Calendar
Across the country, people who are Fed Up with the Federal Reserve are gathering for Fed Up Fridays. This month, the focus is on labor. The Federal Reserve has a mandate to maintain maximum employment. So where are the jobs?
It is clear that the Federal Reserve serves the interests of the banks first and foremost, ahead of all other mandates. That is not surprising, since the Federal Reserve is 100% owned by Wall Street banks. Until we change the system to issue debt free sovereign money that will serve the people instead of the banks, financiers will continue to get richer and life for ordinary people will continue to deteriorate.
To illuminate this issue, the Code Pink Light Brigade will spell FED UP [heart] LABOR and WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
Join Fed Up this Friday and show your support for monetary policy that helps the 99% instead of Wall Street banks. Let’s kick off monthly Fed Up Fridays!
Twitter: #FedUp @FedUpSanFran @FedUpNewYork
https://www.facebook.com/
https://www.facebook.com/
A panel of alumni from the Zapatista Little School who traveled to Mexico as part of a delegation from Oakland will be talking about their experiences with the Zapatistas.
The Little School is a recent initiative by the Zapatistas to invite thousands of participants from around the world to come to the Zapatista territories, stay in the homes of Zapatista families, work alongside the Zapatistas, and study the Zapatista approach to autonomy.
We stayed in communities across the breadth of the Zapatista territory, from the mountains to the jungle, and will be discussing the different circumstances we encountered in different places, as well as the lessons we learned from our time in the Little School.
We will also be discussing some of our experiences with other autonomous projects that we visited in Mexico, outside the Little School and Chiapas. There will be a slideshow with some pictures from our journey, as well as time for a Q&A with members of the panel.
All are welcome, there will be snacks and tea!
Ballot Initiative to Lift Up Oakland!
Join community members, workers, small business owners, students, and faith leaders who are uniting to lift up our City with a voter ballot initiative to raise the the minimum wage and provide workers with paid sick days.
Raise the Minimum Wage to $12.25!
It’s time we make Oakland the kind of city that families can
afford to put food on the table, keep a roof over our heads,
and keep the lights on! Let’s ensure that workers can meet
our basic needs.
Provide Workers with Paid Sick Days!
No one should have to choose between a paycheck and our health! Let’s ensure that everyone can take care of ourselves and our children when we are sick.
The Sunflower Alliance is pleased to host a series of forums in northern Contra Costa County on the dangers of the fossil fuel industry’s turn to extreme energy in recent years. CoCoCo and Benicia are home to five refineries, specializing in the dirtiest and heaviest crude oils, and the industry has proposed five major projects to expand refineries and bring in crude oil by train.
In Pittsburg, Martinez, and Richmond, we will have panel discussions with experts and community activists, featuring a special guest from Lac-Mégantic, Canada, which suffered a devastating oil train explosion last July that killed 47 people. They’ll educate us on Big Oil’s plans and the local, regional, and global effects.
Learn about the consequences for your community, and learn how communities are organizing to fight back and protect our health and safety!
The forums will be held on the following dates:
Pittsburg: Monday, February 24th, 2014, from 7pm to 9pm at First Baptist at 204 Odessa Ave. Facebook event here.
Martinez: Wednesday, February 26th, 2014, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at the Veterans Memorial Building at 930 Ward St. Facebook event here.
Richmond: Saturday, March 1st, 2014, from 12pm to 2pm at the Bobby Bowens Progressive Center at 1021 MacDonald Ave. Facebook event here.
Speakers
Each forum will have a slightly different set of panelists, tailored for the concerns of that area. However, every panel will feature:
- Marilaine Savard: spokesperson for a citizens’ group in the region of Lac-Mégantic, Québec.
- Antonia Juhasz: oil industry analyst, journalist, and author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must do to Stop It and Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Look at the descriptions in the Facebook events for each location (see above) to find out more about each panel’s members.
We look forward to seeing you at one of the panel discussions!
“First they came for the homeless…”
Occupy / Sit-in against Sit/Lie law in front of Macy’s
This is the second action of this campaign
Don’t stand for Sit/Lie!!
After the March Against Corruption this Saturday,
join us in front of Macy’s SF Store on Union Square
This film compiles footage and photographs collected and filmed by Lee over a nine year period including interviews with Betty Friedan, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (the Washington, D.C. delegate to Congress), Aileen Hernandez (the only woman to serve on the first Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), Kathie Sarachild (a leader in the consciousness-raising movement and Redstockings member), Frances M. Beal (cofounder of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and more.
This free event will take place in the 3rd Floor Community Meeting Room.
International Days in Solidarity with the Haitian People
10 years since the 2004 Coup … 210 years since Haiti’s Revolution
* Stand with the People of Haiti – Eyewitness reports, drums, film, food, music
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’etat, engineered by the US, France and Canada, which has left a brutal legacy of pain and destruction. This is an occasion that cries out to be seized upon by all who oppose the coup and support the popular movement.
In Oakland, we in the Haiti Action Committee are marking the coup, and the 10 years of repressive coup regimes that have followed it, with a celebration of the 210th year of the heroic 1804 Haitian Revolution. The event is happening on March 1st at Humanist Hall. (Mark your calendar!) Other cities are organizing their own events, as part of the 2014 International Days in Solidarity with the Haitian People.
We also encourage you to forward this to friends in other cities or countries. Ask them to consider organizing a Haiti support activity where they are — if possible as part of the International Days from February 23 thru March 8th. It could be a demonstration, vigil, march, public meeting, festival, film showing, rally, candle-light gathering, teach-in, musical or artistic event – to commemorate the Haitian Revolution and protest the continuation of the 2004 coup. Have them contact us. We can supply films or materials if needed.
The actions of US-imposed President Martelly and his ally Jean-Claude Duvalier clearly demonstrate what the 2004 coup was all about. The Haitian people are outraged by the step-by-step return of Duvalierism and its embrace by the fraudulently elected Martelly government — which threatens to bring back the hated military … which organizes sweeps of market women and midnight raids on the camps of earthquake survivors … which continues its repressive vendetta against members of the majority Lavalas movement, including a threatened indictment of long-time Lavalas leader and former Senator, Myrlande Liberis-Pavert on trumped-up charges.
We support the Haitian people’s demand that Haiti’s sovereignty be respected and that the 2004 coup must be reversed. That would mean:
· Free and fair elections in which all parties can run candidates.
· Putting an end to the repression and the U.S./U.N. military occupation.
· Rebuilding Haiti the way the Haitian 99% want it built – Paying a living wage in the factories instead of sweatshop wages … Restoring farming self-sufficiency so Haiti can feed itself again … Real Haitian control of mineral resources and aid funds … Schools, housing and health care for the people.
Be an organizer. Spread the word widely. Thinking globally, acting locally! This follows on earlier International Days in Solidarity with Haiti, with observances in many cities on four continents on September 30, 2005, February 7, 2007 and February 29, 2008.
Honor the Earth
Native American author/activist will show a new short film of the Lakota and Anishinaabe peoples’ horse rides along routes of proposed pipelines that would cross North American prairies to carry Canadian crude oil/tar sands.
Lyana Monterrey
Pittsburg Ethics Council/Pittsburg Defense Council
Co-founder of local community coalitions will talk about the proposed WesPac project in Pittsburg, CA, a massive crude oil storage and transfer facility to feed ultra-dirty oil to Bay Areas five refineries and export across the Pacific.
Victor Menotti
International Forum on Globalization
IFG Executive Director will share visualized data from the recent report, Billionaires Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline, plus interactive mapping of the Kochs influence network, known the Kochtopus.
Please come early to help set up and stay after to break down chairs as OccupyForum supports this event!
See you there! (Don’t show up at Global Exchange, we will all be in Berkeley!)
Winona LaDuke
Honor the Earth
Native American author/activist will show a new short film of the Lakota
and Anishinaabe peoples’ horse rides along routes of proposed pipelines
that would cross North American prairies to carry
Canadian crude oil/tar sands.
Lyana Monterrey
Pittsburg Ethics Council/Pittsburg Defense Council
Co-founder of local community coalitions will talk about the proposed
WesPac project in Pittsburg, CA, a massive crude oil storage and transfer
facility to feed ultra-dirty oil to Bay Area’s five refineries and export
across the Pacific.
Victor Menotti
International Forum on Globalization
IFG Executive Director will share visualized data from the recent
report, “Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline,”
plus interactive mapping of the Kochs’ influence network, known the “Kochtopus”.
After a strong community presence from the Lighthouse Mosque, and local technology
activists, the City of Oakland put the breaks on the approval of the”Domain Awareness
Center” (DAC) an $11 Million dollar Department of Homeland center that would
set an unprecedented standard for spying on a city wide level.
Two weeks ago a local Yemini-American leader, Mokhtar Alkhansali, really moved the council
with his speech stating:
“You don’t see that many Muslims here today, even though this
is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our generation. What happens today will be
echoed throughout the legacy of this city and throughout the country. I don’t want
drones to be in my neighborhood here or in my neighborhood back in Yemen. I don’t
want people to be able to record my conversations with my wife, we have
curtains in our living room for a reason. We have the right to privacy, it is sacred, and if
you vote tonight to take away that basic right you will take away our freedoms, our
liberty and our essential existence as dignified humans. So I urge you today on
behalf of my family, my community, and the human community as a whole to get away
from these practices. We urge you to vote against this because our community, we
want to be here, we want to be present and voice our concerns but we can’t when we
know that voicing our concerns will lead to our mass incarceration and the targeting of
our community.”
Full Video: http://tinyurl.com/laaenxu
Stop the DAC at City Council after this press conference.
Dearest friends, family and fellow farmers,
We need your voices and bodies in Albany this Wednesday! Despite a successful referendum, citizen appeal, 2 current lawsuits, and 15 years of public comments against the commercial development of the Gill Tract Farm, Albany City Council will be voting on a development plan to place a large parking lot and chain grocery store (“Sprouts”) on the south side of the Gill Tract. The city council moved this vote up from the original date of March 17th, so please help us get the word out about the new date and time!
This a very important vote and the outcome will greatly impact the struggle for the Gill Tract. Please join us to voice your opposition to this development:
If you can’t come, please email or call UCB Vice-chancellor of Real Estate Rob Lalanne (415-908-1500) and Chancellor Nicholas Dirks (510-642-7464). Tell them we want preserve this land as a center for agroecological research and local, sustainable urban farming, and demand that they stop commercial development of public farmlands!
Support the Trayvon 2, Hannibal Shakur (Lamar Caldwell) and Tanzeen Doha. They were arrested while protesting the George Zimmerman not-guilty verdict in the murder of Trayvon Martin. The Trayvon 2 are being railroaded through the judicial system on false charges.
This is going to be a very important date, so let’s pack the court room to show our community support.
There will be a rally at 8AM and the hearing starts around 8:30 AM.
For a lot more information, legal defense fund donation link, and video.
Student Debt National Day of Action
Wells Fargo Student Loans,
– John Stumpf, and
–Chevron Oil Company.
What do these three have in common?
They’ve created the student debt crisis impacting our communities and growing inequality in education.
283% CSU fee increase since 2002
$170 million in student debt
135% community college tuition increase since 2006-2007.
25% less funding for higher education since 2009.
Today, we have much less funding for education because corporations are not paying their fair share forcing the average student to graduate college with over $30,000 in debt. Two companies are leading the effort to limit their taxes and maximize their profits through high student loans, environmental impacts and tens of millions spent on aggressive lobbying. John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo and Chevron Board Member is at the center of the student debt crisis.
STAND WITH STUDENTS TO DEMAND JOHN STUMPF:
1. Modify Wells Fargo loans to reduce student and household debt;
2. Support $2 billion each year for our CA schools by getting Chevron to withdraw opposition to the Oil Extraction Tax.
Participating organizations:
Jobs With Justice
San Francisco ACCE
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Student Labor Action Project
CCSF Student Labor Action Project- SLAP
Draw your impressions of your neighborhood or whatever else you want!
We’ll have paper, drawing stuff, and scanners, and in the end we’ll add your drawings of Oakland to the Oakland Wiki! You can make drawings to illustrate different entries (Dog Park anyone? )
Massive Women’s Convergence on the Golden Gate Bridge
Activists from Bay Area CodePink, No Nukes Action Committee and Fukushima Response will form a united front on the Golden Gate Bridge in recognition of women’s global effort for a better world.
10:00 Rally, Music, Dance, S.F. side of Golden Gate Bridge.
11:00 March across the eastern walkway, starting on either side of the bridge, to meet in middle for convergence for peace, equality and environmental justice.
12:00 (SF side)
Honoring women activists, past & present.
All are encouraged to represent a woman peace & social justice activist from around the world, and to share her story through a mini-bio, a poem, a photo, song and or story.
The convergence themes will include:
1. Women United to End War & Violence:
In solidarity with the Afghan women working for peace & justice and an end to brutal occupation. Please wear sky blue scarves to symbolize the blue sky that we all share, and our inherent right to peace, justice and economic equality.
2. Nuke-Free World Now! On the 3rd anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, we stand in solidarity with the women of Japan who demand an end to all nuclear power and weapons and a commitment to a safe and nuclear free environment for all.
3. E.R.A. NOW. In the 21st Century it is an abomination that the Equal Rights Amendment has still not been ratified. This day will mark the send off of a year long campaign & march from San Francisco to Washington DC to culminate on March 8, 2015, when Helen de Boissiere, accompanied by supporters, will arrive in DC to chain herself to the White House fence, demanding passage of the E.R.A.
Sponsored by Bay Area CodePink, No Nukes Action Committee and Fukushima Response
Prosecuting Attorney Angela Corey is planning to push for consecutive sentencing in Marissa’s upcoming re-trial, pushing for a 60 year sentence for firing a warning shot, causing no injury, to protect herself from her abusive husband. We cannot allow this to happen! It’s time to drop the charges against Marissa Alexander and let her get back to the work of raising her children and living her life.
This Saturday, International Women’s Day, at 2pm we will gather in Oscar Grant Plaza for a march into West Oakland to bring awareness to Marissa’s case. We will have information to give to folks and will move at a pace that allows for both participation and important conversations with our neighbors. Families are encouraged to participate!
GG’s statement on homelessness at the Albany City Council:
http://www.youtube.com/user/orionorion99?feature=watch
Benefit for Berkeley Copwatch.
Doors open at 7pm. Show starts at 7:30.
Berkeley Copwatch invites you to “In Love and Struggle” a celebration of International Women’s Day. Its all happening on March 8th at 7:30pm at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley. This night will feature dance and spoken word performances by our own MC Kaila Love , Students for Hip Hop and surprise dramatic performances. There will also be a special guest appearance by hip hop diva Vixen Noir, and at beginning at 9pm The Average Dyke Band will have you on your feet and dancing to old school funk, R &B, modern and more.
This event is dedicated to the memory of Kayla Moore and all who have suffered or died at the hands of police and is a benefit for Berkeley Copwatch.
For more information go to www.berkeleycopwatch.org and check us out on Facebook: Justice 4 Kayla Moore
Teach-In on Technology, Race and Civil Liberties: The Case of Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center presented by the Oakland Privacy Working Group
Join us for Presentations followed by Questions and Answers with Cat Brooks and Eddan Katz.
* Cat Brooks, an Oakland community and equal rights activist and performance artist, is co-chair of the Onyx Organizing Committee ( https://www.facebook.com/onyxorganizingcommittee ).
* Eddan Katz, co-founder of Oakland’s creative community hacker space, The Sudo Room, is a member of the Oakland Privacy Working Group ( https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com/ ).
Wheelchair accessible. Buses pass by regularly. Ashby BART is approximately 7 blocks away.
SPONSOR: Green Sundays are a series of free programs and discussions sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County. They are held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party of Alameda County follows at 6:45 p.m. Council meetings are always open to anyone who is interested.