Support the ex-Calavera workers in their class-action lawsuit by packing the court for their official public hearing!
Apoyemos a los ex trabajadores de Calavera en su demanda colectiva al llenar la corte para su audiencia pública oficial!

Earlier this year, 3 workers were terminated from Calavera, a high-end Mexican restaurant in Oakland, without receiving their final wages. Throughout their employment, these workers worked off the clock and were denied rest and meal breaks without proper compensation. Since the filing of this class-action lawsuit, two other former employees have joined, citing similar allegations of theft and abuse.
Al principio de este año, 3 trabajadores fueron despedidos de Calavera, un restaurante Mexicano de lujo en Oakland, sin recibir sus salarios finales. A lo largo de su empleo, estos trabajadores trabajaban fuera de su horario y se les negó descansos y pausas para el almuerzo sin compensación adecuada. Desde el inicio de esta demanda colectiva, otros dos ex empleados se han unido, citando acusaciones similares de robo y abuso.

Please join us in supporting the workers at this important hearing by packing the court THIS Tuesday! As a community we will come together to show our strength and resilience–we will not stand for exploitative practices that hurt our friends and family!
Por favor, únase a nosotros en el apoyo a los trabajadores en esta importante audiencia para llenar la corte el ESTE Martes! Como comunidad nos uniremos para mostrar nuestra fuerza y resistencia – no vamos a aceptar las prácticas de explotación que perjudican a nuestros amigos y familia!

See you at court!
Los vemos en la corte!

The goal of the meeting will be to celebrate this key victory, brief folks on the measure & discuss what it will take to win this November!

If you find yourself face-to-face with injustice, you don’t have to feel powerless. With a phone or other recording device, you can make a profound difference. Learn to share what you see. Join BAVC, Berkeley CopWatch and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for an informative evening about your rights when documenting injustice, where to send your videos, and how to stay safe while doing so. Admission is free.

Bethany Woolman is a communications strategist with the ACLU of Northern California. This year, she’s worked to publicize and expose the covert use of social media surveillance software by police, censorship of students’ political expression in the Central Valley, reproductive health violations in California jails, and discriminatory policies in local traffic courts. Bethany is also an artist, filmmaker, and restorative justice practitioner. She graduated from Stanford University, and has called the Bay Area home since 1989 – the same year a chimney fell through her kitchen window during the Loma Prieta earthquake.

As a founding member of the first Copwatch group (Berkeley Copwatch), Andrea Prichett has been watching the police for over 26 years. From protests to patrols, Andrea has documented police activity in cities around the U.S. and helped to create some of the most basic educational materials for the Copwatch movement including, “The Copwatch Handbook”, the Copwatch “Know Your Rights” presentation and she also contributed to the video “These Streets Are Watching”. In addition, Andrea has facilitated a UC Berkeley DeCal class, “Community Based Police Accountability” for over 15 years.

East Bay Democratic Clubs to Host David Dayen, Author of the Award-Winning Book “Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud”

The Lamorinda Democratic Club, Diablo Valley Democratic Club, San Ramon Valley Democratic Club, Contra Costa Young Democrats, and Democrats of Rossmoor invite you to join them as author David Dayen discusses his new book on Tuesday, August 16 at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center’s Community Room. The ocial time will begin at 7 p.m. with Dayen’s presentation to follow at 7:30 p.m. and a book signing with the author to follow at 8:30 p.m. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
“Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud” was the 2016 winner of the Ida and Studs Terkel Prize. The book tells the dramatic true story of how, in the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history—a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose.
Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anti-corporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it.

The New York Times called Dayen’s book a “gripping story of foreclosure fraud,” Publisher’s Weekly said that Dayen’s “absorbing account grabs the reader early on and doesn’t let go,” and Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book is, “an inspiring, well-rendered, deeply reported, and often infuriating account.”
Dayen, currently touring the country to support the book’s release, is a journalist who writes about economics and finance. He is a contributing writer to Salon.com and The Intercept, and writes a weekly column for The Fiscal Times and The New Republic. He also writes for The American Prospect, Vice, The Huffington Post, and more. He lives in Los Angeles, where prior to writing about politics he had a 15-year career as a television producer and editor.

East Bay Homes not Jails in Collaboration with Liberated Lens present:
Occupy Everything: Films, panel, and discussion exploring open/public
occupations as a direct action tactic.

All proceeds to benefit the Omni Commons and the people of Oaxaca.

Films Include:

-A film about the 4/1/12 occupation of 888 Turk St in San Francisco

-The Battle of Oakland: the story of #j28 aka Occupy Oakland Move-In Day

-Stimulator Film on contemporary history of the struggle in Oaxaca

-Nochixtlan tierra de gente valiente: a film about the current
struggle in Oaxaca

Panel and open discussion to follow the films.

For those who are dismayed about the changes that were made and do not wish to continue to participate in the Coalition, we accept that and are grateful for the support you gave along the way.

We will transition from a coalition into a campaign and discuss what that will mean in practical terms. We will look at a timeline and the need to create a budget, get endorsements, work on messaging, etc.

I hope folks will join us to kick-off what promises to be an exciting moment in Oakland’s history!

• Join the Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the surveillance state,  against Urban Shield, and to advocate for privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, including the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, the BART Board of Directors, and by the Oakland and Berkeley City Councils.
• 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, ALPRs, requirements for “backdoors” to your cellphone 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; its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC, and made Oakland’s new Privacy Advisory Commission to the City Council happen.  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).

We have presented our work at the recent RightsCon in San Francisco and at Left Forum and HOPE in New York City.

Stop by and learn how you can help guard our 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

• DAC FAQ
• Oakland Wiki Domain Awareness Page
• Oakland Privacy WordPress

Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.

Please join us for this important general meeting.  We will be working specifically on the four demands we put forth following the OPD Rape Scandal:

1) Nancy O’Malley must publicly state she intends to launch a full investigation into the police officers who raped and trafficked a 17 year old child and press charges against all officers involved.

2) Divest 50% of the Oakland Police Department’s budget and redirect those funds to career centers, job training programs, mental health services, youth programming and services for sex workers.

3) The establishment of a CIVILIAN controlled police review commission

4) Libby Schaaf must to resign�

We will also be discussing next steps in the Teodora Valencia case, as well as First Responders needs and work.

See you in the streets~

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.

It is time for action! Join us in Sacramento on August 18th to demand that Peace Officers Bill of Right be repealed Come out to support families whose loved ones have been killed by Police. This is a Bill supported by Police and Law Enforcement Agencies to kill innocent citizens with impunity. It seems like there was a call for all white males to be deputized because there are 18000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Even when there are black and/or brown in those positions they align themselves (by and large) with the Blue Wall of Silence. Yet some of these same Officers have been shot and killed themselves by White Officers.

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignoranceprevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
― Frederick Douglass

The ACLU of Southern California has been working to understand how many people have been killed by law enforcement in America’s most populous state. What they found is alarming. Over a six-year period that ended in 2014, California’s Department of Justice recorded 610 instances of law enforcement committing homicide “in the process of arrest.”
1. Whites were killed at 78 percent the rate one would expect if killings were distributed evenly across the state’s population.
2. Hispanics were killed at 115 percent the expected rate,
3. while blacks were killed at 280 percent the expected rate.
The killings described above are the ones recorded as police murders and does not cover suspected police killings of black and brown.

When not being killed out right we are wrongfully prosecuted and/or given disproportionate sentences to white offenders. We are demanding that the Legislature and Governor Brown take Action by repealing this racist Peace Officers Bill of Rights!

Pack the Court for the Preliminary Hearing!

New Video on the #LandAction4 – it's awesome. Watch this and support Aug 18th at Alameda Court Aug 18th https://t.co/pEEtgfueVx #LandAction

— Occupy Oakland (@OccupyOakland) August 15, 2016

My name is Isidoro Saravia Ramos. I worked for the Casino San Pablo for 15 years, and I’ve spent many years standing up for my co-workers as a union leader. I got injured – and then I got fired.

I have knee and back problems and I needed surgery. But the Casino only lets us take 3 months of medical leave. I couldn’t recover so fast, so I lost my job. (Please read more about my story and donate to help with my surgery if you’re able!) It’s terrible for pregnant women who work at the Casino. Management lets people smoke inside, so women have to take time off if they don’t want to breathe second-hand smoke while they’re pregnant. If a woman uses up her time off during pregnancy, she can’t take more after the birth – so she has to choose between breathing smoke and losing time with her new baby.

If a woman needs more than three months to care for her baby or recover from a cesarean, she can be fired!

Other California workers have more protections when they are sick or injured or have babies. But this casino is owned by a tribe, so we don’t have the same rights – to California pregnancy disability leave, California workers comp, or even a smoke-free workplace.

Join my co-workers and I for an action to show the Casino we deserve the same rights as other Californians!

In solidarity,
Isidoro Saravia Ramos

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The SF Unitarian-Universalist Center will show films on the environment every Friday this month. .

The next film, Aug 12, “Unacceptable Levels” tells the story of the inadequate federal measures to keep toxics out of our environment. A speaker from the EPA will help make sense of the situation and the new law recently passed.

In “Evolution of Organic,” showing Aug. 19, the story of the organic agriculture movement is told by those who built it – and looks ahead to the next generation of growers.

In “Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown” showing Aug 26, Nye goes to a psychoanalyst’s couch to struggle with his emotions about global warming and what to do about it.

Written and performed by
Charlie Hinton
Music by Bill Crossman
Directed by Mark Kenward

Charlie created Solitary Man based on letters and visits with prisoners in Pelican Bay SHU/solitary confinement. The show takes place in November, 2014, a year after the largest prisoner hunger strike in history.

This performance is a benefit for the coalition to Stop Urban Shield and militarized policing.

After the performance, we will have an update about Pelican Bay and discuss how and why people across California are mobilizing to stop the Urban Shield military expo and SWAT competition on September 9.

Sponsored by: School of Americas Watch East Bay; Stop Urban Shield Coalition; American Friends Service Committee.

This high quality 38-minute film features more than forty voices advocating for reform, including business and labor leaders, activists, health policy experts, economists, physicians, nurses, and patients.

The film convincingly makes two points:

-Our health care system is headed for a crash
-There is way to fix it for businesses as well as individuals

Bay Area folks: @healthcareforCA will show the xlnt #singlepayer movie "Fix It", with Q&A, in El Cerrito on 8/20: https://t.co/5WZRl0zrVU

— RedwoodGirl (@RedwoodGirl) July 15, 2016

10:15 Doors open
10:30 Introduction
10:35 Movie Screening
11:15 Q&A with:
-Pat Snyder, PhD, RN – Health Care for All – Contra Costa County
-Dan Hodges – Health Care for All – Alameda County

Brought to you by Health Care for All – Contra Costa and Alameda Chapters

Co-sponsored by Contra Costa County District 1 Supervisor John Gioia

SEATING IS FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED

Don’t miss the next general meeting of the Oakland Justice Coalition. We have a full agenda and need your help to begin the work of supporting our candidates.

Agenda

Welcome and Brief Orientation
(TBD: Presentation by Registrar of Voters)
Candidate Endorsements
Review and Consideration of Changes to Ballot Initiatives
Rent Protection
Police Commission
Candidate Support and Committee Sign Up/Planning

Candidates Presented for Endorsement on 8/21

District 3
School Board: Kharyshi Wiginton

District 5
School Board: Mike Hutcheson

District 7
City Council: Nehanda Imara

Candidates We’ve Endorsed To Date

District 3
School Board: Don Macleay
City Council: Noni Session

District 7
School Board: Chris Jackson

Film Screenings:

1:30 PM: Policing the Police

3:00 PM: Broken on All Sides

4:30 PM Solitary Nation

6:30 PM 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets

Sponsored by SFUU Human Rights Group, Amnesty International, Stop Mass Incarceration Network

The Tony Award-winning SF Mime Troupe now running with its 57th season premiering “Schooled”

Education. It’s like the weather: everyone has an opinion but nobody does anything about it. That’s how Livina Jones feels about her son Tom’s new school, Eleanor Roosevelt High. With its old textbooks, crumbling classrooms, and racist treatment of kids just like hers Livina believes Roosevelt is exactly the sort of school that can benefit from a little free-market common sense. The nanny-state government has failed to see students as individuals, and failed to give them the real-world skills they’ll need to get ahead. So who says it isn’t time for some big money, for-profit schooling?
Ethel Orocuru, for one. She’s the long serving history/civics/American government/basketball coach at Eleanor Roosevelt, and she’s willing to fight for her version of education as long as her reconstructed hips will allow. But is she fighting for a system that can be fixed, or is she just too blind by her past to see how times have left her and her school behind? And when an efficiency expert, Mr. Babbit, is assigned to improve her class is it a sign that Ethel is behind the times, or a sign of something more sinister? And with privatization on the line, and a Wall Street heavy hitter lined up to fold the entire district into his conglomerate, suddenly the next School Board election is more about a hidden agenda than the open curriculum. And when did the hall monitors start wearing brown shirts and arm bands?