Calendar
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 million 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!
Liberated Lens is a digital filmmaking collective dedicated to social change, based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to help each other tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We make films in a spirit of collaboration and solidarity, share a lending library of film equipment for creative projects, and organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops.
Join us for our weekly meeting and a workshop!
We usually meet in our editing suite (2nd floor in the ballroom, to the left of the stage) and then work on projects. It’s open to all!
The Oscar Grant Committee was born from the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant, mudered by BART police on Jan 1, 2009. We organize working class resistance in support of families whose loved ones were murdered by police.
We meet on the first Tuesday of every month.
The demand for justice is happening and needs you!
- student debt resistance
- organizing for public banking.
- advocating for Postal banking.
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- ongoing study group
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- our famous Strike Debt radio program
- staging Debtors’ Assemblies
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts
- Working on ways to kickstart the drive for basic income
- and much more!
Strike Debt – Principles of Solidarity
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
We also oppose debt because it is an instrument of exploitation and political domination. Debt is used to discipline us, deepen existing inequalities, and reinforce racial, gendered, and other social hierarchies. Every Strike Debt action is designed to weaken the institutions that seek to divide us and benefit from our division. As an alternative to this predatory system, Strike Debt advocates a just and sustainable economy, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence.
Strike Debt is committed to the principles and tactics of political autonomy, direct democracy, direct action, creative openness, a culture of solidarity, and commitment to anti-oppressive language and conduct. We struggle for a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression.
Strike Debt holds that we are all debtors, whether or not we have personal loan agreements. Through the manipulation of sovereign and municipal debt, the costs of speculator-driven crises are passed on to all of us. Though different kinds of debt can affect the same household, they are all interconnected, and so all household debtors have a common interest in resisting.
Strike Debt engages in public education about the debt-system to counteract the self-serving myth that finance is too complicated for laypersons to understand. In particular, it urges direct action as a way of stopping the damage caused by the creditor class and their enablers among elected government officials. Direct action empowers those who participate in challenging the debt-system.
Strike Debt holds that we owe the financial institutions nothing, whereas, to our friends, families and communities, we owe everything. In pursuing a long-term strategy for national organizing around this principle, we pledge international solidarity with the growing global movement against debt and austerity.
OTU’s Mission
The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists dedicated to protecting tenant rights and interests. OTU does this by working directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacting legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and working with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares our core values and who believes that tenants themselves have the primary responsibility to work on their own behalf.
Monthly Meetings
The Oakland Tenants Union meets regularly at 7:00 pm on the second Monday evening of each month. Our monthly meetings are held in the Community Room of the Madison Park Apartments, 100 – 9th Street (at Oak Street, across from the Lake Merritt BART Station). To enter, gently knock on the window of the room to the right of the main entrance to the building. At the meetings, first we focus on general issues affecting renters city-wide and then second we offer advice to renters regarding their individual concerns.
If you have an issue, a question, or need advice about a tenant/landlord issue, please call us at (510) 704-5276. Leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will get back to you.
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 Tuesday 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/
Join the Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against Stingrays being acquired by law enforcement agencies, against Urban Shield, and for various privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, especially by Alameda County and the Oakland City Council. We are also engaged in the fight against Predictive Policing and other “pre-crime” and “thought-crime” abominations, drones, improper use of police body cameras, and against other invasions of privacy by our benighted City, County, State and Federal Governments.
OPWG originally came together to fight against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OPWG was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network, and its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC.
We were also the lead in having Alameda County pass the most comprehensive privacy and usage policy in the country for deployment of “Stingray” technology (cell phone interceptors).
Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s right not to be spied on by the government & if you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to:
oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe AT lists.riseup.net
For more information on the DAC check out
The demand for justice is happening and needs you!
We will feature on the agenda our brothers and sisters from SEIU 1021 who have experience in signature collection campaigns for successful ballot measures. They will engage with us on lessons learned and we will discuss ways in which we might collaborate in our efforts to get our respective measures on the November ballot.
Homes Not Jails is a consensus-based collective of squatters and squat supporters who believe housing is a human right. Our goal is to open as much vacant housing as possible and to keep it open as long as possible. HNJ is a place to organize mutual aid among squatters and squat supporters and housing rights advocates in the bay. We actively fight to make our space inclusive and safe for everybody and combat oppression in all forms.
Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.
The Anti Police-Terror Project is a project of the ONYX ORGANIZING COMMITTEE that in coalition with other organizations like The Alan Blueford Center For Justice, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Community Ready Corps and Workers World is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.
We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.
We encourage all Oakland residents to attend the weekly No Coal in Oakland meeting.
Up until its February 16th meeting, the position of a majority of Oakland City Council members on permitting coal shipment from the city’s port may have been in doubt. Even now the proposal remains on the table. But at that meeting, council members took concrete steps toward banning coal exports once and for all. Thanks to the efforts of Mayor Libby Schaff, local clergy, State Senator Loni Hancock, and community activists, the Council has signaled its intention to enact an outright ban on coal exports. In fact, it passed a moratorium on the issuance of any permits for the terminal until the question has been resolved. Read details on the latest developmemts here.
(And for more background, see A Coaltastrophe Threatens Oakland on this website.)
The demand for justice is happening and needs you!
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/
Meeting to plan for March 1 activities
Alex Nieto and Amilcar Perez-Lopez were City College students when they were murdered by the SFPD, and Mario Woods went to Balboa High School: it could have been you! They are from the same communities being marginalized and evicted from San Francisco by gentrification, and from City College through downsizing and push-out policies.
March 1st, WALK OUT, shout out for the opening of Alex’s trial
8AM:Ceremony at court, 450 Golden Gate Ave, SF 9AM: Assemble at City College Ocean Campus Ram Plaza,
and City College Mission Campus, 21st and Valencia. 10AM: Rally at Court, 450 Golden Gate Ave. 11AM:March.
Then attend trial throughout.
In loving memory of A.J.Trasviña, 1988-2009 ; Labor Donated
Save City College Coalition, the
Homes Not Jails is a consensus-based collective of squatters and squat supporters who believe housing is a human right. Our goal is to open as much vacant housing as possible and to keep it open as long as possible. HNJ is a place to organize mutual aid among squatters and squat supporters and housing rights advocates in the bay. We actively fight to make our space inclusive and safe for everybody and combat oppression in all forms.
We encourage all Oakland residents to attend the weekly No Coal in Oakland meeting.
Up until its February 16th meeting, the position of a majority of Oakland City Council members on permitting coal shipment from the city’s port may have been in doubt. Even now the proposal remains on the table. But at that meeting, council members took concrete steps toward banning coal exports once and for all. Thanks to the efforts of Mayor Libby Schaff, local clergy, State Senator Loni Hancock, and community activists, the Council has signaled its intention to enact an outright ban on coal exports. In fact, it passed a moratorium on the issuance of any permits for the terminal until the question has been resolved. Read details on the latest developmemts here.
(And for more background, see A Coaltastrophe Threatens Oakland on this website.)