THE POSTAL SERVICE HAS THE BERKELEY POST OFFICE “UNDER CONTRACT.” !!!!!!!!!!!

 Come help us plan our next steps in opposition to their proposed 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.

Strike Debt In Action with Student Debtors
We invite you to join us at the Department of Education Public Hearing to support current and former Corinthian (Everest, Heald, and Wyotech) students who will be speak directly to DOE officials to tell their stories and demand debt cancellation.

Join online at: Corinthian.debt.is The Debt Collective tech team created this page so that those of us who can’t be in Anaheim in person can be there virtually. This website will go live an hour before the hearing with a livestream, chat, social media links, DoE twitter bomb and other virtual actions. Everyone who wants to support Corinthian students as they demand debt cancellation, meet here on Nov 4th: http://corinthian.debt.is

What’s the Background?

On September 17th, Strike Debt launched The Debt Collective, where we are developing a new platform for organization, advocacy, and resistance. We aim to build power to bargain with creditors or even to threaten a debt strike. As we build membership, debtors can join together based on region, type of debt, or lender.

Alone our debts are a burden; together they make us powerful.

People already get it.  Denny in South Dakota emailed us to ask, “Is it possible there are others who have some of my issues in common? Is there an opportunity to collectivize this issue?”

Phil in California asked a similar question, “Do you have a collective group of Bank of America Mortgage debtors?” Denny and Phil’s questions show that people already understand what the debt collective can do.

People are ready to organize and begin demanding fair terms: fair interest rates, fair principal amounts, even the abolition of unjust debts.

Why Start With a For-Profit College?

The Debt Collective’s pilot project is with current and former students from for-profit Everest college. Everest, like other for-profit schools, targets students from low-income households, disproportionately from minority backgrounds. As Everest’s parent company, Corinthian, falls apart and its predatory activities are revealed, students are still expected to pay back their loans.

If Everest students join together, we believe they can win a full debt discharge. Their victory will help us demonstrate debtors’ collective power and other groups can be formed to follow their example.

What Will Happen at the Hearing?

On November 4th, we have a unique opportunity to demonstrate the power of debtors acting collectively at the Department of Education public hearing.

If you live in the Los Angeles area, we invite you to join us at the event.

If you don’t live in southern California but still want to support students, go here, starting at 12p PST, to help share students’ messages, see video clips, and watch the livestream of the hearing.

Please follow the Debt Collective on Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook event & RSVP

Agenda includes preparations for the Board of Governors meeting on November 17th

Devoted to understanding debt, how it interacts with our financial system, and theorizing about what to do about it.

Readings for the 29th:

http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/martin_wolf_proposes_the_death_of_banking

http://coppolacomment.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-imf-proposes-death-of-banking.html

Do we really care who creates money?

Below is the Wolf article the first link refers to. All 3 of these together really isn’t very long. Also,  we can review the last reading (found here), which still has a lot to it that is not quite clear.

Strip private banks of their power to create money

By Martin Wolf
The giant hole at the heart of our market economies needs to be plugged

Printing counterfeit banknotes is illegal, but creating private money is not. The interdependence between the state and the businesses that can do this is the source of much of the instability of our economies. It could  and should be terminated.

I explained how this works two weeks ago. Banks create deposits as a byproduct of their lending. In the UK, such deposits make up about 97 per cent of the money supply. Some people object that deposits are not money but only transferable private debts. Yet the public views the banks’ imitation money as electronic cash: a safe source of purchasing power.

Banking is therefore not a normal market activity, because it provides two linked public goods: money and the payments network. On one side of banks’ balance sheets lie risky assets; on the other lie liabilities the public thinks safe. This is why central banks act as lenders of last resort and governments provide deposit insurance and equity injections. It is also why banking is heavily regulated. Yet credit cycles are still hugely destabilising.

What is to be done? A minimum response would leave this industry largely as it is but both tighten regulation and insist that a bigger proportion of the balance sheet be financed with equity or credibly loss-absorbing debt. I discussed this approach last week. Higher capital is the recommendation made by Anat Admati of Stanford and Martin Hellwig of the Max Planck Institute in The Bankers’ New Clothes.

A maximum response would be to give the state a monopoly on money creation. One of the most important such proposals was in the Chicago Plan, advanced in the 1930s by, among others, a great economist, Irving Fisher. Its core was the requirement for 100 per cent reserves against deposits. Fisher argued that this would greatly reduce business cycles, end bank runs and drastically reduce public debt. A 2012 study by International Monetary Fund staff suggests this plan could work well.

Similar ideas have come from Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University in Jimmy Stewart is Dead, and Andrew Jackson and Ben Dyson in Modernising Money. Here is the outline of the latter system.

First, the state, not banks, would create all transactions money, just as it creates cash today. Customers would own the money in transaction accounts, and would pay the banks a fee for managing them.

Second, banks could offer investment accounts, which would provide loans. But they could only loan money actually invested by customers. They would be stopped from creating such accounts out of thin air and so would become the intermediaries that many wrongly believe they now are. Holdings in such accounts could not be reassigned as a means of payment. Holders of investment accounts would be vulnerable to losses. Regulators might impose equity requirements and other prudential rules against such accounts.

Third, the central bank would create new money as needed to promote non-inflationary growth. Decisions on money creation would, as now, be taken by a committee independent of government.

Finally, the new money would be injected into the economy in four possible ways: to finance government spending, in place of taxes or borrowing; to make direct payments to citizens; to redeem outstanding debts, public or private; or to make new loans through banks or other intermediaries. All such mechanisms could (and should) be made as transparent as one might wish.

The transition to a system in which money creation is separated from financial intermediation would be feasible, albeit complex. But it would bring huge advantages. It would be possible to increase the money supply without encouraging people to borrow to the hilt. It would end “too big to fail” in banking. It would also transfer seignorage – the benefits from creating money – to the public. In 2013, for example, sterling M1 (transaactions money) was 80 per cent of gross domestic product. If the central bank decided this could grow at 5 per cent a year, the government could run a fiscal deficit of 4 per cent of GDP without borrowing or taxing. The right might decide to cut taxes, the left to raise spending. The choice would be political, as it should be.

Opponents will argue that the economy would die for lack of credit. I was once sympathetic to that argument. But only about 10 per cent of UK bank lending has financed business investment in sectors other than commercial property. We could find other ways of funding this.

Our financial system is so unstable because the state first allowed it to create almost all the money in the economy and was then forced to insure it when performing that function. This is a giant hole at the heart of our market economies. It could be closed by separating the provision of money, rightly a function of the state, from the provision of finance, a function of the private sector.

This will not happen now. But remember the possibility. When the next crisis comes – and it surely will – we need to be be ready.

Please join Flying Over Walls, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, CURB and many others in fighting the latest round of CDCr’s attempts to censor communications across the walls! CDCr publicizes at its website that the purpose of these censorship rules is to forbid “publications that indicate an association with groups that are oppositional to authority and society.”

These proposed regulations seem to be a retaliation to try to prevent future hunger strikes or meaningful organizing of any kind. These new revisions do almost nothing to address the widespread concern and opposition voiced just a few months ago when the original version of the regulations were proposed. We need policies that open the lines of communication with our incarcerated family, friends, loved ones and political allies, not shut them down. Deadline is November 10 for public comments to the latest revisions put out. Please send in comments and make calls to let them know we are watching!

******************************BACKGROUND**********************************

Now that CDCr has passed new STG (Security Threat Group, aka gang) regulations, if any STG-associated incarcerated person’s name or letters are published in a newsletter (aka TGIJP’s Stiletto, Black & Pink’s monthly newsletter, Critical Resistance’s The Abolitionist, SF Bay View’s newspaper, etc.), then the whole newsletter can be banned, so as to ensure that “inmates shall also not possess or have under their control written material or photographs that indicate an association with a validated member or associate of a Security Threat Group. ”

And, if not banned, if they publish an article or picture of a “validated” member of a STG (whether or not it’s true, because the STG regulations are so absurd), another prisoner’s possession of it may be used to indicate that he or she is “associated” with the prisoners whose work is published in it, which could lead to them being “validated” as part of a STG and end up in SHU (solitary).

CDCr also continues to deem as contraband any number of items that a person in the SHU may innocently possess.

Please invite others, notify local media and help us raise awareness so that the CDCr does not try to slip this regulation through. Comments supposedly will only be “heard” to the extent that they address the revisions, rather than the originally proposed text, so please mention the revisions in your letters, even if it is just to say that these revisions do not address our original concerns.

*********************FAX-IN, EMAIL-IN, WRITE-IN!!!*************************

Please submit written comments to:

Timothy M. Lockwood, Chief,
Regulation and Policy Management Branch,
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,
P.O. Box 942883,
Sacramento, CA, 94283-0001;

by fax to (916) 324-6075;

or by e-mail at rpmb@cdcr.ca.gov (We additionally recommend that those responding by e-mail cc staff@oal.ca.gov)

Comments must be received or postmarked no later than 5:00 p.m. on November 10, 2014.

Sample letters and other resources will be posted in the comments section. Please post letters that you’ve sent and information that you want to share in order to support others in crafting their letters, emails, calls and faxes!!

*********************************AND CALL-IN!!!*******************************

In order to raise the pressure, once you have submitted your written comments, please also call Lockwood’s office to voice concern: (916) 445-2269. If you cannot get through, you can also call Christopher Abshire: (916) 327-5305.

Call-in script:

“Hi, my name is _________. I’d like to speak to Chief Timothy M. Lockwood or his staff person who handles public comments.

[You will almost definitely be told no one is available to speak with you. You can then tell the receptionist or whoever you are speaking with:]

“I am calling to express my concern / anger about the CDCR’s newly revised obscene materials regulations issued October 20. I’m upset that the Department has failed to meaningfully take into consideration concerns previously expressed by hundreds of community members regarding the originally proposed text, despite the Department’s promise that it would go back to the drawing board and its claim that the public had misunderstood its intent.

As a resident of [your city & state], I am very concerned that the description of what constitutes material from a Security Threat Group consists of materials that are highly subjective to individual interpretation on the part of prison staff and includes everyday items that may be innocently possessed. The CDCR needs to ensure that (1) no publication will be banned—permanently or temporarily— merely because because it has political or sexual content and correspondence typically protected by First Amendment constitutional rights, or because a person in custody with STG affiliation has chosen to publish his name and/or location in an editorial, news article or penpal request; and (2) no person in custody will be penalized simply for possessing publications that reference or include “affiliated” members of an STG.

[If you don’t get to have a real conversation with someone, make sure you leave your name and number and ask them to have a staff person call you back.]

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.

THE HEARING TO GRANT A RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST THE SALE WILL HAVE BEEN MONDAY MORNING.

 Come learn about what happened in court 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.

JOIN US TO CONTINUE TO EXPRESS OUR SOLIDARITY WITH RASMEA.

WHEN: Wednesday, November 12th @ 7:30, with the program starting at 8am.

WHAT: Rally, speak out, and flyering

Without a full and fair trial, Rasmea found guilty!

In a travesty of justice, Rasmea Odeh was found guilty of one count of Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization. For over a year, Rasmea, her supporters, and her legal team have been battling this unjust government prosecution, saying from the start that the immigration charge was nothing but a pretext to attack this icon of the Palestine liberation movement. And although there is real anger and disappointment in the jury’s verdict, it was known as early as October 27th that she would not get a full and fair trial.

Facebook page with detailed info & RSVP

Please come to help organize for the Board of Governors meeting on November 17th to say the STWEP MUST GO!

TELL BOG TO REINSTATE CCSF BOT
The California Community College Board for Governors will be considering a plan that delays restoration of the CCSF Board of Trustees at least 18 months. We demand that they be immediately restored. Join us to let them know that the (Special Trustee With Extraordinary Powers)
STWEP MUST GO!

On Wednesday, November 12th, Fossil Free Cal is going to be leading a nighttime march around the South Side of the UC Berkeley campus. The March will start at 9:00 PM from the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft at the edge of campus.

The march aims to send a clear message to the UC Regents that a movement against their continued investment in fossil fuel companies is coming. Climate change is taking its toll on the planet and having a disproportionate impact on those least able to protect themselves. That being said, the Regents have shown no desire to stop investing in the big oil, coal, and natural gas producing and extracting companies.

Fossil Free Cal wants students and the community to bring their whistles, pots, drums, megaphones, and signs, so that the Regents can actually HEAR our complaints instead of continuing to ignore us.

Bring your friends, family members, and significant others. Join the movement and help us change the world!

Facebook event.

When:
2nd & 4th Thursdays
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Where:
Council Chambers
Oakland City Hall
14th & Broadway

Read the announcement from the City of Oakland City Administrator’s Weekly Report (April 25, 2014):

This committee was created by City Council action during the discussions earlier in the year about the Port Domain Awareness Center (DAC). The goal of the DAC is to improve readiness to prevent, respond to and recover from major emergencies in the Oakland region and ensure better multi-agency coordination across the larger San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of the Privacy and Data Retention Policy is to ensure there are safeguards to protect against potential misuse of the data or violations of individuals’ privacy rights and civil liberties. The meeting is open to the public. For questions about the Ad Hoc Committee, please contact Joe DeVries, Assistant to the City

We need to show up to these meetings and pressure the City to adopt a privacy policy that makes privacy a priority, not only “security” or administrative convenience.

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)

============

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/events/1698666823691759/

> 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/studentsforengagedandactivelearning?ref=br_tf

> You can use this form letter to email and message your friends and family:
http://sealstudents.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/sample-email-outreach.pdf

> 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://sealstudents.wordpress.com/community-support/

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.

#OccupyWheeler GA happening at 8 tonight! Big decisions to be made! #occupycal #FightTheHike #takebackyourtuition @theopenuc @bpoffcampus

— OCCUPY CAL (@OccupyCalCampus) November 23, 2014

A Northern California grassroots campaign to end the use of the racial slur as the mascot and name of the NFL team in Washington, D.C. will be re-launched November 23rd at 10:00 AM. The campaign calls upon the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell to end the use of the racial epithet and its hurtful reminder of Indigenous peoples ongoing mistreatment. We also aim to develop institutionalized Indigenous oversight with the NFL to promote healing and restorative justice caused by our exploitation.

The American Indian Movement-West, Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes, Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, and others are organizing its largest grassroots demonstration in the San Francisco Bay Area. Diversity is welcomed, so join our efforts and become a part of history! Endorsements, organizations, volunteers, carpools, & event attendees are needed.

GA tonight at 8 in Wheeler Commons. Main issue: updates and finalize Walk Out tomorrow! #openuc #FightTheHike #FundOurfuture

— CalProgressives (@CalProgressives) November 23, 2014

UC-Wide Walkout Against the Fee-Hikes and for Accessible Public Education
The general assembly in Wheeler hall has called for a day of action on Monday to continue our struggle for accessible public education.

We will have:

Morning teach-outs ~ come join discussions on a variety of topics

• 11:30: Academic Workers’ Rally for Public Education: https://www.facebook.com/events/501511563323950/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
• 12pm: Rally at Sather Gate in solidarity with statewide movements for public education

March through campus, then to downtown, passing big banks, BCC, and BHS. March returns to campus for a General Assembly to decide on a major action for Tuesday morning.

———–

Throughout the day, there will be Open University teach-outs on issues that cross student, worker, and community issues.

Check out the Open UC Website.

Officials have announced that a decision on whether to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown has been reached, but what the decision is is not public yet.  The decision itself is to be announced later today,  now officially stated to be at 6:00 PM Pacific Time.

The call associated with the picture to the left.

IndyBay announcement.

FTP March Tonight at 14th and Broadway 7pm #getfree

— Occupy Oakland (@OccupyOakland) November 24, 2014

The call from Stop Mass Incarceration Bay Area email:

If Wilson Walks, America Halts!
No Business As Usual in NYC!
Anything Less Than a Murder Charge Is Unacceptable
Charge Darren Wilson With Murder Now!
When Announced Immediately Go to 14th and Broadway and Into the Streets!
Justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner,
and All Victims of Killer Cops!

Tonight Is The Night! #Oakland #DarrenWilson pic.twitter.com/Cot1qhEN62

— FireWorks (@FireWorksBAY) November 24, 2014