Calendar
JAB is currently focused on the demand that California Attorney General Kamala Harris do her job & prosecute ALL killer cops. Everyone is welcome, we will meet at The Alan Blueford Center for Justice at 2434 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, please check here for late changes.
Our latest action was a civil disobedience “standin” at Oakland’s State Building that resulted in eight people being arrested, but the good news is that all the charges are being dropped.
Upcoming events we will be discussing include
- – April 8 – Families United March on State Capital
- – April 25 – Civil trial begins in support of Ernest Duenez, Jr. in Sacramento
- – May 8 – Civil trial begins in support of Alan Blueford
- – May 31 – statewide mobilization in support of Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa
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 may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
The American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We have some ideas of our own too! One will be presented at this meeting.
Encouraging articles have come out 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.
Dearest friends, family and fellow farmers,
We need your voices and bodies in Albany this Wednesday! Despite a successful referendum, citizen appeal, 2 current lawsuits, and 15 years of public comments against the commercial development of the Gill Tract Farm, Albany City Council will be voting on a development plan to place a large parking lot and chain grocery store (“Sprouts”) on the south side of the Gill Tract. The city council moved this vote up from the original date of March 17th, so please help us get the word out about the new date and time!
This a very important vote and the outcome will greatly impact the struggle for the Gill Tract. Please join us to voice your opposition to this development:
If you can’t come, please email or call UCB Vice-chancellor of Real Estate Rob Lalanne (415-908-1500) and Chancellor Nicholas Dirks (510-642-7464). Tell them we want preserve this land as a center for agroecological research and local, sustainable urban farming, and demand that they stop commercial development of public farmlands!
We meet on a once-every-two-week-or-so schedule, discussing debt, money, how our financial system does (and usually does not) work, and the politics of it all.
Here is the PDF for chapters 2 & 3 for Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. These are the chapters we will discuss next meeting:
- Here is a link to the scan for the preface of Michael Hudson’s The Bubble and Beyond. Please read it and come with an idea for which chapters you would like the class to read.
Michael Hudson’s ‘The Bubble and Beyond.’
We’ll be discussing chapters 6 & 7 from Michael Hudson’s The Bubble and Beyond. Here’s a PDF.
New to Strike Debt?? Don’t walk cold turkey into a bunch of radicals talking about debt! Show up a half hour early—at 2:30 PM—for an informal pre-meeting intro session. If you’d like to attend this pre-together please email strike.debt.bay.area@
Join Strike Debt Bay Area in working on some exciting projects locally and nationally to fight unjust debt.
– The latest on our coalition efforts to Save the Berkeley Post Office and fight the privatization of our commons.
– The latest on our efforts to help Richmond and NGO allies push for principal reduction for Richmond’s homeowners. Read an article written by two Strike Debt Bay Area members on the Richmond principal reduction / eminent domain case.
In addition, we are exploring the use of a public bank to help Richmond, CA and other communities escape the thrall of Wall Street.
– Work on our radio segment on KPFA
– Other projects include efforts to fight against student debt in conjunction with peeps at UC Cal via a Strike Debt UC Berkeley chapter of Strike Debt, a book group with semi-weekly discussions, investigations into the legitimacy of mortgage ownership and therefore the right to foreclose, efforts to thwart payday loan usury and more.
“Just as bosses are dependent on workers, so are lenders dependent on borrowers. If workers walk out, the enterprise stops. If borrowers refuse to pay their debts, the lenders could be in real trouble. Each side depends on the other. The millions of underwater mortgage holders, of student debtors and credit card holders, need the bank loans – but so do the banks need those borrowers, and they especially need them to cooperate by paying their monthly charges. Otherwise, the capital that the banks list on their books begins to drain away.” ~Francis Fox Piven
Check out our website, our Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Check out the Berkeley Post Office Defenders website too.
On March 5th, we are sorry to report that Albany City Council chose to ignore the overwhelming crowd of farm supporters, and instead approved the UC’s development plan for the southern half of the Gill Tract. This public farmland is an invaluable and rare resource, but if the UC Administration has its way, it will be developed it for purely commercial uses that have nothing to do with Berkeley’s mission and responsibilities as a public land grant university.
After the meeting, many of the people who had come to speak to City Council had an impromptu meeting and announced several followup events:
- 1) A brainstorming and power-mapping forum for the community to propose and deliberate actions that might prevent the development.
- 2) A kickoff event for campus organizing. Let’s bring some pressure to bear on the UC Administration!
“Lunch with the Chancellor”
Meet in front of California Hall, on the UC campus
112 Hilgard Hall on UC campus
Can’t come out? Keep making calls!
Please continue to email or call UCB Vice-chancellor of Real Estate Rob Lalanne (415-908-1500) and Chancellor Nicholas Dirks (510-642-7464). Tell them we want preserve ALL of this land as a center for agroecological research and local, sustainable urban farming, and demand that they stop commercial development of public farmlands!
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 may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
The American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We are going to start a “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign.
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked and we need to be on the leading edge of that. We hope to holding a forum on postal and public banking soon on the Post Office steps. Come help us plan it!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.
This Monday, we will start promptly at 6!!
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Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
OccupyForum presents
Got water?
Our water commons is leaking away,
next thing you know they’ll be selling us air
Water is essential for life. We are 65% water and are not likely to survive more than three days without it. Water is not just for drinking, but for other essential processes like growing food and for sanitation. Fresh water is in limited supply. Despite its preciousness, however, water is being violated by pollution and waste, and commercialization all over the globe. Corporations are privatizing and exploiting water supplies where people can least afford it. Climate change is turning more and more of the earth’s surface to desert, and when the rains do come, they come more often as violent storms. California’s most recent drought has brought our regional water issues to the front pages, including the question of why Northern California reservoirs are empty and SoCal reservoirs are full. How can we cope with and reverse this global and local water crisis?
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla is the Executive Director for Restore the Delta, which works in the areas of public education and outreach so that all Californians recognize the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta as part of California’s natural heritage, deserving of restoration. Prior to joining the campaign, Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla served as the Business Development Manager for the Planning and Conservation League in Sacramento. Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla has also worked in education, business and communications. Over the last seven years, Ms. Barrigan-Parrilla has worked to give Delta residents a voice in the myriad of government processes leading to the proposed peripheral tunnels project, or Bay Delta Conservation Plan.
Adam Scow is the California Director of Food & Water Watch, a national organization dedicated to protecting our right to safe food and clean water. He is responsible for developing strategy for local, state, and campaigns. Adam is a co-founder of Californians against Fracking and has won several campaigns to defeat attempts to privatize our water. He has served on the planning committee for the annual California Water Policy Conference.
Check out the Blue-Gold action plan!
http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/actionplan/index.html
We are a fellowship of people wanting to find aliveness, connection and survival in the face of social-political-economic overwhelm. We do this by recognizing and addressing our unspoken submission to historically entrenched, institutions and influences of the dominant culture. We observe cunning, baffling and powerful social ills perpetuated through inequities involving race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability. We explore how these impact our thoughts feelings and personal habits. We hope that as each of us becomes free from acquisition driven, socially divisive, militarized forces, we can catalyze change and establish a new way of living with care for each other and the earth.
We work with a modified version of AA’s twelve steps and traditions using practices of: anonymity, vulnerability in truth telling, intuitive inquiry, restorative amends, group service, non-hierarchical decision making and conscious action.
The first Recovery from the Dominant Culture meetings were created and held in west Oakland, Ca through Seminary of the Street. This flyer is a draft proposal for a new meeting in Berkeley. We welcome participation in the process of developing meeting agreements. And most of all we invite you to our upcoming meetings beginning on Saturday March 15th at 10 am
Draft Version. Edited, Feb, 2014,
1. We admitted we were powerless over our thoughts, feelings, desires and actions shaped by the dominant culture and that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to rebuild our lives, seeking truth, love, and discernment through connection with intuitive wisdom, Great Spirit, God, Goddess and/or a Higher Power of our choice.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of how we treat ourselves and relate with others.
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our thinking, feelings and actions based on dominant culture conditioning
6. Were entirely ready to have our Higher Power remove coping habits and addictions not in alignment with our integrity.
7. Humbly asked our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons, living beings and earth sources we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people, living beings and the earth wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when acting under the influence of dominant culture patterns we promptly admitted it and sought more conscious ways of interacting.
11. Sought through study, writing, art, prayer and/or meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, and to identify new ways of participating in life affirming culture, holding our well being in balance with the well being of others.
12. Having experienced transformative change with these Steps, we practice these principles in all our affairs, carry this message to those interested, and engage in actions that embody an alternative to the addictive processes of the dominant culture
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 American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We are starting a “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management!
The City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
And we need to be prepared, despite the zoning effort, if the Post Office announces a sale!
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked and we need to be on the leading edge of that. We will be holding a forum on postal and public banking on March 29th on the Post Office steps. Come help us plan it!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.
Richmond Needs a Raise! Raise the Minimum Wage!
Join the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, SEIU 1021, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Restaurant Opportunities Center, CCISCO, Somos Richmond, BMOER and the rest of our community ;who are uniting to lift up our City by raising the minimum wage.
The proposal is to raise the minimum wage to $11, $12.30, or $15 an hour and includes a cost of living adjustment annually! Businesses with 10 or fewer employees would be exempted.
It’s time we make Richmond the kind of town where families can afford to put food on the table, keep a roof over our heads, and not have to choose between a paycheck and health! When workers have more money in their pockets, they spend it in our community, building local businesses, creating jobs, and generating tax revenue for schools and public safety. EVERYONE BENEFITS!
We will be reading chapters 6 & 7 from Michael Hudson The Bubble and Beyond.
Here they are.
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 American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We are starting a “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 Berkeley City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale!
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. We will be holding a forum on postal and public banking on March 29th on the Post Office steps. Come help us plan it!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
On Sunday, March 30, 6:00PM @ the Sudo Room (2141 Broadway Ave. Entrance on 22nd St.) We will be having a meeting to prepare for the Earth Day to May Day Direct Action Assembly.
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 American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We’ve started a “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 Berkeley City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale! The Office of Inspector General’s report on the sale of Post Offices is supposed to come out before the end of March – anything could happen after it comes out.
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. We will be holding a forum on postal and public banking on March 29th on the Post Office steps. Come help us plan it!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum presents�
Fukushima:
Facts and Fiction
During the three long and frightening years since the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the world has heard less and less about this manmade industrial disaster. Money, power, and engineering hubris were put ahead of the lives and health of the people of Japan and the northern hemisphere as radiation releases continue to leave the site and migrate into the environment. Decommissioning and dismantling the reactors will take decades, and complete cleanup is not even possible.
Ralph Nader calls nuclear power and the radioactivity it produces �violent, unnecessary, unsafe, and uninsurable� undemocratic.� And constructing new words that begin with �un,� it is also �unevacuate-able, unfinance-able, unregulatable.�
Naoto Kan, prime minister of Japan when the disaster began states: Without nuclear power plants we can absolutely provide the energy to meet our demands. Since Fukushima began, Japan has tripled its use of solar energy a jump in solar power production that is the equivalent of the electricity that would be produced by three nuclear plants Germany is a model in its commitment to shutting down all its nuclear power plants with all its power supplied by renewable power by 2050. The entire world could do this if humanity really would work together we could generate all our energy through renewable energy.
OccupyForum brings together a panel to discuss Fukushima and the alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear power. Josh Wolf, moderator, is a journalist who spent a year in prison for refusing to turn over videos of a 2011 demonstration to police. Umi Hagitani from No Nukes Action is a journalist and anti-nuke activist from Japan, and a key organizer in Japan and the United States. Paul Kangas (Solar One) is a journalist, veteran (Bay of Pigs), private investigator and doctor who has been an activist for solar power and against atomic energy since 1963. In May, Paul is making a film in France and Germany on the growth of solar in Europe to be released in January of 2015. Paul will be discussing the inevitability of solar�s displacement of fossil fuel.
Bloggspot/paul kangas, Youtube: paul8kangas
Time will be allocated for Q&A and announcements.
Donations welcome, no one turned away!
Or next class will be discussing Michael Hudson’s The Bubble and Beyond ch.9 – ‘Junk Bonding Industry.’
We will also be taking a look at the Public Banking Workbook ch 1-3 to further understand Public Banking and what it can provide.
Here are the readings.
New to Strike Debt?? Don’t walk cold turkey into a bunch of radicals talking about debt! Show up a half hour early—at 2:30 PM—for an informal pre-meeting intro session. If you’d like to attend this pre-together please email strike.debt.bay.area@
Join Strike Debt Bay Area in working on some exciting projects locally and nationally to fight unjust debt.
– The latest on our coalition efforts to Save the Berkeley Post Office and fight the privatization of our commons.
– The latest on our efforts to help Richmond and NGO allies push for principal reduction for Richmond’s homeowners. Read two articles here and here, written by two Strike Debt Bay Area members on the Richmond principal reduction / eminent domain case.
In addition, we are exploring the use of a public bank to help Richmond, CA and other communities escape the thrall of Wall Street.
– Work on our radio segment on KPFA
– Other projects include efforts to fight against student debt in conjunction with peeps at UC Cal via a Strike Debt UC Berkeley chapter of Strike Debt, a book group with semi-weekly discussions, investigations into the legitimacy of mortgage ownership and therefore the right to foreclose, efforts to thwart payday loan usury and more.
“Just as bosses are dependent on workers, so are lenders dependent on borrowers. If workers walk out, the enterprise stops. If borrowers refuse to pay their debts, the lenders could be in real trouble. Each side depends on the other. The millions of underwater mortgage holders, of student debtors and credit card holders, need the bank loans – but so do the banks need those borrowers, and they especially need them to cooperate by paying their monthly charges. Otherwise, the capital that the banks list on their books begins to drain away.” ~Francis Fox Piven
Check out our website, our Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Check out the Berkeley Post Office Defenders website too.
We are having an assembly to plan direction actions from April 22nd to May 1st to raise awareness about the intersections of labor, immigration and environmental issues. You can propose actions or events. Examples include film screenings, sit-ins, tree-sits, guerrilla gardening, pickets, marches, blockades, strikes, etc. After the proposals are voted on we will have a discussion about strategies to unite workers and environmentalists against the bosses.
Following this will be a screening of he file “Rocking the Foundations,” about the Builders Labourers Federation of Australia.