Calendar
Today at 5:30pm, at @SFCity_Hall, let's show them how we feel about tasers.. #Frisco500 pic.twitter.com/KS3trB932Y
— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) June 1, 2016
Help Food and Water Watch stop fracking before it begins in Alameda County. They are bringing legislation before the County Board of Supervisors to outlaw the practice before it begins (there is currently no fracking in Alameda County, but you never know when it could start…)
Snacks.
Vigil for #AmilcarPerezLopez at Mission Police station 6 pm every Wed til @GeorgeGascon announces if #sfpd charged pic.twitter.com/TiyAAbsH6F
— Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat) May 19, 2016
Meet with community advocates in the fight against homelessness, those without houses, Berkeley City Councils staffers and interested citizens to discuss progress on Tiny Homes solutions to homelessness, and starting a Tiny Homes village.
The Other Barrio, is a wonderful movie that takes on gentrification in San Francisco in a Noir setting.
Post film discussion.
Open as MANY homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…
Justice 4 Jessica Williams
Community Press Conference
Thursday at 11 AM
Bayview Police Station
201 Williams St. SF@MaryMad— LolaLolaLola (@Lola_Casanova) May 31, 2016
The Sheriff wants to build a new $55 million jail expansion at Santa Rita for treating mentally ill inmate. It needs to be stopped in its tracks and the money redirected to mental health treatment outside of jail.
We’ve got some momentum to re-invigorate and have a lot to discuss with the decarceration plan. Here a tentative agenda for 7/28, feel free to add additional items by directly replying to me.
- Check in
- What’s happening, what’s coming up in the community
- LeeLoo Update
- Individual and org commitments
- Shared leadership structure and coalition admin.
- agenda setting
- meeting location
- facilitation
- meeting frequency
- listservs
- Decarceration Plan
•COMMUNITY ALERT•
The #Justice4MarioWoods Coalition Invites YOU to a Special Community •TOWN HALL MEETING• Details👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/Y97zgp84Dg— HipHop4Justice (@rezurxn) June 1, 2016
Transition Berkeley & the Ecology Center Present: “Occupy the Farm” film & discussion
6:30 refreshments, 7 pm event
Please join us to witness an incredible drama that took place in our own back yard in 2012 and that continues to unfold today. Occupy the Farm tells the story of 200 urban farmers who walk onto a publicly-owned farm in Albany, California and plant two acres of crops in order to save the land from becoming a real-estate development. This direct action set up a vibrant tent village on land destined to become condos, while their crops blocked the development plans of UC Berkeley.
Director Todd Darling will be present for Q&A, and the event will include updates on the current status of the farm and the developers. Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase at the event. Sponsored by: Transition Berkeley, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, and the Ecology Center.
Bring: a local snack or refreshment to share at 6:30 pm if you like
This is the most important election in decades. The billionaire class, their media, and their two parties are trembling as the 99% rally around Bernie’s platform. Kshama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative Seattle city councilmember has launched a petition for Bernie to run independently through November and over 30,000 people have signed! We’re done playing their two-party game!
Join us to discuss questions like: can the Democrats help win fundamental change? Should Sanders run as an independent? Why are millions of people interested in socialism? Do we need a party of the 99%? What should we do next month if the Hill steals the nomination?
Speakers
Luci Riley – Movement4Bernie
Erin Brightwell – Socialist Alternative
Kevin McLoughlin – Socialist Party Ireland, General Secretary
Berkeley Post Office Defenders presents Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for US President.
In addition to Ms. Stein, there will be other speakers who will cover such topics as
– Preservation of Berkeley’s main post office and other public resources in the face of privatization manipulations by high profit corporations
– Unified protection of union jobs as USPS attempts to move postal services to Staples
– Eco-wise use of common space resiliance after destruction of our community information, clothing, book, plant and seed sharing Center
– Access to the Berkeley Post Office Community Garden -Remove the ugly metal postal police fence
– Support for tiny houses initiatives as pro developer politicians criminalize homelessness
– Postal Banking- no more bail outs, debt slavery,predatory lenders and private banking fraud
– UPSURGING Political voice/action in the face of corporate control of government and media
– An update on Berkeley’s response to Department of Justice attempt to threaten the cities ordinance to protect historic commons
– An update of community garden with over the fence seed ball planting
Join us for MUSIC with Hali Hammer and postal worker and activist Dave Welsh
Speakers may include:
– Mike Wilson from Berkeley Post Office Defenders
– Shirley Taylor, from the APWU (postal workers’ union)
– Jesse Arreguin, Berkeley City Councilor whose district the downtown Post Office is in, and candidate for Berkeley Mayor.
– Mike Zint, First They Came for the Homeless
Come join us this First Friday for a beer or two and connect with other Bay Area restaurant workers on our ongoing struggle for worker justice.
Follow us on our bar hop!
5:00 – 5:30 = Meet at Soul Space & pick up banner
5:30 – 6:15 = Diving dog Brew House
6:15 – 7:00 = Beer Garden
7:30 – 8:00 = Hella Vegan Eats
On the weekend of June 4th and 5th, 2016, the Bay Area Book Festival will once again fill downtown Berkeley with a literary extravaganza that offers pleasure to anyone who has ever loved a book.
Whether you’re a fan of food writing or poetry or science fiction or children’s literature or biography, come experience one of the best book festivals on the planet. Free to the public!
The Communist Party USA (Oakland/Berkeley) invites you to a discussion of ‘An electoral process that goes beyond Bernie’. As background the following short articles are suggested reading.
John Bachtell, ‘Left Strategy in 2016: Building Real Political Independence’
http://www.cpusa.org/article/left-strategy-in-2016-part-1-grasping-the-key-link-of-struggle/
C. Hass, ‘The Other Progressive Challengers Take on the Democratic Establishment’
http://inthesetimes.com/features/bernie_sanders_democrats_political_revolution_candidates.html
Linda Burnham, ‘Notes on the Election’ http://portside.org/2016-04-25/notes-election
Reese Ehrlich, ‘Why the Left Should Support Trump’
https://reeseerlich.com/2016/04/26/why-the-left-should-support-donald-trump/
May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, 1-5pm
Using news photographs, memorabilia, reconstructed objects, documentary fragments, and original documents, contemporary artist Kate Haug re-tells the story of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last monumental social protest prior to his assassination. The exhibition features images and objects culled from Haug’s extensive research in the archives of the Associated Press, the popular press, and eBay, which have not been seen together before, bringing to life the complex ambition of King’s vision.
King began organizing the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) in 1967 to unify America’s poor across class rather than racial lines, believing that economic parity was key to African American equality within the United States. The PPC culminated with a 3,000 person shanty town named Resurrection City, constructed on the National Mall in Washington DC. Resurrection City drew people from all over the country, was the nineteen sixties version of the 1932 Bonus March and a predecessor to “Occupy”. The exhibition time frame for this show mirrors many of the actual dates of the campaign, tracing the Resurrection City’s opening day to its final destruction.
The PPC echoes aspects of current social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fight for Fifteen, and Our Walmart. In San Francisco, a city with one the highest rates of income inequality in the United States, King’s work asks pointed questions about the contemporary social contract and the democratic promise of America.
News Today: A History of the Poor People’s Campaign in Real Time runs from April 9, 2016 to June 25, 2016.
Gallery Talks:
Sat May 14, 2pm:
Justin Gomer Ph.D., Lecturer, American Studies, UC Berkeley
A discussion of the images in News Today as they relate to the shifting political landscape in the years after 1968.
Sat May 21, 2pm:
E.C. Feiss, Ph.D. Student, Art History, UC Berkeley
The Politics of Display
- organizing for public banking
- advocating for Postal banking
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Tiny Homes for the homeless.
- student debt resistance
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contract
- Presenting debt-related topics at forums and workshops
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early and meet one or two of us before the formal meeting starts, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com .
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.
June 2016 marks two years since the unjustly killing of our beloved Yanira at the hands of the Police in San Mateo County, pain and sorrow still present, but hope and love is even bigger.
The death of my sister two years ago brought a community together, I met so many kind and generous people who were willing to give their time and energy to help my family. People who did not know me, or my family but they knew what happened to my sister was a tragedy and wanted to fight for what was right.
Justice never came, but the struggle continues …
Everyone is invited to celebrate the life of my sister in commemoration of her second angelversary, in which not only will celebrate her spirit and the beauty of who she was, but we will also let the county and corrupt system know that we are still hungry for justice. Yanira is in the heart of each and every one who still remembers her.
Saturday June 4th, 2016 we will be joining our voices together with dozens of families that have also been affected by police violence in an effort to say enough is enough.
»There will be a ceremony led by Aztec dancers at The “Mariposa” Mural located at the “Our Lady of the pillar” catholic church in Half Moon Bay, Danzantes will lead us in a procession through the streets of the city.
»We will all meet at the “Mac Dutra” Plaza where we have an altar to honor the families victims of police brutality who have suffered and still suffer the loss of a loved one at the hands of the police. Families will share their stories of love, faith and hope.
»There will be a special performance, “Moonraised” is an example of what dedication and hard work can achieve. A group of young people who continue to be a motivation through their music for future generations. We repeatedly criminalize our youth by making them responsible and accountable for systemic faillures on the part of our social and educational system as well as the legal system, it is time to empower our kids to do more.
#JusticerForYanira #MentalillnesIsNotACrime
“Mental illness is so much more complicated than any pill that any mortal could invent.”
We’re very excited to start Planning meetings for Occupy’s 5 year anniversary. We’re planning an art and music celebration and we are looking forward to collaberating with the bay area activist community. Come on out and see what we have started and be part of planning the extravaganza.