Calendar

TONIGHT: Sunday, August 19 – 7:30pm

Gather to bring in the sunset for our sister Tsega.

Join us as we gather at the site of Tsega’s murder for a candlight vigil and open mic.

Lake Merritt (on Grand Avenue between Harrison and Bay, near Fairy Land)

“I didn’t come to die. I came to sunshine.”

REST in POWER TSEGA!

In an August 17 decision, Administrative Law Judge Clifford Anderson of the National Labor Relations Board found that Castlewood Country Club has maintained an illegal lockout since August 10, 2010. He recommended that the NLRB order Castlewood to reinstate the locked-out workers and pay them two years of back wages and benefits. But Castlewood may appeal the decision!

DEMAND AN END TO AN ILLEGAL LOCKOUT!
Wednesday, August 22, 5 pm
Castlewood Country Club Valley Course

Join us for a picket to celebrate the ruling and call on Castlewood to bring its workers back!

More information about the court case and the decision

Rides may be available. Contact Sarah Norr, 510-502-5344.

“From the folks who brought you the West Coast Port Shutdown.”

The OO Labor Solidarity Committee meets weekly, with every other meeting being held at Oscar Grant Plaza weather permitting. This week’s meeting will be at Francesco’s Restaurant, 8520 Pardee Dr, off Hegenberger near the Airport, across from the ILWU hall.

At 6:30 we will be listening to a presentation by someone from the Chicago Teachers’ Union. Here is the blurb:

This Thursday, August 23rd, you will have the opportunity to hear a skype presentation from Jim Cavallero of the Chicago Teachers Union. Jim is a high school teacher in Chicago, who is a union district supervisor working with a group of CTU delegates, a member of the 30 person rank&file bargaining team, and an activist in CORE (the grassroots caucus which has provided much of the current militant union leadership and is active with community mobilizations). He will discuss the CTU organizing model linked to rank&file activati including the involvement of the rank & file in the contract struggle.

The key questions around membership involvement in the union, the fights against school closures and mayoral control, resisting the Rahm/Arnie/Barack deforms and building labor-community unity are issues all too familiar to the struggles in Oakland and the Bay Area. The Chicago contract fight is one with national implications.

We invite all OEA members, other union and labor solidarity activists, and anyone involved in the battle to preserve and expand public education to come on Thursday. It is all part of ONE BIG STRUGGLE. Please be there to show solidarity with the CTU and learnfrom their experiences.

After the presentation the Labor Solidarity Committee will have an abbreviated meeting.

Topics may include discussion about the OOLSC’s next actions, the OO Occupy Everywhere Conference, support for organizing efforts by UNITE HERE at the Oakland Airport, the OO General Assembly, and other topics as they may arise.

Emergency Rally & Protest
Friday August 24th 2012 @ 5pm
Oscar Grant Plaza (aka Frank Ogawa Plaza)

Protest the murder of 40 striking mine workers by the South African Government. Stand in solidarity with the mine workers as they continue their battle with the Lonmin Platinum Mine and the murderous government police force. Workers in all countries must come together to resist these atrocities carried out by the state in the interests of International Capitalism. As working class organizations we strongly believe that:”an injury to one IS an injury to all.”

Initiated by Advance the Struggle in conjunction with the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression. Please contact us if your organization would like to be included as an endorser: bay.strikes@gmail.com

From Oakland to South Africa,
one struggle, one fight!

Video of slaughter

I am Einar Stensson, a sociologist at the Stockholm university and activist in the Occupy Stockholm movement during the fall of 2011. After studying the Occupy Oakland movement during my two months in the Bay Area, I will share my conclusions about the occupy movement based on the interviews (no identities will be revealed, only perspectives) I have conducted with various activists in the Occupy Oakland movement.

Why did the movement start and spread so quickly around the globe?
How is Occupy organized? Who matters in the movement and why?
What is the future of Occupy?
I will first talk for around 40 minutes and then open up for questions/discussion. Please buy something at the cafe when you arrive 🙂

Einar Stensson’s web site: http://people.su.se/~eist7232/index.html

Airport concession stand workers have been subject to workplace abuses such as not being paid the legally required ‘living wage’, no overtime when overtime is due, no vacation when vacation is due, firings for trying to organize a union, and plenty else.

UNITE HERE is the union which has organized the Castlewood Workers, sought and obtained aid for their cause from Occupy Oakland and its Labor Solidarity Committee, and recently won a huge court victory against the Castlewood Country Club for unfair labor practices.

THIS FRIDAY! Airport Action and Boycott Launch
Friday, August 31, 11am-1:30pm.
Oakland Airport Terminal 2.

Join UNITE HERE 2850 and airport workers for a Labor Day action at the Oakland Airport! Workers are launching a boycott against the following non-union airport businesses:

• See’s Candies • Auntie Anne’s Pretzels • Gordon Biersch • Jamba Juice • Subway • Otaez • Burger King • World Passage Duty Free • Silver Dragon • Tech Showcase

Stand up with the workers in demanding a fair process for deciding whether to join a union, free from intimidation.

SIGN THE BOYCOTT PLEDGE HERE!

While you’re there, you can meet Hakima Arhab and consider making a donation to support her and her family. She’s the cashier at the Oakland Airport Subway who was fired after she blew the whistle on her bosses by filing charges that Subway has violated various labor laws. You can make an online donation here or send a check to 1440 Broadway Ste 208, Oakland, CA 94612 (make checks out to UNITE HERE Local 2850, with “Hakima Arhab” in the memo line).

Also, check out our new airport campaign page and the 2850 Facebook page to learn more about the workers and their stories!

For questions or rides, contact Lian Alan at lalan@unitehere.org or 510-219-6491.

UNITE HERE Local 2850, 1440 Broadway, Suite 208, Oakland, CA 94612, Tel. 510-893-3181, Fax 510-893-5362

Check out the Poster for more info.

Check out the trailer.

Check out a writeup of the event.

A Documentary Release Screening and Party.

Performances by SuperNatural, Jabari Shaw, Shareef Ali and the Radical Folksonomy.

Chevron profit was 26.9 billion dollars last year, yet they cannot stop leaks like the one that occurred on August 13th in Richmond.

Meet at Pt. Richmond Washington Park at 10:00 AM on September 3rd and march to Chevron!

OO’s Nomads are hosting a potluck BBQ at Snow Park at 2 PM on Labor Day, September 3rd.  Bring a dish to share with your comrades & cronies.

OK, Labor Day is the establishment’s alternative to May 1st, International Workers’ Day, celebrated by progressives all over the world. May Day started as a commemoration of 7 anarchists unjustly sentenced to execution after being railroaded after an incident at a workers’ demonstration in Chicago in 1866.  But even that attempted cooptation of workers’ own celebration of their solidarity had to be rung out of the ruling class after 13 workers had been shot down by US Marshals & about 12,000 army troops sent to crush the Pullman Strike in 1882.

But I guess Americans have to be grateful that their corporate masters give them any time off at all, the US government does not mandate it, and indeed, a quarter of American workers get no paid vacation time, not even the miserly number of often-paid national holidays. At least 24 industrialized nations mandate a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation, in addition to more generous allocations of national holidays. Brazil, France & Finland guarantee 6 weeks of paid vacation. But in this ‘No-Vacation Nation’ many workers are afraid to even take off the 2 weeks of vacation time their companies might offer them because so few legal protections are in place to prevent them from being laid off. Besides, with the ever-increasing pace of work many employees are afraid they wouldn’t be able to cope with the backlog of work awaiting them when they returned from holiday. And with the increasing prevalence of electronic gizmos tying Americans to their jobs 24/7 taking time off often just means working from somewhere other than the office.  Americans have less vacation time than citizens of any other advanced economy, working an extra 350 hours a year more than Europeans (the equivalent of 9 full working weeks). Even in Japan, where they have a special word for working yourself to death (Karōshi), the government mandates 25 days of paid time off of work each year.

Anywho, it should be more fun than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Why not attend the Chevron march at Point Richmond and make a day of it?

Support SEIU 1021 Port Workers. Tell The Port of Oakland and Goldman Sachs: Stop the Greed!

— Goldman Sachs owns a major stake in one of the terminals at the Port of Oakland, and rakes in huge profits while paying no taxes and ripping off the City of Oakland over bond indebtedness.

–Goldman Sachs got bailed out while libraries, schools and parks crumble.

— The Port of Oakland generates a $35,000,000 surplus each year.
— Yet the Port of Oakland wants to cut real wages by 15%. More money for Goldman Sachs, less money for the rest of us.

The Coalition to Stop Goldman Sachs says:

“It’s time for a series of escalating actions.”

FREE FOOD

In the wake of the Marikana mine workers massacre, leftist groups of all stripes are calling resistance inevitable.

Come see former Black Panther Gerald Smith and Berkeley PhD student Zach Levenson and recent visitor to South Africa discuss the country’s history and what’s happening now.

Join us for a one mile march around downtown San Francisco, visiting at least four Bank of America branches and perhaps artistically decorating the sidewalks out in front.

More info here

Presented by Haiti Action Committee
Sunday September 09, 2012
$5-$20 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds. – 4pm

A talk by author Jeb Sprague, introduced by Nia Imara of Haiti Action Committee.

Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians.

The Green Party invites you to hear two speakers about the ongoing story of police misconduct in the East Bay.

Our first speaker is Jeralynn Brown Blueford, the mother of Alan Blueford, who was killed by the OPD under very suspicious circumstances. The Blueford family has formed the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition to get answers about why this young man was shot and killed. Andrea Prichett from Berkeley CopWatch will also speak. Andrea has been training people for 20 years to monitor police, document abuse, and organize resistance to police misconduct.

The new semester just recently began at UC Berkeley and there is a lot of students who want to know about Occupy around the Bay Area. The purpose of the Info Table is to inform students about Occupy Oakland, Occupy the Farm, and Occupy Cal; what actions they’ve done, what plans are in the mix for the future, and how they can get involved.

Facebook page.

Come join us, help out!

We invite you to join us for an inspiring evening of solidarity with the Colombian labor movement as we launch and fundraise for PASO International (Proyecto de Acompañimiento y Solidaridad).

Colombia suffers from the highest level of economic inequality in Latin America, with 2/3 of all workers in the informal sector. Unions defending workers’ rights face surveillance, threats, kidnapping, torture, and death. Over 1,000 Colombian union activists have been assassinated since 2000 (15 this year) and Colombia accounts for 63% of all union assassinations worldwide. Recent implementation of free trade agreements has put Colombian workers on the frontlines of the global resistance against privatization and other neoliberal economic policies. In the face of this exploitation and repression, Colombia has one of the most vibrant labor movements in the Americas. Fired General Motors workers recently inspired the world by encamping 24/7 outside the U.S. Embassy for over a year and sewing their mouths shut in hunger strike, and port workers, oil workers, teachers, food service workers, health care workers, palm workers, and miners are all in key battles.

Working with and at the request of Colombian unions, PASO is launching an on-the-ground international presence in Colombia and rapid response solidarity network. But we need your help!

Join us on Wednesday, September 12th for an evening of:

•A report on the Colombian labor movement from PASO solidarity oorganizers in the Bay Area from Bogota.
•A live Skype conversation with GM hunger strikers.
•Video documentation of recent labor struggles.
•An opportunity to fund on-the-ground accompaniment of Colombian labor leaders.
•A raffle drawing for beautiful prints of Colombian worker rights art and other goodies.
•Yummy food and beverages, of course!

In New York, on September 13th, thousands will BLOW THE WHISTLE and organize determined resistance to Stop & Frisk, mass incarceration, solitary confinement, police brutality, and the criminal injustice system.

In Oakland, meet at Bancroft & 73rd Ave at 4:00 PM to march to the Oakland Police Substation at the Eastmont Mall.

Stop Masss Incarceration National Website.