Calendar
On Friday Nov 14th, SEAL delegates will be meeting with Chancellor Dirks to present our proposal for a Food Initiative at the Gill Tract Farm.
We have years of visions and designs, years of petitions and public comments, years of community processes pointing towards a student and community desire for an alternative use of the land that does not exploit people and does not pollute the planet. We need the world-renown University of California to have a powerful Food Initiative amplifying the voices from the grassroots and producing community-driven research to find solutions to the pressing environmental problems we face today.
Nov 14th is the day. Let’s show our Chancellor the student and community power behind halting the development and engaging in a community-design process for all 20 acres of the Gill Tract Farm.
Facebook event & RSVP. (Check for location details)
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How can you help?? So glad you asked!
> Get inspired at the Occupy the Farm Film! It is having its theatrical premiere right here in Berkeley! Nov 7th-Nov 14th.
https://www.facebook.com/
> If you have not done so already, please sign our petition:
bit.ly/FoodInitiative
> Like us on Facebook and share our posts!
https://www.facebook.com/
> You can use this form letter to email and message your friends and family:
http://
> We love our campaign co-sponsors! Are you part of a food justice, urban garden, environmental justice, local economies, or other related organization and would be interested in signing on as a co-sponsor? email us!
http://
SEAL delegates willb e meating with Chancellor Dirks to present our proposal for a Food Initiative in ALL 20 acres of the Gill Tract. Support them at the Rally!
Keynote address: Eric Holtz-Gimenez from Food First.
Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area –
Black and Brown Lives Matter
A Night of Healing for the Community
We are Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area with knowledge and unity! Open to the community a night of sharing, entertainment, Food, and so much more! The Event is hosted by Anita Wills, Executive Director of the Inter Council for Mother’s of Murdered Children. Speakers include Alex Salazar, Dionne Smith, Anita Wills, and others from the community whose lives have been touched by violence. The evening will also include will include Chicken Dinners, Seafood Gumbo, Enchiladas, Peach Cobbler, Potato Pies, Cakes, and other dishes, as well as beverages.*
Speaker Anita Wills will share her experience of traveling to Ferguson within a week of Michael Browns death. Other speakers, Dionne Smith-Downs and Alex Salazar will share their experiences in Ferguson. Alex Salazar spent weeks in Ferguson and has set up Cop-watch Workshops. He is an Activist who will share his experience as someone who has been on the inside and outside of Police Work. We have other speakers from the community, as well as short films, and items such as candles, crafts, baked goods, for sale.
Booth space is available for $25, (inbox for details, ntawls@gmail.com). A $10 donation is requested at the door (no one will be turned away for lack of funds). Those who donate $15 or more will receive a free dinner. All proceeds go to the Kerry Baxter Senior Legal Fund (Event is co-sponsored by the Mary & Patty Bowden Foundation).
* Items for sale as part of Fundraiser
Occupation, Repression, and Strategies of Resistance from the US to Palestine:
A Night of Music, Food, and Conversation to Support the Case of Rasmea Odeh
Featuring from Palestine:
Sahar Francis, Deputy Director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Accessible by elevator and Bart
Funds raised will support the defense of Rasmea Odeh
Pelican Bay State Prison is one of the largest prisons in our state. With close to 3 thousand men, and more than a third kept in solitary confinement, this prison is one of California’s most notorious for its unjust treatment of folks inside.
Join us tonight at the Omni in Oakland, for a performance of Hell in Paradise: My Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison. A play written and preformed by Charlie Hinton, based off the prison letters of Clyde Jackson.
Hell in Paradise screening & Panel Discussion
Followed by a panel discussion on Prisons: Budgets, Conditions and Resistance:
- Danny Murrillo – UC Berkeley student and imprisoned at Pelican Bay SHU
- Emily Harris – Californians for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
- Annie Kane – Human Rights Pen Pals
The event is free and is being hosted by the Bay Area Public School.
You are invited to join us in presenting Fruitvale, Florida, Ferguson and Beyond: A Summit about Ending Mass Criminalization in Oakland.
The summit will consist of workshops for youth on knowing your rights, for parents on how to keep our children out of jail, and for everyone on busting the school to prison pipeline and ending mass incarceration and deportation. This summit will be focused on youth and parents in the Oakland schools and lead up to a larger conference on these issues in April 2015.
Nationally, more than $60 billion is invested in correctional systems that incarcerate or supervise nearly 7 million people. Yet data shows that the US recidivism rate remains at approximately 67% (81% for youth)–one measure of the systems – failure to improve public safety. In 1970, there were 200,000 people in state and federal prison; in 2013, there were 1.5 million. 65% of prisoners are Black or Latino, though the combined percentage of the population for these two groups is around 30%. It costs $62,000 per year to keep someone in prison, while the California schools spend $9200 per student a year. The U. S. has the highest prison population in the world. According to one study, a Black man is killed by police, security forces, or vigilantes every 28 hours. This situation must change.
We know you understand the importance of this issue.
Come get connected with SDBA’s many projects:- organizing for public banking in Oakland
- saving the Berkeley Post Office and stopping the Staples non-union takeover of good Post Office jobs
- working with the City of Richmond and other municipalities for eminent domain seizure of underwater mortgages from the banksters
- ongoing study group
- distribution of Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual
- student debt resistance
- 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
- and much more!
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
Speak-Out Now! Presents: Wealthcare vs. Healthcare
Our health is one of the biggest markets for the big healthcare companies, pharmacuetical companies and insurance companies. The system profits off our illnesses, turning healthcare into wealthcare for big business. Join us for a discussion of healthcare under capitalism.
Our global ecological crisis has created an increasing interest in Marx’s theory of metabolic rift as a crucial aspect of capitalism. To appreciate fully how capitalism creates this rift, it is important to examine the human metabolic relation with nature in general and theoretical terms. ICSS member Gene Ruyle will explore the implications of Marx’s insight that labor is “the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and it is therefore independent of every form of that existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings live.” (Capital, Vol I, p. 291)
Plan to come early for coffee and donuts. We start promptly.
FREE – but hat will be passed for donations to NPML
This is a benefit for Tristan Anderson!
Free food will be served at 6 PM, the music begins at 7 pm…this will be an acoustic concert. Sunday, November 16th
Art House Gallery & Cultural Center
2905 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, California
David Rovics is a great, revolutionary folk singer of songs of social significance.
You can download most of his music at his web site or over at Soundclick and other places
Tristan Anderson is an activist and photographer who was critically injured by an Israeli tear gas canister in 2009 during a peaceful protest. Tristan is hemiplegic- mostly paralyzed on the left (formerly dominant) side of his body. He uses a wheelchair. He has lost sight in his right eye, suffers chronic pain in his paralyzed limbs, and has had pronounced, life changing cognitive and emotional repercussions as a result of the injury that was done to his brain. He has an ongoing lawsuit against the Israeli government.
David’s music is simply wonderful, sometimes moving and emotional, often hysterically funny, but always vitally concerned with making the world a better place.
But a song is worth 10³ words, here are a couple of examples:
This one cost David a few friends:
Since Occupy has had to deal with the social consequences of Hurricane Sandy to step in where the state and private charities have failed check out Rovics’ take on an earlier “natural” disaster:
A take on 9-11:
A tribute to internationalism:
Since we just exercised our freedom by voting:
Here is a version of David’s song about the Occupy movement.
This one is Einstein’s favourite Rovics tune about his idol Loukanikos:
As Woody Guthrie said, I hate a song that makes you think you were born to lose:
David will also do a set on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office Monday, Nov. 17th at 4 PM.
He will also do a house concert later that evening in Berkeley.
Monday, November 17th
Contact daniellsdin@gmail.com or call (510) 277-6669 for info if you want to attend!
Berkeley, California
Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area –
Black and Brown Lives Matter
A Night of Healing for the Community
Oakland CA, November 16, 2014: We are Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area with knowledge and unity! Open to the community a night of sharing, entertainment, Food, and so much more! The Event is hosted by Anita Wills, Executive Director of the Inter Council for Mother’s of Murdered Children. Speakers include Alex Salazar, Dionne Smith, Anita Wills, and others from the community whose lives have been touched by violence. The evening will also include will include Chicken Dinners, Seafood Gumbo, Enchiladas, Peach Cobbler, Potato Pies, Cakes, and other dishes, as well as beverages.*
Speaker Anita Wills will share her experience of traveling to Ferguson within a week of Michael Browns death. Other speakers, Dionne Smith-Downs and Alex Salazar will share their experiences in Ferguson. Alex Salazar spent weeks in Ferguson and has set up Cop-watch Workshops. He is an Activist who will share his experience as someone who has been on the inside and outside of Police Work. We have other speakers from the community, short films, and items such as candles, crafts, baked goods, and good food for sell.
Booth space is available for $25, (inbox for details, ntawls@gmail.com). A $10 donation is requested at the (no one will be turned away for lack of funds). Those who donate $15 or more will receive a free dinner. All proceeds go to the Kerry Baxter Senior Legal Fund (Event is sponsored by the Mary & Patty Bowden Foundation).
David Rovics is a great, revolutionary folk singer of songs of social significance.
You can download most of his music at his web site or over at Soundclick and other places.
Come and hear him play a set in our common space, the Post Office!
You will not be disappointed.
David will give (or will have given) a benefit concert for Tristan Anderson on Sunday, November 16th at the Art House in Berkeley.
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
Front Line of Aceh’s War —
the struggle for independence
The 2004 tsunami suddenly turned the isolated Indonesian province of Aceh into a household name. Yet the deeper story of the Acehnese and their long struggle for independence has been untold… until now. The Black Road is the harrowing account told by journalist and activist.
Billy Nessen, who was determined to find out the truth and tell the world. Nessen lived for many months with the independence guerrillas, was hunted by the military, and eventually spent time in jail in Indonesia.
Billy Nessen spoke came to OccupyForum last Monday and spoke about his work, including his current work with the UC Berkeley students to organize a campaign for divestment from fossil fuels.
“An extraordinary achievement. One of the most courageous and unflinching journalistic efforts I can recall.”
— Johnathan Holmes, ABC Four Corners, Australia
THE POSTAL SERVICE HAS THE BERKELEY POST OFFICE “UNDER CONTRACT.” !!!!!!!!!!!
THE POSTAL SERVICE WANTS TO SELL THE POST OFFICE TO HUDSON-MCDONALD DEVELOPMENT GROUP.
THE CITY OF BERKELEY HAS SUED THE POST OFFICE TO STOP THE SALE. A TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER IS IN PLACE UNTIL DECEMBER 17th.
A hearing will take place in Federal Court on December 11th.
Come learn about continuing developments and help us plan our next steps in opposition to this theft of our public commons.
Get an overview of the sale announcement here.
Here’s a good more general overview piece.
Also CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE. and the Save the Berkeley Post Office website, and First they Came for the Homeless Facebook for updates.
BPOD is an offshoot of Strike Debt Bay Area, which itself is an offshoot of Occupy Oakland and a chapter of the national Strike Debt movement, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.
On November 18, the third anniversary of Pepper Spray, ASUCD and a coalition of student organizations and labor unions are staging a CAMPUS-WIDE action to fight the impending 5% tuition increases every year for the next 5 years. We believe these tuition increases are a callous threat to the promise of public higher education, and we, as students, are ready to fight back.
This action will also be a platform to recognize the intersectional dimensions of the privatization and decreasing affordability of higher education, as well as an opportunity for coalition allies to advance their causes such as stopping sexual violence, demanding fair and affordable housing, and converting contracted out employees to full-time career UC staff.
We will gather at the quad at noon, and then through participatory democracy and discussion we will decide the course of this action, including workshops, marches, sit-ins, teach-ins, and building occupations.
It doesn’t matter if you’re “non-political,” or not an “activist.” If you pay tuition, or if your friends pay tuition, this matters, and we need you here.
SHARE WIDELY. Talk to your friends, student organizations, workplaces, peers, professors, TAs, etc. Share articles about the tuition increases and discuss them. Engage in this conversation.
Student action stopped the Regents from increasing tuition 81% in 2011. There would be no greater celebration of that success than doing it again.
This is what democracy looks like.
Oakland’s beautiful and wild Knowland Park is under threat, and we need your help at an important City Council vote. Right now, the free public park is home to a range of wildlife, including threatened species, native grasslands, and woodlands.
However, the Oakland Zoo is trying to take over the heart of the park’s 77 acres! – which would displace local wildlife…for an exhibit about species that are regionally extinct due to development. What?!
This would also mean privatizing our public park, and since the zoo has been working behind closed doors with local officials for years, the City Council just might let them do this. Unless we all stand up.
Knowland Park is item 9.2 on the agenda. You can sign up to speak on this item online here.
The zoo will be busing in its employees, and we need to pack the room and show them what democracy looks like. It is absolutely critical that we turn out a BIG crowd.
The Oakland City Council will meet on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 starting at 5:30 pm at Oakland City Hall to vote on whether to grant the zoo additional park acreage. The zoo is trying to take even MORE parkland from the public to “mitigate” for destroying the best of it…and if the Council votes for the zoo on 11/18, that’s it. It would set a terrible precedent.
Join us at the City Council meeting to tell the City Council what the wildlife protection agencies recommended in the first place, and the public has been demanding for years: move the development elsewhere – and preserve the park for all the resident wildlife, including the prime habitat for the threatened Alameda Whipsnake, rather than having to mitigate for its loss.
Sign up here if you can come or want to help out: bit.ly/knowlandmeeting.
FIGHT THE FEE-HIKE!
SATHER GATE. (At the tree between Dwinelle and Wheeler)
The Regents (the administration of the UC) will vote on a $3,300 tuition increase on Wednesday by 2pm.
*** We will discuss actions whether or not they approve fee hikes that day, so that we can proactively organize to roll-back our tuition, and prevent further attempts to raise fees. ***
GA hosted by Cal Progressive Coalition
Twitter:
@CalProgressives
#MoveTheMoney
#OurUniversity
#FundTheUC