Join us for an in-depth look at rent control measures on the ballot in Richmond and Oakland — two of the key Bay Area cities where rising costs are pushing working- and middle-class people out of their communities. Plus updates on our campaigns. We need your participation and your voice!
The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. On every last Sunday we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.
OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over four years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally . Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.
At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.
General Assembly Standard Agenda
Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.
Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area
San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv
The Community Democracy Project is your connection to direct democracy in Oakland! Convened out of Occupy Oakland in Fall 2011, we’re gathering steam on a campaign to bring the people back in touch with the city’s resources through participatory budgeting.
Picture this: Across Oakland, Neighborhood Assemblies are regularly held in every community. People come together to tackle the important issues of their neighborhoods and of the city. At these assemblies, people don’t just have discussions–they learn from one another, from city staff, and they make fundamental decisions about how the city should run. They decide the city budget.
Democratic, community budgeting is a powerful step toward building strong communities, real democracy, and economic justice–and it’s being done all over the world.
The budget of the City Oakland totals more than $1 billion per year. Although part of the budget must be used for specific purposes, still over half of the budget–over $500 billion per year–consists of general purpose funds paid by the taxes, fees, and fines of the people of Oakland. The Mayor and the City Council decide the city budget, with minimal input from the community.
Working together, we will not only get a seat at the table–we will REBUILD the table itself. Participatory democracy is real democracy–join us to say: Local People, Local Resources, Local Power!
Every Sunday The Community Democracy Project and our supporters gather to imagine a society that functions differently. We organize and strategize to make Participatory Budgeting a reality in Oakland through a voter initiative that uplifts and values the voices of the most marginalized.
Beginning August 28th every 4th Sunday will be dedicated to a work of Science Fiction that inspires us. We’re very excited to blast off with the short story, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. Read (attached in the comments!) and join us to share your insight and inspiration.
Future works may include but are not limited to: novels, articles, episodes and films!
Liberated Lens Collective is a community media project based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We believe that story telling belongs to everyone. We do not depend on mainstream media or an expensive film school: we empower ourselves to make our own images!
We learn by doing. We teach eachother. We work horizontally, and operate by consensus. We make films in a spirit of collaboration, inclusivity and solidarity, maintain a film equipment library for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops, and host film screenings. In May 2015 we organized the Films 2 The People Short Film Festival.
To be updated about what we do, join our announce mailing list: Liberated_Lens.announce@lists.riseup.net
To get involved, come to our meetings! We’re open and happy to welcome you, no matter your experience level. Sometimes, the meetings turn into creative workshops!
OccupyForum presents…
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Report from The Homeless People’s Popular Assembly
The Homeless People’s Popular Assembly (HPPA) is a gathering of the homeless, formerly homeless, and their supporters for self-determination to create solutions for encampments.
Strategies involve:
• Collectively develop a political analysis of the current homeless crisis and the systemic root causes of homelessness,
• Come up with visions of the life we want and create plans to get there (consider short, medium,and long-term demands as appropriate),
• Create and coordinate related collective actions, campaigns, and strategic movement agendas.
We will report on our efforts re: establishing the Homeless People’s Popular Assembly. Additionally we will speak about props R&Q, two anti-homeless measures on the November ballot.
Bilal Mafundi Ali is a longtime organizer/activist with over 30 years experience living and organizing in oppressed communities in Los Angeles. Bilal became involved in the Black Liberation Movement as a teen in Los Angeles as a member of the Black Student Union, organized by the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party Self-Defense.
Throughout the 90’s Bilal served as the program coordinator for the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) in Los Angeles. CAPA was started by former members of the BPP, who continue to carry out work against police misconduct. Through his involvement with CAPA, Bilal was imprisoned for six years.
In the 2000s Bilal’s worked and lived in the Skid Row area in Downtown Los Angles as lead organizer with the Los Angeles Coalition Action Network (LACAN) and Coalition L.A. organizing those living in skid row to confront the social-economic policies that give rise to poverty and homelessness, along with organizing resistance against gentrification of the West lake / MacArthur area.
Since moving to San Francisco in 2014, Bilal has been involved with the Coalition On Homelessness, as a Human Rights Advocate and organizer. His current activities with the COH includes establishing the Homeless People’s Speakers Bureau, the Homeless People’s Popular Assembly, and building the campaign against Props R&Q. Bilal is also a board member of the Idriss Stelley Foundation. Bilal serves as the co-coordinator of the
Peoples Commission for Justice Campaign.
Kelly Cutler of the Coalition On Homelessness will also be speaking about Propositions Q & R and our organizing to defeat both these ballot measures. Both anti-homeless ballot measures legislation will be on the November ballot.
An invitation to a class on the
Structures of Racialization
At the Bay Area Public School
A free university in the Omni Commons
When the English first got to Virginia, in the early 1600s, they didn’t see themselves as “white.” It took a century for their colonialism to produce the concepts of race and white supremacy.
We’ve been fighting racism, white privilege, white supremacy, and institutional racism since then. And still, a Trump can come along with his “dogwhistle” politics, and get an instant white following at varying degrees of frenzy. Today even the most liberal cities cannot stop police racial profiling – while thee illiberal ones officiate over “stop and frisk.”
Ø What are we missing?
Ø If racism is just a “divide and rule” strategy, why has it always worked so well? Why does it still work so well?
Ø How is it that new groups, like immigrants and Muslims, can be continually targetted for racial assault (victim de jour)?
Ø If race is a social construct, what is the structure that has been constructed?
Ø Is it an economic structure? A cultural structure? What?
Ø How deep culturally does it reside in this country?
Ø Is “race” a noun or a verb?
This class will look at the the structures of policing today, of segregation yesterday, and of colonization and slavery the day before that. If the “modern concept of race” was constructed socially at a particular moment, does that imply an ending we can programmatize?
This class will be mostly discussion and dialogue. We will have to address our prejudices about prejudice in order to get to the issues of structure. There will be non-mandatory readings on line for the class. It will also be open to other texts that class members wish to propose.
Facilitator: Steve Martinot
Support our new fundraising campaign for racial justice: https://t.co/M2WH12nKvL#Reparations4CoCoFamilies pic.twitter.com/BtftmaGm6b
— CCCRJC (@cccrjc) October 17, 2016
The ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism was established in 2011 to honor all those who fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War by connecting the legacy with international activist causes today. This year’s winners, Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, discuss their work with Kate Doyle, director of the Evidence Project at the National Security Archive.
Lydia Cacho is an award-winning Mexican journalist, author and human rights activist specialized in women and children’s rights. She has written a dozen books from poetry to fiction, nonfiction, and investigative reporting.Slavery Inc. her international best seller on sex trafficking, human slavery and child pornography has been translated into many languages. Cacho has been recognized for her international investigations of human rights violations and organized criminal networks. She has received 40 international human rights and journalism awards including the Human Rights Watch Ginetta Sagan Amnesty Award; OXFAM award; IWMF award; CNN Hero; UNESCO-Guillermo Cano freedom of expression award; the Wallemberg Medal; the Tucholsky Award; PEN Canada Award; and World Press International Hero 2010 for the International Press Institute in Vienna.
Jeremy Scahill is one of the three founding editors of The Intercept. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield andBlackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has also served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now! Scahill’s work has sparked several congressional investigations and won some of journalism’s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for Blackwater. Scahill is a producer and writer of the award-winning film Dirty Wars, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Kate Doyle is senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive where she directs the Evidence Project, connecting the right to truth and access to information with human rights and justice struggles in Latin America. Since 1992, Doyle has worked with human rights organizations, truth commissions and prosecutors to obtain government records from secret archives that shed light on state violence. In 2012, Doyle was awarded the ALBA/ Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, which she shared with Fredy Peccerelli of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala.
Join us to fight for a livable wage for all Bay Area workers! We collaborate in principled reflection and action on what the Bay Area livable wage would be and where we are at on the right to a livable wage.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds Community and Power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers.
Our work together encompasses:
(1) The concerns of precarious, care and contingent workers,
(2) 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.
Oakland Livable Wage Assembly meets every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:00 PM at the SEIU Local 1000 Union Hall, 436 14th Street #200, Oakland, CA
Please love and support one another ~ We have a duty to fight ~ We have a duty to win!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568668586707336/
Join the Oakland Institute for two short films, focused on fracking and its resistance here in California. Dear Governor Brown looks at the contradictions of Gov. Jerry Brown—the “greenest” governor in the US (?), who’s encouraging the growth of fracking in California. The film also explores fracking in our state. Faith Against Fracking looks at the role of faith leaders from multiple backgrounds in forming alliances and contributing to the struggle to end fracking.
Following the film, join the Oakland Institute’s Policy Analyst Elizabeth Fraser, along with Shannon Biggs of Movement Rights and David Braun of Americans Against Fracking for a discussion about the incredible and important work happening here in California to ban fracking once and for all.
A one-time screening of The Brainwashing Of My Dad, a documentary by filmmaker Jen Senko about her Democratic dad and his slide into the world of hard right-wing media indoctrination. The film merges the personal story of her family with a look at the right-wing media machine and the sad state of the mainstream media – and could not be more timely in the middle of most bizarre election cycle in American history.
Featuring interviews with Noam Chomsky, David Brock, Jeff Cohen, George Lakoff, Claire Conner, Frank Luntz and narrated by actor Matthew Modine with animations by Bill Plympton. Executive producer Ryan Smith will answer questions after this special screening at the United Nations Association Documentary Festival.
A strong audience showing will demonstrate interest in the state of the media and build support for more film-making about our communications system.
Buy Tickets
Fellow Occupiers: Does the absence of real consequences for Wells Fargo – when caught in the act make you feel “tents”??
Wells Fargo, one of OccupySF’s favorite Bankster targets, is just waiting for our response to its massive criminal enterprise.
They Are Not Too Big To Nail!
Expropriate the Bank and Make It A Public Bank
For working people
and the public, and not the profiteers
The massive criminal enterprise of Wells Fargo Executives and owners to bully workers to illegally open up accounts for their customers, and then bilk them of fees, has been exposed in hearings,
yet the US Justice Department refuses to file criminal charges. Coercing workers to commit criminal fraud is a crime that could not only be prosecuted by the US Justice Department but Attorney General Kamala Harris and District Attorney Gascon, yet all these enforcement officials are conspicuously MIA.
At the same time US Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and Federal OSHA chief David
Michaels refused to investigate complaints about retaliation against Wells Fargo workers who refused to violate the banking laws and illegally open accounts. They went to OSHA and the
Department of Labor and the managers refused to allow investigation and prosecutions, and/or referrals to other agencies for prosecution. This was a further example that these government agencies, which are supposed to protect workers and the public, have been captured by the companies like Wells Fargo which they are supposed to regulate.
Former US attorney general Eric Holder said that some companies are too big to nail and apparently that applies to Wells Fargo which is the 4th largest bank in the United States. At the same time the State of California, as well as other governments around the state, has broken financial ties to Wells Fargo, yet Mayor Ed Lee, the SF Supervisors and the San Francisco Pension Board continue to do business with Wells Fargo bank despite it’s criminal activity.
The people of San Francisco and California deserve a public bank run by working people and the community. The bank should be seized, the executives jailed and it should be made a public bank that will work for the people and not profits for the billionaires.
BRING SIGNS!
Initial Sponsor
United Public Workers For Action
www.upwa.info
For more information (415)282-1908
To:
OccupySF
Defend Anti-Fascist Teacher Yvette Felarca!
Community Organizing Meeting
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
5pm
North Branch – Berkeley Public Library
1170 The Alameda, Berkeley, CA
Protest and Speak-Out at School Board Meeting
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
6:30pm Rally outside
2020 Bonar Street (at University), Berkeley California
7:30pm Speak out inside (fill out speakers cards before)
1231 Addison Street (around the corner from 2020 Bonar)
Berkeley School Board Persecutes Teacher For Helping Stop Neo-Nazis: Stop the Witch Hunt Against Yvette Felarca and Interrogation of Her Students!
Anti-fascist activist and teacher Yvette Felarca has been removed from her classroom at Martin Luther King Jr Middle School in Berkeley, California, for helping stop a neo-Nazi recruitment rally on the steps of the state capitol in Sacramento this summer.
After Ms. Felarca was stabbed and beaten by the fascists, terror threats were made against her and the school if she’s not fired. Instead of defending the entire community, including Ms. Felarca, the school district is capitulating to the neo-Nazis’ demands by taking disciplinary measures against her and removing her from her job.
Prior to being put on administrative leave on September 21 the school district reached back into her bank account after depositing her wages, and took them back out, suddenly challenging previously approved sick days and leaves already taken.
Since then, both current and former students have been pulled out of class and interrogated about her, without their parents’ informed consent, targeting immigrant and limited english speaking families in particular.
Ms. Felarca has been teaching ELD (English as a Second Language) and Humanities at King Middle School for a decade. She is a member of the Executive Board of her union, the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT), and is a founding member of the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary (EON/BAMN) Caucus, an organization working on civil rights issues.
The actions against Ms. Felarca are directly counter to the Berkeley school district’s historic embrace of the fight against racism and fascism. Three district schools are named after civil rights leaders – Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X, and Berkeley was one of the very first school districts to voluntarily desegregate.
Students from all grade levels – elementary, middle, and high school, as well as parents, fellow teachers from Berkeley and Oakland, and a diverse range of community members have been rallying in defense of Ms. Felarca. Please join us in speaking out:
Come to the school board on November 2, write to the board members, and encourage your unions, collectives, and congregations to speak out and write letters and resolutions in solidarity with Yvette Felarca.
Demand that she be reinstated immediately, repaid her full wages, and the harassment of her and her students be stopped!
Write to: boardofed@berkeley.net, Superintendent@berkeley.net,
CC: yvette.felarca@ueaa.net
Defend Yvette Felarca! Non-sectarian defense of all anti-fascists!
An injury to one is an injury to all!
More Details and Background:
Grievance of Yvette Felarca: https://occupyoakland.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Grievance-of-Yvette-Felarca1.pdf
Press conference with Yvette Felarca and her lawyer, September 28: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHhVxvNt3vY
September 21 school board meeting, public comments by Yvette Felarca, her students who demonstrated how she helped empower them, parents who praised her teaching style and expressed concern about recent racist activities in the schools, fellow workers who wondered about the implications of the district’s actions for other teachers, and community members who told personal stories about fascism in their own lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2giLt6Fu4
October 5 rally outside the school board meeting, and public comments inside by more students, parents, teachers, and community members speaking in defense of Ms. Felarca. When board members refused to disclose their personal positions on whether she should continue to teach, and instead scurried off into a second, unagendized “closed session”, the community held its own meeting in the board room, with many more speaking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdwuri1LFYI
October 19 school board meeting, more public comments in defense of Ms. Felarca, including a description of an interrogation by a student, remote participation from a former student who called in from Mexico City, and a standing ovation from one of the student representatives on the board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az4GFkzEfSo
Report of what happened in Sacramento, and the neo-Nazis involved: http://antifasac.weebly.com/home/blood-in-the-valley-why-people-put-their-lives-on-the-line-to-run-nazis-out-of-sacramento
More about the fascist organizers of the Sacramento rally: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/27/violent-clashes-erupt-sacramento-between-white-nationalists-and-antifascists
Details about neo-Nazis converging in Berkeley prior to their attempted rally in Sacramento: https://itsgoingdown.org/big-nazis-on-campus/
Article about racist events at Berkeley High School over the last couple of years, including racist pages in the yearbook which had to be recalled, a noose hanging from a tree, and a terror threat citing the KKK on a school computer, which resulted in a walkout by the majority of students: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/11/04/racist-threats-posted-on-berkeley-high-library-computer/
.
JOIN CODEPINK, WORLD CAN’T WAIT, OCCUPYSF Action Council and others at the huge PEACE banner
Theme this week is: “REFUGEES…”
Feel free to bring your own signage, photos, flyers, …Additional signs and flyers provided.
Stand (or sit) with us and the huge PEACE banner.
Come to our monthly member meeting for a discussion of our 2016 voter guide, updates on our local campaigns, and opportunities for plugging in to our work!
Organize with us to win jobs not jails, books not bars, and healthcare not handcuffs.
Every member meeting is a little bit different, with topics and agendas that range from campaign planning, outreach, and political education. Since it’s election season, tonight we will be discussing state and local ballot initiatives. We’ll also give a campaign update for our fight against the expansion of Santa Rita and ways members can help us build campaign pressure.