Calendar
Berkeley Post Office Defense et al will be holding a rally/concert/teach-in on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office in solidarity with the struggle in the Bronx, NYC to save their own Post Office. The Bronx defenders will be holding their own protest rally that day.
Come learn about the latest news in the struggle to save the Berkeley Post Office and prevent the privatization of Post Offices across the country. Enjoy the music and use the public commons as it should be!
Resisting Empire on Jeju Island
On a small island on the Southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, for the past 7 years, a small group of villagers have been waging one of the most disciplined, dedicated, creative non-violent movements in the world.
Survivors of one of the most horrific genocides of the postwar era, they are struggling to prevent the Island, a UN designated biosphere reserve, from becoming a deep water military base that will uproot the traditional matrifocal culture, destroy a global ecological treasure, and destabilize the entire pacific region.
This Naval base, functioning as the lynchpin of the US Pacific pivot, will host US aircraft carriers, Aegis missile destroyers, nuclear submarines, and 8-10,000 troops, and turn the Island into a hair trigger for global confrontation.
This presentation, by activists working in solidarity with Jeju Island, will screen excerpts from “The Ghosts of Jeju”, chronicling the genocidal US intervention in Jeju Island in 1948, and the subsequent history of influence and manipulation. There will also be recent eye witness testimonies from the ground, to give a synoptic, historical view of the crucial local, cultural, ecological and geopolitical issues at stake.
For a good background summary, see:
Why Oliver Stone Came to Juju, Korea
Also KPFA show and Flashpoint
Schedule of all events at Niebyl-Proctor.
Occupy Forum presents…
How Do We Build A Better Economic System?
with Marco Vangelisti
Occupy Forum is excited to bring back lecturer Marco Vangelisti, who gave a riveting talk at the “What is Money???” forum in August. As a follow-up, Marco will be presenting the rest of his curriculum.
The current economic crisis is a recurring phenomenon of capitalism – a structurally unstable economic system. We will examine the current economic crisis in its historical context, how we dealt with the last major crisis in the 1930s and how we are (counter productively) dealing with it now. We will also look at the essential features of capitalism that makes it unstable and destructive to communities and ecosystems. Then, the systemic features of a new economic system that would be compatible with long term health of ecosystems and communities will be presented. Finally, we will explore the path from the current system to one that democratizes and localizes economic activity and anchors wealth and capital formation in the community.
Marco Vangelisti is a former Fullbright scholar in mathematics and economics at UC Berkeley. He is now involved with Slow Money, an organization concerned with steering financial investments toward small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Find more information about Marco at www.ek4t.com
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
Original notice from Occupy Bay Area United web page.
Publisher of the Pentagon Papers on 1971, Ellsberg’s revelations played an important role in helping end that war.
Ellsberg was been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful US interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.
Daniel’s biography: http://www.ellsberg.net/bio
Starting at 8 AM
Rally at 11 AM — Vigil at 4 PM
Twitter Updates @stopsfevictions
Like thousands of other working class San Franciscans, Mr. and Ms. Lee worked for decades in the city. Now elderly and caring for their disabled adult daughter, they are facing eviction by a real estate investor who bought their eight-unit apartment building in the once blue-collar Polk Gulch neighborhood. The investor has admitted that from the start, his business plan was to evict all the tenants and sell off the apartments. He has almost succeeded. All the other families have moved out and the Lees have also desperately tried to move. But as seniors on a fixed income with a disabled family member they faced a costly and doubly discriminatory rental market. They have applied to dozens of apartments without success. Yet their investor landlord has rejected their requests for help finding alternative housing and has asked the sheriff to force the family into the streets.
The Lee family’s story might be like thousands of others who have been quietly moved without public awareness. But overcoming their initial fears, Mr. and Ms. Lee have decided to take a stand: they are staying in their apartment and publicly protesting their eviction by the sheriff. With the support of the Tenants Union and others, they hope their fight will result in increased protections for all tenants and help for evicted tenants like themselves who need housing in the City.
Last month, a judge approved the eviction of the Lees without a trial, disregarding evidence that the landlord-investor misrepresented in his plans to evict the tenants in order to finance for his project. The court’s has allowed the landlord to proceed to request the sheriff to forcibly remove the family despite a pending appeal of that ruling. The sheriff is now scheduled to evict the family on Wednesday, September 25.
Join Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle, Alameda County Departments, and the Alameda County Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform for a community meeting on Public Safety and AB109 Prison Realignment.
Light refreshments provided
Please join us on Thursday, Sept. 26 for oral arguments on class certification in Ashker v. Brown, our federal lawsuit on behalf of prisoners at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California.
In the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) and other California SHUs, prisoners are isolated in near-total solitude for between 22 ½ and 24 hours a day, denied telephone calls, contact visits, and vocational, recreational, or educational programs.
The court will hear arguments as to whether Ashker v. Brown should be certified as a class action lawsuit. Plaintiffs are seeking to certify a class of all prisoners serving indeterminate sentences at the Pelican Bay SHU on the basis of gang validation for purposes of our due process claim, and a subclass of all prisoners who have been held at the Pelican Bay SHU for more than 10 years for purposes of our Eighth Amendment claim.
Please pack the Court on August 22nd.
What:
– 1:00 PM: Press Conference and rally outside the Courthouse.
– 2:00 PM: Oral Argument in Ashker v. Brown on class certification, before Chief District Judge Claudia Wilken.
We suggest arriving 30 minutes to one hour early, in order to go through security. Everyone will need a current form of identification in order to get inside the building.
People will be staffing a table with information about California solitary confinement conditions in solidarity with the suspended prisoners’ hunger strike.
Come on down and hang out and help pass out literature.
The CIA began Operation Gladio shortly after WWII in order to stop, or repress, the Italian communists from coming to power in Italy… The US continues to use repressive tactics against the population in other countries, most notably in the Middle East… Snowden and Manning are revelating that the US hired and funded terrorists long before 9/11… The War on Terror is used as justification for the US to attack and deny our civil liberties…
Oscar Grant Forum Series.
Berkeley Post Office Defense et al will be holding a rally/concert/teach-in on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office.
Come learn about the latest news in the struggle to save the Berkeley Post Office and prevent the privatization of Post Offices across the country. Enjoy the music and use the public commons as it should be!
Special Guest Speaker:
Peter Byrne, author of Going Postal: U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband sells post offices to his friends, cheap..
National award-winning investigative journalist Peter Byrne reports that the husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has been selling post offices at bargain basement prices—often to his own business partners. Richard C. Blum is the chairman of CBRE Group Inc., the largest commercial real estate firm in the world. In 2011, the Postal Service awarded Blum’s company an exclusive contract to sell off postal real estate in cities and towns across America. Byrne’s in-depth investigation details the many apparent conflicts of interests driving the CBRE deals. It brings to light a scathing government audit of Blum’s contract that is being ignored by the Obama administration. The investigation reveals how Senator Feinstein pressured the Postmaster General to stop a postal construction project, and to favor the interests of a developer working with her husband’s firm. Byrne explains why the Post Office is not really broke and how powerful forces on Capitol Hill are angling to franchise the U.S. Mail monopoly. We learn that the post office executives in charge of Blum’s contract have been up to a financial shenanigans of their own. This is first class investigative reporting on a vital issue of the day that you will not find anywhere else.
Music by the Funky Nixons, Hali Hammer and Redd Welsh.
A Quick Update on the status of the proposed zoning ordinance for the Historic District which includes the Berkeley Post Office may be provided by Berkeley City Councilperson Jesse Arreguin.
An Update on what’s happening with the ever-closer threatened eviction of the Albany Bulb residents will be provided.
Food!
Seventy people, many living on the Albany Bulb for years, even decades, are scheduled to be evicted from their homes beginning October 1st. (See this essay for what the Albany Bulb is and more details).
The Bulb community is sponsoring a Potluck and Open Mic event, followed by Music from BLACKBIRD RAUM of
Santa Cruz.
Protect autonomous and free space! Come visit the Bulb and see what we all can do to stop the evictions!
5:00 PM: Potluck begins.
8:00 PM: Music!
THE ABOLITION OF PRISON
Can you think of such a thing? (Are you attached to a revenge ethic?)
Is it worth our time to think through such an endeavor?
(Are we concerned about what happens to those whom we have empowered the state to incarcerate?)
You’re invited to join the circle and share your questions, concerns, and insight.
We will hear presentations and discuss the issue.
Presenters:
Steve Martinot, author of an extensive essay, The Need to Abolish the Prison System: An Ethical Indictment
Marie Levin, sister of a man who’s been held in solitary confinement in California for more than 29 years
Nuri Nusrat, member of the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collaborative
Judge Gail Bereola, Alameda County Superior Court
Elder Rev. Betty Williams, Alameda Race Violence Task Force
Co-Sponsors:
First Congregational Church of Oakland
Seminary of the Street
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Nafsi ya Jamii
A film directed by Ansar Muhammad (ZAR THE DIP).
Screening followed by a panel discussion.
Sponsored by the Merritt College Black Student Union.
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Come join us for this compelling documentary which uses the metaphor of The Wizard of Oz to explain the history of the monetary system, how it has gotten us into our current economic malaise, and how we can get out of it. The movie was created by Bill Still, a documentary film maker that has been exploring monetary issues in movies since 1996.
The movie is 1:50 long, we will have a short break in the middle, and our always engaging discussion will follow!
The Secret of Oz won the Silver Sierra award at the Yosemite Film Festival and the Award of Merit at the Accolade Competition La Jolla, California.
The yellow brick, the emerald city of Oz, even Dorothy’s silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the movie version) were powerful symbols of author L. Frank Baum’s belief that the people – not the big banks — should control the quantity of a nation’s money. The bottom line: No More National Debt. All our money is created out of debt. But nations don’t have to borrow money from banks. Sovereign nations can create their own money — debt free — just as Abraham Lincoln did to win the Civil War. This is the secret that’s been hidden from us for over 100 years.
Time will be allotted for Q&A, discussion and announcements.
Donations to Occupy Forum to cover costs are encouraged; no one turned away!
“Heidi Boghosian’s Spying on Democracy is the answer to the question, ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you care if someone’s watching you?'”
— Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU and former FBI agent
Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Apple, and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets.
In Spying on Democracy, National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government intelligence agencies mine data from sources as diverse as surveillance cameras and unmanned drones to iris scans and medical records, while combing websites, email, phone records and social media for resale to third parties, including U.S. intelligence agencies.
More info and ticket purchase.
As head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano implemented programs such as Secure communities and 287g which have deported almost 2 million undocumented immigrants. Her only background on education is getting rid of in-state tuition for undocumented youth in Arizona.
We’ll be having a rally on Tuesday at 11:00AM on Upper Sproul to protest Napolitano’s nomination. At 12:00PM students from the Multicultural coalition are going to meet with Napolitano and present their demands.
It’s important that we show that we are one! Napolitano thinks this will be a quick and easy meeting. However, we will make it clear that she is not welcome in our UC System!
Therefore, around 11:20 We’ll head out from Upper Sproul to Oakland. Where her office is located.
From October 25th -28th, 2013 in Oakland, California, Urban Shield – a trade show and training exercise for SWAT teams and police- will bring together more than 150 local, state, federal, int’l and private sector partners and defense contractors. Urban Shield has taken place over the past six years, and is hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
Last week at the city of Oakland’s public safety meeting, community groups challenged the notion of funding for Urban Shield – being hidden in the language and process, by requesting a mere $200,000, to be used for “safety drills” for the Fire Department. Meanwhile, Alameda county record’s indicate that the sheriff’s office is being paid up to $7.5 million in federal funding for Urban Shield – and activities couched as anti-terrorist “safety drills” when the record demonstrates that these methods are also used on civilians in ‘scenarios’ that include public protest, stop and frisk, deportation, and the criminalization of poverty and mass incarceration.
This is our opportunity to make our voices heard again at City Hall, and say:
1) We do not want a gun show that sells militarized weapons to the police in the heart of downtown Oakland.
2) We want to know why City Council is permitting known human rights violators, to operate in the heart of the city?
3) We demand a clear budget of all public funds that are being spent on Urban Shield.
Facing Urban Shield Action Network (FUSAN) is composed of 30 diverse Bay Area groups who believe that hosting Urban Shield in Oakland is the wrong direction for public policy. FUSAN firmly rejects the use of city space and funding for Urban Shield, to practice “war games”. This partnership between police with human rights violations from Bahrain, Israel, Guam, and Brazil, deepens the possibility of continued misconduct and human rights violations already on record. Urban Shield ‘exercises’ further militarizes police responses to all kinds of emergencies, like people in crisis with mental health issues with devastating results. Urban Shield is militarizing police with more weapons, which results means increased harm to African-American, Latino and Arab and Muslim communities.
To prevent the eviction of its current residents and explore solutions.
POTLUCK + DOCUMENTARY SCREENING.
Bring your own water, camping gear, and love of the land.
The Berkeley Planning Commission will be holding a public hearing on a proposed Zoning Ordinance that would preclude the downtown Berkeley Historic District (which includes the Post Office building) from being used for commericial purposes.
While this sounds incredibly boring it is also very important. The Post Office is very scared about the potential for this ordinance to inhibit their imminent sale of the the 2000 Allston Way Post Office building to private developers.
Come make your voice heard for a strong zoning ordinance, against the sale of the Post Office, and against the privatization of our commons!
As millions around the country flock to theaters to watch the acclaimed film, ‘Fruitvale Station’, there is little said about the role of Oscar Grant’s father in his life. But stepping forward for the first time to tell this tale is Oscar Grant’s cousin, Samuel Morris, who will discuss the wrongful imprisonment of Oscar Grant’s father for the past 27 years and the outrage felt by many who see an innocent relative held behind bars while the man who clearly murdered Oscar walks free after a miniscule 11 month jail sentence.
Read the Liberation News’ article that discusses the Oscar Grant Jr. case:
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/untold-story-oscar-grant.html
Join the Party for Socialism and Liberation as we discuss the story of Oscar Grant’s father and the connections between economic oppression, mass incarceration, and police brutality.