Calendar
Signers of the Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth Treaty, Idle No More SF Bay and our allies from Diablo Rising Tide invite you to a Summer Solstice Action:
With love in your hearts for all you hold dear, we invite you to join us on the Summer Solstice to protect and defend the sacred system of life on Mother Earth’s belly by joining us at the gates of Shell in Martinez, California.The Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth (more at www.IndigenousWomenRising.org) calls upon us and all of our relatives on each Solstice & Equinox to:
Nonviolently rise up with others in your communities and around the world to demand immediate changes in the laws that have created the destruction
Commit nonviolent acts of civil disobedience where destruction is occurring until it is stopped
Continue these acts until “business as usual” is halted and life on Mother Earth is safe for generations to come
Our responsibilities as Indigenous women of the Americas and our allies: “demand that we act to ensure healthy air, water, soil, seeds and a safe climate so that life may continue. There are those who have forgotten that we live in a natural system with natural laws that govern that system: the Laws of Mother Earth & Father Sky. These laws have been violated to such an extreme degree that the sacred system of life is now threatened and does not have the capacity for life to continue safely in the way in which it has existed for millions of years.”
More from the Treaty:
“There have never been more unjust laws than the ones that exist now which are allowing the destruction of the environment that we need to exist. For these reasons we invite our sisters and their allies around the world to join us in teach‐ins and nonviolent direct actions at all of the facilities and seats of power that are causing the destruction. We invite you to do this calmly, without malice, and with the love in your hearts for everything you hold dear.As tribal women, our love is clear, unconditional and strong. Our traditional Indigenous ways of life instruct us that women hold the wisdom necessary to guide the leaders toward understanding the needs of children and the unborn. Through this treaty initiative we are raising our voices to give direction to government leaders and those holding seats of power to adjust the man‐made laws in accordance with the natural laws.”
On June 20, activists from 35+ countries will be demanding FREEDOM FOR OSCAR. Join us in Oakland. Oscar is a community organizer, a Vietnam veteran and a political prisoner for 35 years. Join this international day of solidarity following the UN Decolonization Committee Hearings to demand Oscar’s immediate relase. Let us add our voices demanding that President Obama commute Oscar’s sentence!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Film and Discussion with Ted Frazier
Harry Bridges (July 28, 1901–March 30, 1990) was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several chapters in forming a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), adding warehouse workers to its membership, and led it for the next 40 years.
Harry Bridges — A Man and his Union chronicles the life of one of America’s most important and controversial left-wing labor leaders. He headed the International Longshoremen and Warehouseman Union from the 1930s to the 1970s and was a champion of workers’ causes on an international scale.
Harry Bridges was as controversial as he was charismatic. He was prosecuted by FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower alike, and convicted by a federal jury for having lied about Communist Party membership — a conviction which was set aside. On the West Coast, Bridges still excites passions both for and against the labor movement. In our current incarnation, the Movement looks to the unions to amplify the struggle.
Time will be allotted for announcements.
@sanasaleem OPD is rotten to its core and Libby’s got to go. Press conference on Tuesday 6/21 at 10 am in front of OPD HQ #byelibby
— APTP First Response (@aptpresponse) June 21, 2016
OPD is rotten to its core and Libby’s got to go
On Tuesday, June 21st at 10:00 AM, the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), in coalition with Oakland Rising ACTION, Black Lives Matter, Causa Justa, Just Cause, Black Power Network, Ella Baker Center, Asians 4 Black Lives and the Oakland Alliance will hold a press conference in front of the Oakland Police Department.
Oakland’s police department has entered its 13th year of federal oversight, and as investigative reporters, academic researchers and our own soon-to-be ex-mayor have revealed over the last month, it’s clear that nothing has changed since the Riders case.
“OPD is still a bastion of predatory loose cannons who have seen time and again that they will not face accountability for killing, abusing and exploiting our community members,” said Asantewaa Boykin of APTP.
The Oakland community condemns the Mayor’s underwriting of state violence that began when she spent her entire first day in office with OPD. Since that day, OPD has murdered 7 Black men with no consequences.
“Instead of stepping back to acknowledge her mistake, the mayor has doubled down on her support for state-sponsored executions through her words and financial prioritization of policing over the education and employment of our youth,” continued Boykin.
The police department currently squanders 60% of the City of Oakland’s budget. The City Administrator, Mayor and Board of Supervisors have shown and stated that they’re incapable of managing the “frat house” with guns and handcuffs that prowls our streets day and night.
The community demands immediate action and commits to working toward building an Oakland where all of us can live free of police terror.
Demands
1. Community-controlled policing – Establish a fully funded community-nominated and controlled civilian review board with the power to hire, fire and discipline all members of the OPD.
2. Defund OPD and invest in the community – Cut the policing budget in half and redirect those millions into community-run job centers, programming for youth, re-entry resources, mental health services, tenant protections and education and very low-income housing.
3. Address the child sexual exploitation scandal in a meaningful way – Launch a full investigation by an outside agency that will investigate criminal cases influenced by predatory officers and account for the trafficking investigations they have compromised. Additionally, OPD must Publicly state that coercion and enticement of a minor is never the fault of the child.
4. Resignation of Mayor Libby Schaaf
Speak up Oakland! Tell City Council how you feel.
Ya’ll know that “rent is too damn high”. Community has been working hard this year to put into place measures to protect renters by asking the city to enact a #HousingMoratorium (which ends July 5th!) and additional ordinances on the November Ballot. Plus, given the recent upheaval with the policy, the Mayor and City Council are looking to reallocate funding from the police budget to other things.
Key items are as follows:
1. Item 16 on the Agenda: The Renter’s Protection Ordinance will do the following:
– Require owners to file a petition for rent increases above 60% Consumer Price Index for Bay Area. Currently, if a tenant gets a drastic rent increase, they have to petition to the city for arbitration, which places the burden of time, money, stress on the renter. This item will ask the landlord to justify the rent increase.
– Modify New Construction Exemptions to apply to developments built after Jan. 2002
– Require relocation funding to tenants in Owner Occupancy Evictions.
– Limit City Council’s ability to modify ordinances
– Increase of the transparency of the Office of Rent Program, requiring regular reports to city council.
– Establish new composition of the Rent Board to have majority renters. (Currently 2 renters, 2 Landlords, 3 neutral members, 1 neutral alternate). Initiative asks for 4 tenant members, 3 other members. One per district). Kaplan’s alternate proposal asks for an increase to 6 alternates.
– Board independence from City Council, City Attorney and City Administration.
Learn more here: http://www.oaklandtenantsunion.org/protect-oakland-renters-…
2. Item 14 on the agenda. Affordable Housing preference policy for local neighborhoods (ie a percentage of affordable housing is reserved for those that live in that district), and a residency or Oakland worker requirement for participants in Oakland’s First Time Buyer Loan Program.
3. Item 13 on the agenda: City Budget adjustments.
– Money for training OPD
– Delaying (Schaaf) or Eliminating (Rebecca Kaplan) the next OPD Training Academy to hire new cops
– Set aside 1.5 Million to fund Police Commission (may soon be voted on to be placed on the ballot in November)
Article: http://m.eastbayexpress.com/…/town-business-delete-the-poli…
Get involved in the campaign to stop Solitary Confinement.
JOIN CODEPINK, WORLD CAN’T WAIT, OCCUPYSF Action Council and others at the huge PEACE banner
Feel free to bring your own signage, photos, flyers, …Additional signs and flyers provided.
Stand (or sit) with us and the huge PEACE banner.
On the steps facing Market Street, below Feinstein’s office,
Directly above the Montgomery BART/Muni station.
Come to the Ella Baker Center’s June member meeting to learn how to get involved with our local campaigns to win jobs not jails, books not bars, and healthcare not handcuffs in Oakland. The meeting will now be held on June 22nd; the June 14th meeting has been canceled.
Free dinner will be provided and all are welcome.
The event is hosted at La Cultura Cura Cultural Arts Cafe, a social enterprise of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice that aims to employ and empower systems impacted youth and young adults.
Join us for free weekly meditation happy hour on Wednesdays, co-hosted by the Art of Living Eastbay Berkeley/Oakland.
We will teach simple and easy guided meditation and breathing techniques to let go of stress and trauma, let your hair down, and celebrate!
We believe that love is the universal language. We also believe that love is the universal cure to heal what ails societies worldwide. These meditation happy hours are our love offering to the community and are the result of a beautiful new & evolving partnership w/The Art of Living facilitated by Neelam Patil…& the universe ♥
A film about the search for truth & justice for human rights crimes committed by the Salvadoran military during the Civil War in the 1980s. The film follows the efforts by the families of the four U.S. churchwomen raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980 to bring two leading Salvadoran Generals into a U.S. courtroom. Several Salvadoran survivors of torture are also featured who confront the same Generals in the same Florida courtroom using the same legal concept: command responsibility. 90 min.
Peter Stern, one of the attorneys, will speak after the screening.
Sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild of San Francisco;
For more info about the film: http://
RSVP: http://www.nlgsf.org/
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.
Open as MANY homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…
Oakland, CA: Statewide Coordinated Actions To End Solitary Confinement
Please participate in an informational demonstration on Thursday, in conjunction with actions all over California and throughout the U.S. Connect with family members, formerly incarcerated people, activists, and attorneys who struggle for prisoner human rights. Unity inside, unity outside!
Get involved in the movement to end solitary confinement. Pass out leaflets. Promote the Agreement to End Hostilities. Take action to Stop Sleep Deprivation torture in Pelican Bay SHU and women’s death row. Become a Human Rights Pen Pal.
#Oakland! Take it 2 the streets!- Justice 4 #FreddieGray 4pm at 14th and Broadway. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/JKU9B19VNg
— StopMassIncarceratio (@StopMassIncNet) June 23, 2016
The demand for justice is happening and needs you!
Please come to the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club on Thursday, June 23rd, 7pm, at Humanist Hall for a discussion on forming independent police commissions in Oakland and Berkeley.
Excerpts: Full article here
It’s not a surprise that Oakland finds itself in the middle of a new police scandal-we’re becoming a bit jaded to the police-chief-musical-chairs situation. But, even those of us who’ve been working on police accountability for years, are shocked and chagrined by what is being revealed about our costly department. We had thought they were on the road to reform, albeit, a rocky, circuitous road filled with breakdowns but it turns out-the changes were only superficial…
In the wake of almost daily revelations, the Anti-Police Terror Project has proposed that Oakland establish a version of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa)] and this is a brilliant and quite necessary part of a change in how our community is policed. While APTP has yet to detail its proposal, nothing less than a full process of bearing witness by the entire Oakland community will begin to turn around the horrendous situation we find ourselves in…
Oaklanders have spent years, indeed generations, dealing with police brutality, corruption and neglect and it has left a deep residue which damages every aspect of self-government. Indeed distrust, fear and hatred of our most expensive department lies at the heart of distrust and disengagement with local democracy. Our residents need a safe space to tell their stories and finally be heard by those who injured them and by officials who have chosen not to believe them or to consider their concerns in their day-to-day governing of our city…
While police operate in Oakland as they do in the rest of California, with impunity and often disregard for the real safety of our citizens, we will continue to hide ugly corruption and ignore vicious behavior. In a democracy, we should should demand better. We know the next steps, do we have the will to see them through?
MEDIA ADVISORY
California Teachers Association June 23, 2016
Protest Violence Against Oaxaca Teachers
#Oaxaca
Contact: Lysa Sassman at 916-813-2319 or Toby Spencer at 530-867-0594
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Local Educators Protest Slaughter of Teachers in Mexico
Outraged At June 21 Killings in Oaxaca, Protest
Educators, labor council members, Hispanic advocacy supporters will protest the June 21 killing of unarmed teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico
NATOMAS – Outraged by the killing of nine teachers, educators say they will protest at the Mexican Consulate in Sacramento tomorrow (Friday) afternoon. Reports indicate nine teachers were executed, 23 disappeared, 21 were arrested, and more than 100 civilians, police and bystanders were injured June 21 in Nochixtlán, located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
“I’m an education advocate and have demonstrated, protested and spoken out,” said Lysa Sassman, Auburn Union Teacher’s Association and one of the event organizers. “Never once did I think I’d lose my life over it. These teachers are my colleagues; they just live in a different country.”
Sassman and Toby Spencer, San Juan Teachers Association, have taken to social media to publicize the event and to share what’s happening to teaching colleagues in Mexico. “This is not just about privatization,” Spencer said. “The ‘education reform’ movement is an effort to remove teachers from rural and indigenous areas. We must stand with teachers and against violence in the Americas.”
The Stop Urban Shield coalition and Berkeley Copwatch will be facilitating an interactive forum to understand what Urban Shield is, its tactics to repress our communities through increased militarization of emergency medical services, and its place within the global context of policing and imperialism. Join us and get plugged in to the fight!
Come through on Friday, June 24 to learn how to support the state-wide mobilization against Urban Shield on Sept. 9 in Pleasanton, CA! This is the second of three Town Halls that Stop Urban Shield is holding, and we encourage all social justice organizations and individuals in Berkeley and surrounding neighborhoods to attend.
Hosted by the Stop Urban Shield coalition and Berkeley Copwatch, we’ll be facilitating an interactive forum to understand what exactly Urban Shield is, its tactics to repress our communities through increased militarization of police and emergency medical services, and its place within the global context of policing and imperialism. As we always must, we’ll be highlighting the voices and deep insights of those who have lost loved ones to police violence and lifting up the ways our communities are building resilience against militarization.
In 2014, communities united to kick Urban Shield out of Oakland.
In 2015, we converged on the Sheriff’s office in downtown Oakland to let them know that Urban Shield is not welcome in Alameda County.
And In 2016, we’re taking it state-wide and putting Urban Shield on notice that we don’t want them in California or anywhere else for that matter.
ABOUT URBAN SHIELD:
Urban Shield is a weapons expo and war-like police training that brings together law enforcement agencies from across the country and world to learn how to better repress, criminalize, and militarize our communities.
Urban Shield is a key player in creating militarized emergency response systems that make police the first responders to everything from climate disasters to uprisings. But as we saw during Hurricane Katrina, when “public safety” relies on armed emergency management, communities of color — and particularly Black communities — become an “emergency” that need to be controlled and managed with a military response.
COME JOIN US at this Town Hall to learn how WE can shrink Urban Shield — and policing as a whole — out of existence.
Access: Entrance and bathrooms are wheel chair accessible.
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- 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.
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contract
- student debt resistance
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- 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.
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