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The Community Democracy Project is your connection to direct democracy in Oakland! Convened out of Occupy Oakland in Fall 2011, we’re gathering steam on a campaign to bring the people back in touch with the city’s resources through participatory budgeting.
Picture this: Across Oakland, Neighborhood Assemblies are regularly
held in every community. People come together to tackle the important issues of their neighborhoods and of the city. At these assemblies, people don’t just have discussions–they learn from one another, from city staff, and they make fundamental decisions about how the city should run. They decide the city budget.
Democratic, community budgeting is a powerful step toward building strong communities, real democracy, and economic justice–and it’s being done all over the world.
The budget of the City Oakland totals more than $1 billion per year. Although part of the budget must be used for specific purposes, still over half of the budget–over $500 billion per year–consists of general purpose funds paid by the taxes, fees, and fines of the people of Oakland. The Mayor and the City Council decide the city budget, with minimal input from the community.
Working together, we will not only get a seat at the table–we will REBUILD the table itself. Participatory democracy is real democracy–join us to say: Local People, Local Resources, Local Power!
Free Movie: This is What Democracy Looks Like (2000 Documentary Directed by Jill Friedberg and Rick Rowley – 72 minutes.) Filmed during the WTO protest in Seattle, November 30, 1999. Plus WTO shorts and discussion.
The Fukushima nuclear plant disaster remains very dangerous. What might we still be able to do about it? Who’s monitoring radiation levels? What about California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, surrounded by a dozen earthquake faults, and San Onofre, closed in 2013 but containing tons of nuclear waste? Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen and Fairewinds Director Maggie Gundersen; with Joanna Macy, environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, deep ecology, whose work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age; Gar Smith, author “Nuclear Roulette”; Mary Beth Brangan, EON-Ecological Options Network; songs by singer-songwriter Vic Sadot.
Sponsored by the BFUU SJC, EON, Codepink Women for Peace
Wheelchair accessible.
For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
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For weekly notices of BFUU services etc. go to:
http://www.bfuu.org/signup.html
Stand against the war on black people on Monday Nov. 23rd! Protest global displacement, policing and repression! Protest state Violence!
One of the many weapons of State sanctioned violence is displacement. The gentrification we see in the Bay Area is an extension of land theft, exploitation, colonial expansion, and forced migration seen all across the world. Communities impacted by displacement will be coming together to raise their voices in support of the Black Friday14! While the State attempts to criminalize Black activists for demonstrating their power, we will demonstrate our commitment collective liberation and to ending anti-Black violence here and everywhere.
Let’s honor cultures and the resilience of our communities here in Oakland. Let’s show the City of Oakland what the people of Oakland stand for!
**Bring a paint brush OR a toothbrush!!**
#3rdWorld4BlackPower #BlackLivesMatter #BlackPowerMatters#BlackResistanceMatters #BlackFriday14
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Occupyforum presents
“Race” is not a noun, it is a verb (“to racialize”)
with Steve Martinot
To recognize the operations of the structures of racialization in the US today, and the role of white racialized identity in maintaining those structures, we must know their history. Thus we can see the structural components, and identify them in contemporary events and political processes. This capability has become all the more urgent because, though the civil rights movements seriously undermined the hegemony of whiteness, it did not contest the underlying structures of racialization. It is the resurfacing of those structures that is now making a violent political comeback, and reconstituting the elements of white racialized identity.
The strength of this comeback leaves the old language of anti-racism weak and ineffective. The new resistance that this resurgence has engendered needs to see much more clearly what we are up against than the old civil rights movements did. To see and hit at the core of this resurgence, which includes the prison industry and the police-prison nexus, we need to see how its structural components work together and resurrect each other.”
Steve Martinot has been a human rights activist most of his life as a union organizer, community organizer, anti-war activist and historian on the structures of racialization in the US. He is a former political prisoner, and active in prisoner solidarity work today. His 8 books include “The Rule of Racialization” and “The Machinery of Whiteness,” (Temple University Press). His latest publication is
“The Need to Abolish the Prison System.”
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
Wheelchair accessible, ride shares announced.
Come learn about continuing developments in the battle to save the Berkeley Post Office, other Post Offices in the area, and the Postal Service from privatization. Support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.
Since Federal Judge William Alsup’s ruling in April, 2015 after the Postal Service told the judge it is not currently selling the building, the Postal Service has remained silent and no further attempts at a sale have been attempted. But we’re not fooled. They could “find” a buyer at any moment (although the Judge ordered the Postal Service to provide 42 days notice before any sale, so that the City of Berkeley’s lawsuit could be refiled).
Check out the Community Garden at the Post Office.
In more recent developments, Berkeley has Declared War on Its Homeless, and an ordinance criminalizing the homeless came before the City Council on June 30th (see here and here) but was tabled to some indeterminate date.
November 1st will be the one year anniversary of First They Came for the Homeless’ occupation of the downtown Post Office’s grounds. FTCftH is planning a sit/lie protest in San Francisco on Black Friday.
Check out our website and the Save the Berkeley Post Office website, and First they Came for the Homeless Facebook for updates.
BPOD is an offshoot of Strike Debt Bay Area, which itself is an offshoot of Occupy Oakland and a chapter of the national Strike Debt movement, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.
Berkeley Copwatch is tired of unjust policing and lack of accountability. We stand in solidarity with those protesting the murders of black people across the nation and say that this must end! We have our unique problems in Berkeley and the East Bay and we must take local action to stand up and demand justice!
We Demand:
- End racial profiling in Berkeley! Get the statistics on who is really being detained and arrested and stop handcuffing men of color for no reason!
- No tasers in Berkeley! Spend money to study how to end racial profiling – not acquire tasers!
- End the militarization of the police! No boats, no armored personnel carriers, no more weapons and no more military games. Withdraw from Urban Shield!
- Justice For Kayla Moore!
- Decriminalize Mental Illness! Police with no training in mental health crisis are most often the first responders to these kinds of situations. Berkeley must fully fund emergency mental health response in the city and prevent militarized cops from being the first point of contact for members of the public who need help in dealing with emergency mental health situations. No more putting spit hoods over the heads of people with mental illness! No taser use on mentally ill people! Counselors not cops!
Meetings at 7pm every Monday!
As part of our monthly Statewide Coordinated Actions To End Solitary Confinement, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition (PHHS) folks will be writing cards to prisoners. Although this is short notice, we invite you to join us. We’ll be writing cards from 7pm til around 9-9:30pm, so come for as short or as long a time as you’re able.
The 3rd floor Conference Room is on the left side of the corridor as you exit left out of the elevator, a few doors down (near the bathrooms).
Please note that the front door downstairs at 1904 Franklin is typically locked by 7pm. We will try to have someone at the door, but if you find the door locked, you can text Kim at 415-756-2896 to come down and let you in.
If you can, please bring snacks to share.
Earlier in the day on November 23rd, from 12noon to 2pm at 14th and Broadway (Oakland), people will be out with banners, handing out information and talking with passersby about ending solitary confinement and ending the sleep deprivation torture that has been ongoing in CA solitary units for over 110 days! If you can take some lunch time to join us, please do.
Check out togethertoendsolitary.org or togethertoendsolitary.org/events/ for actions on Nov 23rd in other parts of California and the country. Also, if you are planning an action for Monday, Nov 23rd against solitary confinement, please submit the details to that site.
Statewide Coordinated Actions To End Solitary Confinement and Together to End Solitary actions on the 23rd of each month for the 23 or more hours every day that a person is kept in their solitary confinement cell.
Standing Silent Nation (2006), Directed by Suree Towfighnia. From the hemp fields of Pine Ridge to the US Federal Court of Appeals, this one-hour documentary tracks one family’s effort to create economic independence for themselves, their reservation, and their future generations.
When the Oglala Sioux tribe passed an ordinance separating industrial hemp from its illegal cousin, marijuana, Alex White Plume and his family glimpsed a brighter future. They never dreamed they would find themselves swept up in a struggle over tribal sovereignty, economic rights, and common sense.
The hemp plant is like a new buffalo for the Lakota: a resource whose many uses (from food to fuel to fiber) could enrich their sovereign nation. For three years, Alex White Plume and his family planted industrial hemp. But each year, their harvest was disrupted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which claims that hemp is marijuana despite the absence of marijuana’s psychoactive properties.
Happy Thanksgiving from the US government…
Doors open at 6pm, film screens at 6:30. Come give thanks for free popcorn??
~ Sponsored by Liberated Lens ~
Join us to fight for a livable wage for all Bay Area workers! We collaborate in principled reflection and action on what the Bay Area livable wage would be and where we are at on the right to a livable wage.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds Community and Power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers.
Our work together encompasses:
(1) The concerns of precarious, care and contingent workers,
(2) Campaigns to improve wages for low wage workers, and
(3) Efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.
We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.
Oakland Livable Wage Assembly meets every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:00 PM at the SEIU Local 1000 Union Hall, 436 14th Street #200, Oakland, CA
Please love and support one another ~ We have a duty to fight ~ We have a duty to win!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568668586707336/
The pressure is on for District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to drop the charges against the Black Friday 14, but we can’t let up now.
This gathering, part of a campaign that began with the Fight for $15/Labor action on November 10, brings together people of faith, faith communities, and people of conscience across the spectrum to ask the district attorney “Which side are you on?” and to call on her to end the selective prosecution of these Black activists. (The white activists who committed civil disobedience during the same period have not been charged.)
Join us for rousing music, drumming, speakers, prayer, rituals, celebration of our freedom fighters, and more.
The developers have annouced that in less than ONE WEEK they’ll break ground on the historic Gill Tract! Bring the ruckus! Bring the noise! No business as usual until Sprouts pulls out of plans to develop on our Gill Tract farmland.
We’ll meet at the Walnut Creek store on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, one of the nation’s busiest grocery shopping days, and we’ll make sure that everyone knows to Boycott Sprouts! We’ll have a Dance Disruption lead by Jasmine Fuego, and beautiful examples of what a REAL farmer’s market looks like and means to farmers and our community. Please come for part if not all of this critical action!
Many homeless people are gathered in protest at Old Berkeley City Hall this week demanding human services and opposing the anti-homeless ordinances about to be passed by the Berkeley City Council.
On Thanksgiving Day, save a dish or two from your Thanksgiving feast and bring it down to Old City Hall! Of course it will be appreciated on Friday and over the weekend too!
Please join workers and community members as we continue to challenge Walmart for $15 and Full Time. You can find more information on the national actions at www.protests.blackfriday. See you on Black Friday.
Funeral of Richard Perkins, killed by Oakland police
The mother of Richard, Ada Perkins Henderson,extends an invitation to all supporters to attend the funeral of her son. Richard was killed by the Oakland Police on Sunday, Nov. 15.
Richard was shot 16 times by 4 police officers.
Plz join us for the 16th anniversary of our annual protest. In 1999, the City of Emerryville built the Mall that now sits on the corner of Shellmound St and Ohlone Way. This space was once a Ohlone village site and it was one of the largest Shellmounds in the Bay Area. The sacred Shellmound once stood over 60ft high and 350 ft in diameter and it was considered the largest funerary complex of the Ohlone people. When the mall was built, we petitioned the city council and asked them not to destroy our sacred sites, but the developers and the businesses ignored our voices. Although, the mall was built, our resistance is alive and it has never died. Hence, every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, we’ve organized an educational protest to remind everyone that Ohlone peoples are alive in the Bay Area and we aim to educate the public on why and how the desecration of Ohlone sacred sites hurts Ohlones and everyone living here in the Bay Area. We also ask people to not shop at this mall.
Bring friends,food to share, appropriate and thoughtful signs and plz bring your positive attitudes. The ceremony at the protest will include spoken word, sacred songs and dances. Plz contact organizers beforehand if you have an offering you would like to share.
FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE HOMELESS IS ORGANIZING
Occupy the Sidewalks
DON’T STAND FOR SIT LIE
Stop the war on the poor
Section 168 of the San Francisco Police Code, makes it unlawful, with certain exceptions, to sit or lie on a public sidewalk, or on an object placed on a public sidewalk, between 7AM and 11PM.
(4) participating in or attending a parade, festival, performance, rally, demonstration, meeting or similar event conducted on a sidewalk under and in compliance with a street use or other applicable permit;
Protesting the law allows you to sit. The constitution guarantees you’re right to peaceably assemble in the commons. Remove their ability to prosecute and persecute the homeless. The commons belong to all!
The sidewalks of San Francisco have been a battleground if you are homeless. Sit lie is used to shuffle the poor out of sight. We take the shopping district on black Friday.
Join us for a speakout and rally against the recent white supremacist shootings against #4thPrecinctShutDown and #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators in North Minneapolis and in solidarity with the ongoing protests in Chicago in the wake of Laquan MacDonald horrific murder by police in 2014. From the growing white nationalism of Trump’s campaign to the now over 1,000 people shot down by law enforcement in 2015 alone, such systemic white supremacy has ushered in a new phase of the black liberation struggle. Now is the time to take sides and get organized.
Big ups to our comrades in Berkeley and East Oakland who have walked out of school and stood firm in the face of police terror.
Bring signs, banners, and noise makers!
Various community speakers will address the crowd as well as guests calling in from Minneapolis and Chicago!
#Oakland solidarity rally for #Justice4Jamar #Chicago #LaquanMcDonald #4thPrecinctShutDown. Fri November 27 5pm. pic.twitter.com/v2TyW1WcrD
— FireWorks (@FireWorksBAY) November 25, 2015
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Occupyforum Night Out…
Reassessing and Recommitting
To Your Activism in Dire Times
We are coming to the end of another year of our activism, which invites us to reassess and hopefully recommit. This year has seen a surge of resistance: Black Lives Matter, anti-incarceration, climate justice and environmental justice locally and globally, immigration activism, anti-gentrification and protection of those victimized by it, Indigenous leadership, peace activism — way too much to list. At OccupyForum, we’ve been hearing from activists in all these battles and are an active part of this Movement.
But in our own circles, we take time out to express our frustration, anger and fear that what we see in the world is just too much. We have been to workshops and read books about taking care of ourselves when we are dealing with the world’s trauma, and getting help staying sane. The topic tonight, instead, is how to stay inspired (not just functioning!). How do we keep our work strong and focused when we are feeling afraid, defeated, and hopeless about our progress as a Movement?
“Much of life is sad, and there’s nothing to be done about it. (All my activist friends are more than a little disappointed in the complacency of a populous who still refuse to join us in the streets, even as our corporate masters destroy the planet.) Sometimes we ignore happiness and healing when it’s dangled in front of us… There is one, and only one solution, but people are too scared to embrace it. Suffering, when you’re used to it, can feel safe. That solution is: come together, right now, over us.” — Peter
“I personally need to make sure I name the whole spectrum of my feelings in order to redouble efforts in the face of the madness. I’m so angry about what’s going on with black lives in this country I don’t know what to do. We protest and it flies back up in our face. We are living in an insane asylum in Amerikkka…. but it doesn’t mean we can afford to give up. Gandhi says you have to keep tipping the scales drop by drop.” – Ruthie
This Forum is for YOU. Please come to share your own feelings in the face of insanity, and tell us what advice you have for the rest of us to help focus the rage and despair into productive activism.
We have a little extra $ to help pay for food if you’re broke!
Don’t let cost keep you away!