Calendar
Meeting with Program featuring Norman Solomon of Roots Action!
SF 99% Coalition
Free and open to the public
6 – 6:30 PM: Potluck Dinner
6:30 – 7:25: Meeting
Agenda:
Welcome & Intros
UU updates-Treasurer’s Report
Environmental News/Actions
Other Recent Actions Reportbacks
Sept 20 OccupySF Street Theatre Update
Sept 21 Climate March Update
Announcements
7:30 – 9:00 Program
Speakers:Norman Solomon, journalist and media critic
followed by
Janet Weil & Susan Harman on opposing Urban Shield (with brief powerpoint presentation);
Zaki Manian of Restore the 4th on state & natl legislation.
Q and A to follow.
Show up and learn about Sudo Room! Make friends. Have fun.
We encourage other collectives to host similar events for the community (and each other) to learn about us.
We meet, usually every two weeks, to discuss various readings in the theory and practice of debt, from personal to corporate to sovereign.
Readings for this meeting:
This: Out of thin air – Why banks must be allowed to create money.
And a reply to it: Sovereign-Money-in-Critical-Context-Huber
And a video: State Money Versus Bank Money.
Fighting for $15/hour and a union: when we stick together we are heard.
Join us this Thursday in Oakland!
It’s just wrong that so many fast food workers aren’t paid enough to afford our basic needs, like food, transportation and housing. We’re united for a $15/hour wage floor and the right to form a union without retaliation. Raising pay will lift up our families and our community.
Also a rally at 11 am at Oscar Grant Plaza
More on facebook: East Bay Fast Food Workers & Twitter: @fairfastfood
#StrikeFastFood: Join us as we ramp up efforts for $15 and the right to unionize without retaliation. For respect, fair treatment, and against extreme income inequality. WE DESERVE MORE!
PUBLIC FORUM:
SHOULD BERKELEY POLICE USE TASERS ON
THE PEOPLE OF BERKELEY?
Thursday September 4th at 7pm
1939 Addison St, Berkeley, CA 94704
(two blocks from BART)
Berkeley Police are asking the City Council for tasers. The City Council wants a study. Some critics believe that tasers are part of the militarization of our city. The Coalition for a Taser Free Berkeley is convening a diverse panel to discuss their experiences with tasers and to help Berkeley make an informed decision about whether to acquire the weapons. We invite members of the public, city employees and even police officers who are genuinely concerned about how tasers will affect the community to attend, ask questions and participate.
Panelists include:
- Aram James, Activist and former Public Defender Palo Alto
- Barbara Ann White, Berkeley NAACP Vice President and Community Mental Health Professional
- James Chanin. Founding member of the Police Review Commission, Civil Rights lawyer
- Jeremy Miller, Program Director, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Co-organizer of the successful campaign to stop San Francisco from getting tasers
This event is free and open to the public. It is wheelchair accessible.
Sponsored by Coalition for a Taser Free Berkeley
(510) 548-0425
PUBLIC FORUM:
SHOULD BERKELEY POLICE USE TASERS ON THE PEOPLE OF BERKELEY?
Berkeley Police are asking the City Council for tasers. The City Council wants a study. The Coalition for a Taser Free Berkeley is convening a diverse panel to discuss their experiences with tasers and to help Berkeley make an informed decision. We invite members of the public, city employees and police officers who are genuinely concerned about how tasers will affect the community. We will consider taser effects on various communities, mentally ill people, previous cities’ experience with tasers and how taser use would be monitored and police officers be held accountable?
Panelists include:
- Aram James, Activist and former Public Defender Palo Alto
- Barbara Ann White, Berkeley NAACP representative and Berkeley Mental Health
- James Chanin. Founding member of the Police Review Commission, Civil Rights lawyer
- Jeremy Miller, Program Director, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Co-organizer of the successful campaign to stop San Francisco from getting tasers
More speakers to be announced! Public discussion to follow.
This event is free and open to the public. It is wheelchair accessible.
Contact: CoalitionforTaserFreeBerkeley.org or taserfreeberkeley@gmail.com
COPWATCH AT UC BERKELEY
Berkeley Copwatch is working with UC students to offer Copwatch for Credit this Fall. This class is free and welcomes ALL members of the public. Fortunately, through the DeCal class at UCB, students can get up to 2 units of credit for reading, attending class and going on actual Copwatch shifts in the community. The first part of the class will focus on knowing your rights during police encounters and from there we will study community control, civilian review, specific cases including Eric Garner, Andy Lopez, Kayla Moore and more. Students will hear guest speakers on current topics in policing and the struggle for police accountability.
Contact: berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com
| SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER: ELAINE BROWN. | |
| Please join in unity with the families, friends, and supporters of James Rivera Jr, Mario Romero, and Andy Lopez; Oakland California, September 5th, 2014.The people will gather for a free community BBQ and March for justice, starting at 11:30am @ Plaza Park. Come out and enjoy free food, hear the families and friends of these young men speak about the growing trend in police violence and how it effects ALL OF US.Around 3:30 we will march to the Marriott in downtown Oakland to join the protest rally against Urban Shield.
Join the call for California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris to indict trigger happy killer cops Gregory Dunn, Eric Azarvand, John Nesbitt (cops who killed James Rivera Jr); Dustin Joseph, and Sean Kenny (killers of Mario Romero); and Erick Gelhaus (deputy who shot and killed 13 year old Andy Lopez); on Charges of Murder. The people say NO MORE!!! All three of these victims were unarmed and assassinated by officers in their home towns.James Rivera was 16 years old and killed when officers fired 48 shots at him from 9mm pistols and one AR-15 assault rife. Mario Romero, a father, brother, and friend to many, was murdered by Vallejo Police. Mario was not suspected of a crime and was sitting in his own car in front of his home when officers Dustin Joseph and Sean Kenny unloaded their guns on him, stealing him away from us for life. Andy Lopez was only 13 years old when Sonoma County Sheriff Deputy Erick Gelhaus shot him 7 times because he was playing with an airsoft rifle in a field near his home in Santa Rosa Ca.
|
Join the Coalition against Urban Shield for a Press Conference at 4:00 PM and immediately afterwards a Rally. Tell the Marriott we don’t appreciate their holding the Urban Shield Conference, an event which glorifies the militarization of police. Let Oakland and Oakland’s politicians know that in light of events in Ferguson, there is absolutely no excuse to arm the police with the weapons of war.
Join us in commemorating the suspension of the largest hunger strike in U.S. history-begun on July 8, 2013 by over 30,000 people.
At great cost to their health, dozens of incarcerated people in CA fasted nonviolently for 60 days, ending on September 5, 2013.
The 2013 hunger strike-the third since 2011-aimed to win 5 demands and end CA’s arbitrary and inhumane policy of isolating individuals in solitary confinement indefinitely- based on mere association without regard to actual conduct.
Food at 1:00 PM.
RSVP: bit.ly/RSVPSept6
Carpooling arranged from:
Southern CA (714) 290-9077
Northern CA PeoplesARC@gmail.com / (707)442-7465
Santa Cruz tashnguyen@gmail.com / (408) 499-7912
Speakers: Anita Wills, Chris Kinder, Carol Denney and Mansour Id-Deen.
Sponsored by the Peace and Freedom Party.
Come get connect with SDBA’s many projects:- organizing for public banking in Oakland
- nonprofit check cashing and public finance study initiatives through the participatory budgeting process
- saving the Berkeley Post Office and stopping the Staples non-union takeover of good Post Office jobs
- working with the City of Richmond and other municipalities for eminent domain seizure of underwater mortgages from the banksters
- participating in Occupy San Francisco’s third anniversary convergence
- ongoing study group
- distribution of Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual
- student debt resistance
- and much more!
Oakland Nights Live will be having our next show a week from Saturday.
It will be the 1st part of a 2 month series covering the Oakland mayor’s race.
WHO:
BRYAN PARKER – bryanparker.org
JOE TUMAN – joetuman.com
EINSTEIN – einsteinforoakland.org
Report from the frontlines of the Ferguson rebellion.
Making plans for a massive demonstration on October 22nd in Oakland.
Trial is scheduled Monday – Thursday.
One writeup from 2006:
Kahlil Sullivan hasn’t had time to do much lately other than plan for his younger brother’s funeral. He hasn’t even had time to find out exactly why his brother is dead.
“We feel like we’re lost,” he said over the phone a week after his cornered and unarmed brother was shot and killed by the San Francisco Police Department.
The cops have offered two stories as to why officers fired a still-undisclosed number of bullets into the body of Asa Sullivan on June 6. And neither one seems to make much sense or explain why they shot Sullivan.
…
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!! Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue on all sides of these critically important issues!
To honor Thursdays non-violent direct action at Kinder Morgan, Occupy Forum presents the film:
Just Do It.
This Thursday, more than a dozen Bay Area citizens (our comrades from Sunflower Alliance, OccupyOakland, and others in this affinity group) chained themselves to a gate at the Kinder Morgan rail terminal in Richmond to stop operations. The citizens risked arrest to protest mile-long oil trains that threaten the safety of area residents and are a massive new source of air and carbon pollution in the region.
Among the demonstrators were residents of Richmond, Rodeo, Martinez, and Benicia, all towns that currently see dangerous oil trains moving through residential areas. Earlier this year the regional air quality agency, known as the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, changed an existing permit to allow oil trains at the rail facility. Demonstrators contend that the agency broke the law when it modified the existing permit without additional environmental and safety review. “Bomb Trains” are an environmental justice issue, a climate issue, and one of the most reckless, heedless gambits Big Oil has thrown our way.
In honor of our sisters and brothers who are leading the way for us all in the Bay Area and around the country, OccupyForum will screen the film “Just Do It – A Tale of Modern Day Outlaws” by Emily James. The documentary follows climate activists as they blockade factories, attack coal power stations and glue themselves to the trading floors of international banks despite the very real threat of arrest and abuse. It seems the time has come for everyone who can muster up the courage to put our bodies on the line.
Discussion and Announcements will follow.
link to video of our comrades locking down to the gate at Kinder Morgan
The Postal Service has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
The Postal Service outsourced 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.
On July 29th, at our invite, Ralph Nader spoke on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office against privatization and corporatism. Watch and listen to his talk here.
We’ve began the “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management! Here’s the front of the postcard. The campaign has been adopted by Postal Unions, the San Francisco Labor Council and has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, and has gone national!
All four Postal Unions have joined together to support maintaining full service, public Post Offices in every community, with expansion to include postal banking, and to oppose subcontracting and privatization of services. The California Federation of Teachers passed a resolution in support of opposition to Staples. Just recently the American Federation of Teachers, AFCSME and UNITE HERE did too.
Check out our correspondence with the President of the American Postal Workers Union, Mark Dimondstein. The APWU has been leading the charge against Staples.
For most of July the sidewalk in front of Staples was ‘occupied’ 24/7 by an intrepid band of San Francisco occupiers with solidarity and support from BPOD members distributing literature and convincing people not to shop at Staples. They’re back! Come hang out with them outside Staples at Durant & Shattuck.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale! The Advisory Commission on Historical Preservation came out with its report, recommending that sales of Historic Post offices be halted until the USPS conforms with historical preservation law. Here is our response. Also the Office of Inspector General’s report on the sale of Historic Post Offices came out recently – anything could happen now since Congress’ “request” that no historic Post Offices be sold until it had come out has been honored and no further Congressional request or mandate has come down. Come help us plan our response.
We have joined with other activists in Berkeley to put a ballot initiative on the ballot to rezone the Berkeley Post Office and other areas in the Historic District to prevent privatization, and also to insure a better Downtown Berkeley. We succeeded in getting the necessary signatures; it will be voted on in November, but Tom Bates and the City Council have nefarious plans to undermine our coalition. The Berkeley Planning Commission passed a similar zoning ordinance (finally) on August 27th. It will go before the City Council on September 9th.
Encouraging articles are still coming out about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. The National Conference of Mayors recently endorsed Postal Banking. Pew Research held a day-long seminar on Postal Banking. The Postal unions and other groups have announced plans for a conference on postal banking in November.
We are planning our next event, ‘Jam the Sale.’ Spread the work and come help us out!
Let’s fill the room and make sure the Ordinance – more than a year after it was proposed – gets passed! It will rezone the downtown Historic District to prevent usages of the buildings or land for other than civic purposes, thereby rendering a sale of the Post Office or the other historic buildings around the downtown park to a developer not worth it to the developer, who won’t be able to build a twenty story office building with a McDonald’s at street level.
Come lend your support and speak about preserving the public commons!