ERICK GELHAUS!! THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY JILL RAVITCH IS FACING RE-ELECTION – MAKE SURE SHE UNDERSTANDS HER FAILURE TO PROSECUTE ERICK GELHAUS WILL BE THE END OF HER CAREER!!
The Oakland City Council will soon consider whether to endorse Richmond’s strategy to use eminent domain as a tool to fight foreclosure and study whether it should do the same. The council will take up the issue at a 4:30 p.m. special meeting on Nov. 5 that was requested by Council members Desley Brooks, Larry Reid and Noel Gallo.
Richmond’s effort to do something constructive about mortgage relief for large numbers of homeowners in Richmond is being supported by Strike Debt Bay Area (Facebook and webpage) and ACCE.
For background check out this article by two Strike Debt Bay Area peeps, Can a Small California City Take on Wall Street—And Survive?.
Come and show your support for a city willing to take on Wall Street and demand that Oakland do the same.
What the new globalized, high-tech imperialism means for the class struggle in the U.S.
http://www.lowwagecapitalism.com/
3rd in series of three classes – if you’d like a copy of the book to read in advance of the class, please message Terri Kay to work out getting a copy to you. We will cover section 3 of 3 this week. If you missed session 1 or 2, no worries, you’ll be able to follow the discussion with no problem.
Snacks will be served – wheelchair accessible
Support the Zoning Overlay
WE MUST AGAIN PACK THE PLANNING COMMISSION PUBLIC HEARING
Zone for the Community, not the Developers
We need you to speak or be a supportive audience member.
SAVE THE BERKELEY POST OFFICE!
Over 75 people came to the last Planning Commission meeting–60 spoke FOR the Zoning Overlay and only 3 spoke for the developers. At this next meeting, the Commission will finalize its recommendation to the City Council.
WE MUST AGAIN BE THERE TO SPEAK FOR THE ZONING OVERLAY!
Berkeley’s Planning Commission and City Council propose to place a Zoning Overlay on Berkeley’s existing Historic District. This area includes Berkeley’s Old City Hall, New City Hall, Berkeley High School, Veteran’s Memorial Hall, and the Berkeley Main Post Office at 2000 Allston Way. The Zoning Overlay would limit the area’s use to community, cultural, and civic purposes. It will make the Post Office less vulnerable to developers and help the USPS realize the value that Berkeley places on its public services.
Berkeley’s historic Civic Center District is our Public Commons. Let’s protect it with appropriate zoning. Although the uses of buildings change, the end result must be a stronger community, not a richer real-estate developer. Let us show that we are a city of caring citizens in community.
Save the Berkeley Post Office Facebook.
Berkeley Post Office Defenders Meets Mondays on the Steps of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office.
As we step up a concerted transition to alternative energy, Big Oil lurches towards its last gasp: exponential development of fossil fuel infrastructure at West Coast ports for transport, storage, refining and shipping to Asian markets.
The WesPac Pittsburg Energy Infrastructure Project would transform Pittsburg (a dormant industrial, residential area in our Northern San Francisco Bay) into a major crude oil receiving, storage and shipping facility. WesPac develops, constructs, owns and operates infrastructure throughout North America for petroleum products handling, and Pittsburg is the next target for modernization and reactivation of its existing marine terminal and oil storage and transfer systems.
Plans are to move Canadian tar sands crude to the Chevron and Shell refineries through pipelines and extended rail systems, load it onto ships and send it to Asia to the tune of 242,000 barrels per day. This is the same dirty crude slated for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project drawing widespread opposition. Even dirtier crude oil would be shipped to the WesPac facility from southern California. Oil would also come from a huge deposit in North Dakota, which, like the California oil, would be extracted by fracking.
This development will include:
— Pipelines: Expand existing pipelines and add new lines from rail cars to tanks;
— New Rail: Build crude-by-rail transload facility; extend tracks, greatly increase rail shipments thru town;
— Storage: Modernize and reactivate the site’s tanks and build new ones;
— Tanker trucks, diesel trucks: Mobilize for construction and transport: (congestion, diesel fumes, road deterioration, traffic hazards);
— Shipping: Dredge and pile drive to deepen the Bay and reopen, expand and modernize Marine Terminal
Spills, leaks, blow-ups, smog, gas, fires (like the one in Richmond), soil contamination, prolonged effects on area air and water quality and health effects such as asthma, birth defects, and cancer, loom. Increased pollution from idling trucks, rail cars and ships — affecting wildlife, marshes and wetlands, the shoreline, polluted water in the delta (water used for drinking and agriculture), and decreased property values — will result. Pittsburg will become a fossil fuel backwater, and critically, greenhouse gas emissions, warming the climate, and threatening the integrity of our global ecosystem, jeopardize us all. Do we want the Bay Area to be the locus of this scheme to expand fossil fuel extraction and use? Do we want the health of Pittsburg and North Bay residents to be undermined by these environmental threats? And can we stand by as life on our planet is under attack?
Stand with Pittsburg and the Bay Area to Say “NO” to
Expansion of Fossil Fuel Infrastructure on our Bay
Come to the Berkeley Ecology Center to meet the groups forming to fight this and get involved in the upcoming actions and campaigns. We’ll hear the background and plan the backlash.
Coalition to fight massive tar sands export from our Bay: Pittsburg Defense Council, Idle No More, Baykeeper, Communities for a Better Environment, 350Bay Area, National Resource Defense Council, Sierra Club, Groups from North Bay refinery towns, OccupySF Environmental Justice, Forest Ethics, Richmond Progressive Alliance, Refinery Action Collaborative, Sunflower Alliance, No Tar Sands, Steelworkers, Occupy Action Council, and more joining every minute!!!
In light of other actions this day in Oakland and in Santa Rosa for Andy Lopez, the monthly Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition meeting has been postponed for a week.
Hope to see you all next week!
Rally – Speak Out – March
–
Nationwide outrage has swept across the nation in the wake of the brutal murder of 13 year-old Andy Lopez by Santa Rosa Sheriff Erik Gelhaus.
The worst thing we can do now is go home. Keep the pressure on!
Stand with us as we stand against terror in our communities because:
– Playing with toys is NOT a crime.
– Walking while Brown or Black is NOT a crime.
– Living our lives is NOT a crime.
Fire Prosecute and Jail Erick Gelhaus.
Sponsoring Organizations:
ONYX Organizing Committee, Justice for Alan Blueford (JAB), ANSWER, Oscar Grant Foundation
There will be protests, in Andy’s name, as a collaboration with countless organizations around the nation, with groups protesting in their own respective cities…
Facebook page, more info & RSVP.
Come Tell Your Story.
Guest Speakers & Open Mic. Music, Snacks, Information Tables.
Say NO to Veolia/City Union Busting!
Hands off the Boston School Bus Union 5
– Vice President Steven Gillis (fired 11/1/13),
– Grievance Chair and Local founder Stevan Kirschbaum (fired 11/1/13),
– Recording Secretary and Charlestown Chief Steward Andre Francois,
– Steward and Local founder Richard Lynch and Steward
– 3 term former President Garry Murchison.
The latter three suspended and threatened with firing.
Every day, USW Local 8751 members in Boston are experiencing more and increasing disrespect from Veolia management, including constant suspensions and threats based on bogus allegations and constant harassment. This includes an illegal lockout that occurred on October 8 that was substantiated and witnessed by local union officials and community leaders, which followed a constitutionally protected free speech protest and discussion by the workers of Veolia’s contract violations and disrespect.
eolia is an international conglomerate that has an extensive history of union busting, and relentless attacks on communities of color. Veolia is an International Tea Party patriot with links to the Koch brothers and the 1%. Their crimes of greed are worldwide, from the profits garnered from running segregated buses and a “settlers only” garbage dump in Israeli occupied Palestine.
Facebook page, More info & RSVP.
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the weeks tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
***PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE BELOW!
The Bay Area Battle in Transport: Workers Face Employer Onslaught
No More Defeats Like Wisconsin!
Business Unionism vs.
Class Struggle Unionism
Meeting:
November 10 (Sunday) 2:00 PM
At: Black Repertory Theater
3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley
Although BART workers marched through downtown Oakland in August and October chanting “Strike, strike, strike!”, union officials shackled them with a concessionary contract.
Why did BART workers settle for a concessionary contract after fighting for four months — striking twice, staging militant mass rallies in downtown Oakland, and inspiring AC Transit bus drivers and mechanics to twice vote down concessionary contracts — each time overwhelmingly?
Why did BART workers vote so resoundingly to approve the concessionary contract (more than 85% of those voting voted “Yes”)? Was this the best they could do? How could they have won a better contract?
Why didn’t BART union leaders mobilize the rank and file (for example, through democratically elected strike committees?) Why wasn’t there a joint strike committee of the BART unions (ATU 1555, SEIU 1021, and AFSCME 3993) and the AC Transit union (ATU 192)? Why did ATU 192 president Yvonne Williams denounce a joint strike of AC Transit workers and BART workers as “Armageddon”?
Why did BART and AC Transit union officials put their faith in Democratic politicians rather than reaching out aggressively to labor and the community? Why did ATU 1555 leaders call on Jerry Brown to invoke a 60-day cooling-off period to suspend the right to strike? How can we defend the right to strike for transit workers, when Democratic state politicians are drafting legislation to make such strikes illegal?
Why did ILWU officials turn their backs on their union’s militant history and direct their members to cross a picket line of port truckers and community supporters? How can ILWU members reclaim the solidarity their union badly needs. Longshoremen are locked out at two northwest ports. Scabs are doing their work. And negotiations for the ILWU’s master contract for all West Coast ports is just around the bend.
Has the labor movement lost its class struggle moorings? In its heyday unions fought for the unemployed and underemployed, for immigrant workers and youth, against racism and home foreclosures. What can be done to ignite such struggle today, forge real solidarity, and beat the bosses’ barrage of union busting?
Come hear speakers involved in these worker struggles:
George Figueroa– Strike Coordinator of the successful July BART strike for ATULocal 1555*, now being victimized by BART.
Clarence Thomas– Co-Chair of the Million Worker March, Executive Board member of ILWU 10*
A Member ATU Local 192* (AC Transit worker)
Yemane Seium, Frank Adams– Organziers, Oakland Port Truckers’ Association*
Jack Heyman– Chair of TWSC and an organizer of the 1984 longshore anti-apartheid ship boycott, the May Day 2008 anti-war West Coast port shutdown and the 2010 Bay Area ports protest for justice for Oscar Grant
(*for identification purposes only)
This forum is organized by the Transport Workers Solidarity Comittee (www.transportworkers.org)
The Post Office has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
Five weeks ago we learned that perfidious Post Office Executives, who only the week before had sent a letter to the Berkeley City Council offering to negotiate until at least November 12th, had had CBRE (Richard Blum’s company) list the downtown Berkeley Post Office for sale.
Last week the Planning Commission passed on to the Berkeley City a proposed Zoning Ordinance that would make the Post Office property less desirable to potential purchasers of the capitalist variety.
Come and help plan our next actions in defense of our post office and against privatization.
Check out the video of Peter Byrne’s talk at our recent Save the Post Office Rally!