Calendar
- organizing for public banking in Oakland and elsewhere.
- advocating for Postal banking.
- 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
- 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
- help save Doctors’ Hospital in San Pablo
- and much more!
Come learn about continuing developments in the battle save the Berkeley Post Office and the Postal Service from privatization, support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.
The postal service wanted to sell the post office to Hudson-mcdonald, a local developer. The City of Berkeley sued the post office to stop the sale. Hudson-mcdonald backed out of the deal in early december.
Get an overview of the sale announcement here. Here’s a good more general overview piece.
There was a hearing in Federal Court on December 11th.
The next hearing is March 19th. The federal judge will decide whether the lawsuit will continue or be dismissed – he’ll decide sometime after march 19th.
The Postal Police had been raiding the Occupation intermittently in the wee hours of the morning, but the Occupiers refused to leave. Read about one of the eviction attempts here. There haven’t been any raids since a few days before Christmas, but they might start up again at any time.
Check out the Community Garden at the Post Office.
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.
If you can make it to #AfrikaTown today in #WestOakland at SanPablo and Brush that would be awesome. We need bodies to defend the garden.
— Minister Flashes (@Federal_flashes) March 11, 2015
Africatown pic.twitter.com/vLNQoFbDII
— Bud (@buddrums) March 11, 2015
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers. We meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at the SEIU Local 1000 union hall, 1433 Webster Street, 2nd Floor in downtown Oakland. These assembly meetings occur from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
Our work together encompasses:
- (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent and care workers;
- (2) current campaigns to improve wages for low-wage workers; and
- (3) efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.
We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.
We look forward to learning with you and making change for the better. Please love and support one another. We have a duty to fight. We have a duty to win.
Folks up at #AfrikaTown feeding the community this morning. This is beautiful. #WestOakland pic.twitter.com/csq99wMSL1
— Minister Flashes (@Federal_flashes) March 11, 2015
The first of eight meetings is January 28th.
This seminar will study the corporate structure, its historical development, and its modes of political control.
www.facebook.com/saveccsf
www.saveccsf.org
Help plan and build the March 24 day of action to remove the dictatorship and demand an end to downsizing, pushout policies, austerity, and attacks on diversity, and the cancellation of the construction of the Performing Arts Education Center.
We’ll be discussing the Debt and Economic systems of the ancient world for this meeting, using an article written by Michael Hudson.
Here’s the reading. Reconstructing The Origins of Interest-Bearing Debt… We’ll be talking about pages 1-30 this time.
The Politics of Debt Reading Group is associated with the Bay Area Public School and Strike Debt Bay Area.
We started hearing back from the implementers at the last meeting; OPD, PEC, Auditor, and the ER director talked. Now the committee has to decide what to do about what they said. See you at 6:00pm, Thursday, 12 March 2015, at Oakland City Hall.
RETALIATE AGAINST WORKER INTIMIDATION BY FAST FOOD CORPORATIONS AND POLICE
Remember two Fridays ago in San Lorenzo, CA when Jack in the box fired a worker unjustly, then called the county sheriffs when she came back with her union comrades demanding her job back???
We are fighting back with a weekly “EFF YOU FRIDAY” picket at various local Jack stores. We gotta send the message to corporations and police that we will not back down from fighting to improve workers’ lives.
WE WILL BE CONTINUING THESE ACTIONS EVERY FRIDAY AT DIFFERENT JACK-IN-THE-BOX LOCATIONS WITH THE SAME OWNER.
FRIDAY THE 13TH: Good Luck Comes to Good Bosses!
Join us for our picket line to support our union brothers and sisters at HS Lordships!
Workers at HS Lordships have been bargaining for a contract for more than four years. These longtime workers are asking for a fair contract, but management continues to propose drastic cuts in medical benefits. Workers have offered to give up sick days and vacation time and participate in a new healthcare plan with an increased deductible and reduced benefits. The restaurant, however, continues to propose making it harder for workers to qualify for healthcare.
At the restaurant, servers make $9 an hour and pay more than $500 per month for family insurance. Workers are fighting for affordable medical insurance and saying “NO MORE” to skyrocketing healthcare costs!
“I have worked at HS Lordships restaurant for ten years. I am a mother of six boys, and my family needs medical insurance in order to provide for and protect our children so they can grow and develop in the healthiest way possible. We need medical insurance that is accessible and affordable so that our basic needs can be met.”
-Adelaida Cisneros, Pantry Cook
Questions or need a ride? Contact Nicole Zapata at nzapata@unitehere.org
www.facebook.com/unitehere2850
UNITE HERE Local 2850, 1440 Broadway, Suite 208, Oakland, CA 94612, Tel. 510-893-3181
You are invited to take part in this cutting edge conference that brings railroad workers, environmentalists, community activists and concerned citizens together in order to build the movement for a safer and greener railroad, one that is more responsive to the needs of workers, trackside communities, citizens in general, and society as a whole.
In recent months, public attention has been focused on the railroad in a way that it has not been for decades. In the wake of Lac Megantic and other derailments and resulting fires and explosions, the public is alarmed about oil trains and the movement of trains in general through their communities. Environmental activists are up-in-arms about the amounts of fossil fuels moving by rail. Farmers and other shippers are concerned about the congestion that has occurred in recent months, due in part to the oil boom. All of this attention gives railroad workers a golden opportunity to educate the general public about the railroad, its inherent efficiencies, its value to society, and its potential. It also gives us an invaluable opportunity to inform non-railroad workers about the situation that we face on the job every day.
The public generally has no idea what goes on daily on America’s railroads. At this conference, we plan to talk about crew fatigue, single employee train crews, excessively long and heavy trains, draconian availability policies, short staffing, limited time off work and other concerns. These issues are of concern not just to railroaders, but are of concern to environmentalists, the community at large and society in general. Non-railroaders in attendance at the conference will come away with a deeper understanding of our workplace and a greater appreciation of the issues facing us.
Join Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub, surveillance systems from facial recognition to license plate readers, Urban Shield and other invasions of privacy by our militarized police and benighted City Government.
We are currently pushing to get a strong privacy policy for the DAC enacted by the City Council, for the Council to create a privacy committee that will create a private policy for all of Oakland, and for a surveillance equipment acquisition ordinance which provides transparency and prior notification before such technology is obtained to be passed.
Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s 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
- Anyone can bring a proposal
- for new classes
- events
- organizational procedures
- lectures, talks, speakers
- workshops
- skill-shares
- Organizers vote
- on class proposals
- important financial expenditures
- use of space
- core values
- We meet each other
- make relevant announcements
- collaborate and coalesce new visions of the school
- distribute tasks and plan to take action
- learn how to build collectivity, a commons, a life
Next Saturday the art activists of Animals Against Extinction will unfurl a striking banner at the pedestrian overpass at University Avenue at I-80, Berkeley. The banner will focus the attention of thousands of drivers on the ongoing threats that climate change poses to all living species.
If you’d like to be a part of this action, please gather at noon Saturday, March 21 at Sea Breeze Cafe at the foot of University and Frontage Road, immediately west of I-80.
This action will also serve as a dress rehearsal for actions at First Friday in Oakland, and the Earth Day celebration in Martinez (at the site of Shell and Tesoro) on April 18th. We will expose Big Oil’s murderous role in contributing to the climate crisis.
7th Open Circle ~Connect & Collaborate on Ending Police Brutality,
Systemic Racism and Disenfranchisement of Black People & People of Color
Let’s kick this meeting off with a potluck at 3:00 pm followed by the Open Circle at 3:45 pm. Please bring a dish or snacks to share!
Open circle will begin with report backs and announcements of upcoming actions followed by reflection and dialogue around the current state and thoughts or approaches on how to effect change.
We will end with breakout group topics and time to connect with folks with similar interests. Some great affinity groups have formed out of the breakout groups segment. Solidarity is afoot so bring your ideas!
Notes from last meeting:
omnicommons.org/connect
Get involved with the fight against solitary confinement.
Become a human rights pen pal: Contact cws@igc.org
Come learn about continuing developments in the battle save the Berkeley Post Office and the Postal Service from privatization, support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.
The postal service wanted to sell the post office to Hudson-mcdonald, a local developer. The City of Berkeley sued the post office to stop the sale. Hudson-mcdonald backed out of the deal in early december.
Get an overview of the sale announcement here. Here’s a good more general overview piece.
There was a hearing in Federal Court on December 11th.
Their will have been another hearing on March 19th. The federal judge will decide whether the lawsuit will continue or be dismissed – he’ll decide sometime after March 19th. We’ll be discussing the judge’s decision if he’s made it at this meeting, and our response.
Check out the Community Garden at the Post Office.
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.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers. We meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at the SEIU Local 1000 union hall, 1433 Webster Street, 2nd Floor in downtown Oakland. These assembly meetings occur from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
Our work together encompasses:
- (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent and care workers;
- (2) current campaigns to improve wages for low-wage workers; and
- (3) efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.
At this meeting we will be planning an action at OGP on April 15th (4/15 = FOR $15) in tandem with other actions around the East Bay and converging on a huge FF15 rally to commence at 4:00 PM at UC Berkeley.
We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.
We look forward to learning with you and making change for the better. Please love and support one another. We have a duty to fight. We have a duty to win.