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At The Green Arcade on Thursday March 20th, join George Caffentzis and Strike Debt Bay Area for a discussion about radical and practical responses to debt and capitalism.George Caffentzis is contributor to the newly released The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual and author of the recent In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism. About In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism: Karl Marx remarked that the only way to write about the origins of capitalism is in the letters of blood and fire used to drive workers from the common lands, forests, and waters in the sixteenth century. In this collection of essays, George Caffentzis argues that the same is true for the annals of twenty-first-century capitalism. Information technology, immaterial production, financialization, and globalization have been trumpeted as inaugurating a new phase of capitalism that puts it beyond its violent origins. Instead of being a period of major social and economic novelty, however, the course of recent decades has been a return to the fire and blood of struggles at the advent of capitalism. About The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual: A handbook for debtors everywhere to understand how this system really works, while providing practical tools for fighting debt in its most exploitative forms. Inside, you’ll find detailed strategies, resources, and insider tips for dealing with some of the most common kinds of debt, including credit card debt, medical debt, student debt, and housing debt. The book also contains tactics for navigating the pitfalls of personal bankruptcy, and information to help protect yourself from credit reporting agencies, debt collectors, payday lenders, check cashing outlets, rent-to-own stores, and more. Strike Debt Bay Area “is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.” Over the last thirty years, average household debt has more than doubled, and we are forced to take on debt to meet our basic needs, which has wrecked lives and devastated communities. This reveals an economic system that enriches the few at the expense of the many. How does the debt system really work? What does a radical response to the debt system look like? What is the relationship between debt and climate? And, how do we develop practical tools, and a mass debt resistance movement? In this interactive discussion, George Caffentzis and Strike Debt Bay Area will help answer these questions, propose strategies, and much more. Also check out the Launch Party for the Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual in the East Bay on March 23rd. |
Rod Coronado is a long-time activist, affiliated with the animal liberation movement, Earth First! and other groups that the government has gone to great lengths to imprison and silence.le.
Wheelchair accessib
COURT HEARING THIS FRIDAY
Please come out for motions regarding the case in Judge Karnow’s courtroom.
More information and statement from Save CCSF about what happened.
Check calendar on website to verify as the legal system is capricious.
www.saveccsf.org/calendar
Click here for update and summary of the status of the Save CCSF lawsuit against the ACCJC.
Anthropology and Social Change Second Annual Conference @ CIIS, San Francisco |
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Anthropology and Social Change Second Annual Conference: The Commons, Enclosures, and Mutual Aid.2pm – 3:30pm 4pm – 5:30pm 5:30—6:30pm Dinner Break 6:30pm – 9:15pm |
The 19th Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair will be at The Crucible in West Oakland, two blocks from the West Oakland BART station. The book fair will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Join dozens of families affected by police violence from across the state of California and countless organizations that are fighting against police brutality for the Statewide Conference to End Police Terror. The conference is being held on the heels of a growing mass movement from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles to bring killer cops to justice and implement new forms of community control over the police.
Workshops include:
Building a united front
Gentrification and police brutality: an investment for the rich
Mass incarceration in capitalist America
Racism at the root: profiling and gang injunctions
Political repression and how to fight back
Raids, deportations and the fight against apartheid
Sexism and the state: police violence is a women’s issue
Know your rights
Patrolling the cops – strategies for community control
Principles for agitation – how to popularize our message
Food will be provided to conference participants and transportation centers are being organized from various locations around the state.
We need you to help build a working class base for the bulb JOIN US MAR 22 sat 12PM TO 3PM to collectLOVERS OF THE BULB video and written TESTIMONIES phone numbers and contact info HEAVY RAIN CANCELS. Call Orion at 510 541-3835 or email ohohorion99 AT gmail.com to help. Above all VISIT THE BULB and take your friends there NOW!
In the last month we have collected over 100 phone numbers and signatures on the following petition we are using this petition as a organizing tool and calling people to call shitty hall 510 559-7250 to protest the removal of 50 parking spaces to isolate the BULB FROM IT’S WORKING CLASS BASE.
THE RESPONSE HAS BEEN TREMENDOUS.
The petition stated
” We the working people of the Bay Area Demand you Restore the Parking spaces at the BULB So that we can continue to have free Access with our friends,family and dogs to the SPACE we love so much”
90% of the people That signed the petition to restore parking are for the bulb to stay as it is. That means, they don’t want the campers to be evicted, they want the art and they want unleashed dogs .
To us that signifies that this is a mass movement and that all we have to do is organize them the next step is to have them writ TESTIMONIES OF LOVE FOR THE BULB and print them up for social media
Our base is the people who use the Bulb for art dogs good times and camping. Not the just voters of Albany but the people who come to the Bulb, many of them for years. Two weeks ago a working family man said his daughter learned how to walk at the Bulb she is now 12 years old and was walking with him.
three weeks ago I met another man with three kids and he said his son Zane who was about 9 years old and digging the monsters faces by Mad Marc’s Castle came out there when he was 4 yrs old and said at that time “this place is magic.”
Come join US and meet the people and hear there stories.
My sign says “Don’t Club The Bulb: Fight The One Percent”
For more background info go to sharethebulb.org watch gg/s statment to shitty hall, my KPFA INTERVEIW.and
Here’s my song They Never Change, They Shoot Us Down Without Shame:
KPFA Interview with me:
GG’s statement on homelessness at the Albany City Council:
http://www.youtube.com/user/orionorion99?feature=watch
The Sunflower Alliance invites you to meet activists who gathered for our August 3rd, 2013 action at the Richmond Chevron Refinery. This inspiring event gave rise to the Alliance, dedicated to fighting climate chaos by taking on the fossil fuel industry in our own back yard.
(Learn more about the Sunflower Alliance.)
Let’s talk!
Please take a minute to complete our quick survey. If you include your phone number, we’ll try to call you, introduce ourselves, and answer questions about our work and about the evening celebration
We look forward to seeing you.
Yes, I’ll be there!
Your RSVP is necessary to reserve a seat.
Can’t attend but still want to get involved?
Then please fill out the survey.
Strike Debt New York City has completed its work on the 2nd edition of the Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual (DROM). Come learn about the new edition, about Strike Debt, and meet cool people who are helping in the international struggle against oppressive and immoral debt.
Music, food, short talks by two famous activists and political philosophers – George Caffentzis (a founder of the Midnight Notes Collective) and Silvia Federici – and the opportunity to purchase the 2nd edition DROM at a sliding scale are all “on the agenda.”
This manual—written by an anonymous collective of resistors, defaulters, and allies from Strike Debt and Occupy Wall Street—aims to provide specific tactics for understanding and fighting against the debt system. You’ll find detailed strategies and resources for dealing with credit card, medical, student, housing and municipal debt, tactics for navigating the pitfalls of personal bankruptcy, and information to help protect yourself from predatory lenders. Recognizing that individually we can only do so much to resist the system of debt, the manual also introduces ideas for those who have made the decision to take collective action.
Strike Debt supports the creation of just and sustainable economies, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence. We owe the financial institutions nothing. It is to our friends, families and community that we owe everything.
Strike Debt Bay Area (SDBA) website.
Strike Debt national website: http://strikedebt.org/
Lack of time, resources, and communal support is responsible for an unprecedented reproduction crisis that is affecting all aspects of our lives. In her presentation, Federici discusses its causes, its social effects, and the struggle we must make to “commonize” care work.
Federici is a longtime feminist activist, teacher, and writer. She is an emerita professor at Hofstra University, and has authored many essays on feminist theory, women’s history, political philosophy, and education. Her published books include: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation; Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its Others (editor); and Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles against Structural Adjustment in African Universities(coeditor).
Copies of her latest book, Revolution at Point Zero (PM Press, 2012), will be available at the talk, or can be purchased online at https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=420.
As per usual, we will try to have snacks and tea.
The Postal Service has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
The Postal Service has started to outsource Post Office services to Staples, replacing union jobs with low-paying, low benefit work.
And we’re fighting against both!
Come help us plan our next steps.
The American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We are starting a “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management! Here’s the front of the postcard.
The Berkeley City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale!
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. We will be holding a forum on postal and public banking on March 29th on the Post Office steps. Come help us plan it!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
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…
What is Money?
Part II
With Jane Smith and Spencer Veale, members of Politics Of Debt Reading group from Strike Debt Bay Area
We use money every day. We spend most of our time working in order to get money. Many of us are in debt and the only way to repay is with money. For something that is so commonplace and so powerful, we spend very little time really thinking about what money is and where it comes from. Who creates our money and how?
Jane Smith, Occupy Activist involved with Strike Debt and FedUp, andSpencer Veale, a researcher at International Forum on Globalization (IFG), have been studying the monetary system and its links to debt in the Politics of Debt reading group, a Strike Debt Bay Area group that has been meeting for over a year. In addition to breaking down the inner workings of the monetary system, they will present solutions to the problems that stem from money created as debt issued by private banks.
An extensive question and answer period will be allotted. Bring all your burning questions about money!
East Bay Hotel & Food Service Workers Take It to the Streets of Oakland!
East Bay hotel, restaurant and stadium workers are marching for our jobs, our rights and OUR POWER! We are fighting for a higher minimum wage and good jobs that pay us what we need to survive and thrive in the Bay Area in 2014!
Join hotel housekeepers, hot dog vendors from the Coliseum, and airport restaurant workers who are fighting for good contracts – along with fast food workers fighting for $15 an hour and a union, and the Lift Up Oakland! coalition to raise the minimum wage!
“I work at the Oakland Airport, and we’re in a hard fight to keep our families out of poverty, but we’re not fighting alone. We’ve been joining up with Walmart workers, fast food workers, and everyone else who is struggling to pay their rent in the Bay Area. Now we’re going out on the streets in downtown Oakland to show the whole city how strong we are when we’re together!” said Nancy Moncada, retail clerk at the Oakland Airport.
“I believe that it is really important for all of us to come together on March 27th, because when my co-workers from the Coliseum unite with hotel and airport workers we have real strength. We did this five years ago, and we won good contracts, now is the time to make this action even bigger,” said Johnny Stake, a longtime Oakland resident and Coliseum stand worker.
BRING YOUR KIDS AND JOIN THE CHILDREN’S BRIGADE!!!
Si se puede!!!
UNITE HERE Local 2850
www.facebook.com/unitehere2850
Three young Americans captured by Iranian forces and held in captivity for two years tell their story.
“Riveting and necessary and illuminating in countless unexpected ways. The hikers have pulled off the almost impossible task of making from their hellish experience something of beauty and grace.” Dave Eggers
In summer 2009, Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan when they unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage, the three Americans ultimately found themselves in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, where they discovered that pooling their strength of will and relying on each other were the only ways they could survive.
In this poignant memoir, “the hikers” finally tell their side of the story. They recount the deception that lured them into Iran in the first place and describe the psychological torment of interrogation and solitary confinement. We follow them as they make surprising alliances with their fellow prisoners and even some of their captors, while their own bonds with each other are tested and deepened. Told through a bold and innovative interweaving of the authors’ three voices, here is a rare glimpse inside Iran and a timeless portrayal of hardship and hope.
“A Sliver of Light weaves a spellbinding tale of hard-won survival at the intersection of courage and love the love of friends struggling to support one another in wretched circumstances, the unyielding bedrock of mothers’ love for their long-lost children, and the fiercely tested love of three people for the family of humankind. It is a triumph of writing born of a triumph of being.” Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon
Shane Bauer is an investigative journalist and photographer. He has reported from locations such as Iraq, Sudan, Chad, Syria, Yemen, Israel/Palestine, and California’s Pelican Bay supermax prison. He has written for Mother Jones, The Nation, Salon, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and others. He has received the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism, the John Jay/ H.F. Guggenheim Award for Criminal Justice Reporting, and many other national awards. He was also a finalist in the Livingston Award for journalists under 35.
Josh Fattal, a graduate of Berkeley’s program in environmental economics and policy, is an activist and organizer focused on sustainable development. He has spoken at universities, human rights conferences, and private events to describe the experience of imprisonment in Iran.
Sarah Shourd is a writer, educator and Contributing Editor at Solitary Watch currently based in Oakland. Sarah has done international human rights work with the Zapatista indigenous movement in Chiapas, Mexico; organized with women’s groups against unsolved murders of sweatshop workers in Juarez, Mexico; and taught for the Iraqi Student Project while living in Damascus, Syria. After her wrongful imprisonment in Iran, Sarah has become an advocate for prisoners’ rights, focusing her writing, speaking, and theater projects on the wide-spread use of prolonged solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails. She has written for the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, and Newsweek/Daily Beast, and contributes a blog to Huffington Post.
Interviewing the three writers this evening is Frances Dinkelpiel, the co-founder of Berkeleyside, journalist, and author of Towers of Gold.
Berkeley Arts & Letters and FCCB Present
at First Congregational Church of Berkeley (2345 Channing Way at Dana, Berkeley)
Tickets $15 ($8 students) at Brown Paper Tickets in advance; $20 at the door
Fourth Friday prayer meeting for healing, dedicated to the survivors and victims of violence and police brutality in Oakland.
We get together to:
- Share prayers, spiritual writings and poems from all spiritual traditions
- Reflect and recharge
- Connect with others concerned about violence and interested in healing
- Build community
Please feel free to bring quotes or passages to share
All are welcome
Simple vegetarian dinner will be served.
At noon Laura Wells, candidate for California State Controller, endorsed by the Green Party of California, will speak on the issue of public banking. She will be followed by comments on recent happenings around the possibility of Post Office banking and financial services, updates on where things stand with the (possibly imminent) sale of the Berkeley Post Office, the campaign against the outsourcing of Post Office jobs to Staples, music, letter-writing and more.
The first item in Wells’ platform is
Implement a Publicly-Owned State Bank for California
Determine the best option or options for a successful implementation of a State Bank, and get started on it. Day one.
Come eat at the Farmer’s Market a block away, join us, get caught up, and enjoy a beautiful Spring day in Berkeley.
Music by one or more of Hali Hammer, Dave Welsh, Fresh Juice Party, Fat Luv, and Mountain Fire.
Other updates about efforts to save our Post Office:
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~ March 11 hearing with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
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~ Status of the proposed Zoning Overlay Ordinance.
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~ Protests at Staples Stores, ongoing.
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~ Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s proposed moratorium on selling historic Post Offices.
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~ Legal actions, and invoices outstanding. Plans for a lawsuit. ~ Bring your lunch.
Gather at 2pm, then we will take to the streets at 3pm. Bring your body down. Bring a friend or a hundred. We will march to honor Alex Nieto and all the countless many black and brown young men murdered by those thugs in uniform. We will march for our friends and families getting kicked out of their homes. We will march to stand up and fight back against the takeover of our communities by the forces of capital and their human agents who have too much money for how little heart they possess.
Stand up and be counted.
A revisit to Macy’s to thank them for their support of the inhumane sit/lie ‘law’
which criminalizes our homeless sisters and brothers
– we have the signs, cardboard & sharpies, bring yourself / friends / family & sit for your human & civil right to sit down –