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!
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 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
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.
Our weekly PARTY to get this hackerspace together, to provide a venue for those things that otherwise cannot be worked out through day-to-day practice.
Potluck! – bring your own tasty dish!
Sudo room, located in the southwast corner of the ground floor, is a creative community and hackerspace. We offer tools and project space for a wide range of activities: electronics, sewing/crafting, 3D and 2D manufacturing, coding, and good old-fashioned co-learning!
Hours: The space is open whenever a member is present. Come visit! Best times to drop in are evenings between 7 and 9pm. See the calendar for recurring meetups and upcoming events: https://sudoroom.org/calendar
Join us for a conversation with Fred Glass, longtime friend of the Labor Center and author of a new book, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement. The author will delve deep into the vibrant labor history of the Golden State where workers have engaged in politics, strikes, and a variety of organizing strategies to find common ground among its diverse communities to achieve a measure of economic fairness and social justice.
About the book
There is no better time than now to consider the labor history of the Golden State. While other states face declining union enrollment rates and the rollback of workers’ rights, California unions are embracing working immigrants, and voters are protecting core worker rights. What’s the difference? California has held an exceptional place in the imagination of Americans and immigrants since the Gold Rush, which saw the first of many waves of working people moving to the state to find work. From Mission to Microchip unearths the hidden stories of these people throughout California’s history. The difficult task of the state’s labor movement has been to overcome perceived barriers such as race, national origin, and language to unite newcomers and natives in their shared interest. This is an indispensable book for students and scholars of labor history and history of the West, as well as labor activists and organizers.
About the author
Fred B. Glass is Communications Director for the California Federation of Teachers and Instructor of Labor and Community Studies at City College of San Francisco. He is the producer of Golden Lands, Working Hands, a ten-part documentary video series on California labor history.
This event is free and open to the public.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. Books are also available online from UC Press.
Space is limited. Please register for the event.
Join us as we welcome award winning filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, co-directors of the PBS film Shift Change as they screen their latest documentaries, WEconomics and La Empresa es Nuestra.
WEconomics was filmed in the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy which has one of the highest concentrations of cooperative businesses in the developed world. The capital, Bologna, is an industrial powerhouse, where prosperity is widely shared, and cooperatives of teachers and social workers play a key role in the provision of government services.
La Empresa es Nuestra, filmed in the Basque region of northern Spain, describes the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation, that largest cooperative corporation in the world. Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, it is the tenth-largest Spanish company and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.
SPACE IS LIMITED! PLEASE RSVP!
Please join us for a film screening and discussion of how these examples can be helpful toward developing a stronger coop economy in the U.S. and specifically the East Bay. Young and Dworkin have produced films about worker coops over a period of 15 years, first in Argentina after the dramatic economic/political collapse in late 2001, then in the Basque Country of Spain and across the U.S., including the Bay Area, for Shift Change. Their work encourages us to think and work toward a more just, equitable, sustainable economy.
In Cooperation,
Ricardo
Ricardo S. Nuñez
http://www.theselc.org/
Audrie & Daisy is an urgent real-life drama that examines the ripple effects on families, friends, schools and communities when two underage young women find that sexual assault against them has been caught on camera and distributed online. From acclaimed filmmakers Bonni Cohen and John Shenk, “Audrie & Daisy”– which made its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival — takes a hard look at America’s teenagers who are coming of age in this new world of social media bullying, spun wildly out of control.
“Audrie & Daisy” will be presented FREE in both Piedmont and Oakland by the Appreciating Diversity Film Series and by Piedmont Parents Network. The film was co-produced by documentary filmmaker and Piedmont High School alum Sara Dosa, who will be in attendance to facilitate a discussion after the film on October 27.
The directors were motivated by what they saw: “We are struck by the frequency of sexual assaults in high schools across the country and have been even more shocked by the pictures and videos, posted online–almost as trophies–by teens that have committed these crimes. This has become the new public square of shame for our adolescents. Unfortunately, the story of drunken high school parties and sexual assault is not new. But today, the events of the night are recorded on smartphones and disseminated to an entire community and, sometimes, the nation. Such was the case for Audrie Pott from Saratoga, California and Daisy Coleman, from Maryville, Ohio, 15- and 14-year old girls, living thousands of miles apart but experiencing the same shame from their communities.”
We invite you to this moving and meaningful film so that you can understand more about the world teenagers live in today.
The Appreciating Diversity Film Series is sponsored by the Piedmont Appreciating Diversity Committee, Piedmont League of Women Voters, Piedmont Adult Education, and the City of Piedmont.
Free, no RSVP needed, usually all are able to find seats.
This screening is the Bay Area premiere of The Last Crop documentary.
The Last Crop is an intimate exploration into the lives of small family farmers Jeff and Annie Main of California’s Central Valley. The film follows these organic pioneers’ ten-year pursuit to ensure that a farm need not be imperiled at the end of every generation. Theirs is a story that is being echoed on farms across our nation as our largely aging farming population faces retirement. What sets the Mains apart is their resolve to create an alternative for their farm’s succession that ensures its productivity and affordability for future farming generations.
Post film panelists: Annie & Jeff Main, Andrea Davis-Cetina owner Quarter Acre Farm & National Young Farmers Coalition member, Evan Wigg, Executive Director, Farmers Guild, Kathryn Lyddan, Executive Director, Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust and filmmaker Chuck Schultz
Please contact us if you have any questions at info@blueprintproductions.biz
Because policing fails to meet people’s needs, and puts people in danger of arrest, imprisonment, and/or even death, we must eliminate connections between policing and healthcare.
Critical Resistance Oakland and The Oakland Power Projects present: The “Know Your Options: Chronic illness” workshop
This workshop is designed to increase people’s understanding of mental health-related experiences, events, trauma, and conditions so that we don’t default to 911 or the cops when a baseline or escalated mental health-related event or experience happens.
The “Know Your Options” workshop series aims to increase people’s access to the healthcare they need and to decrease people’s contact with law enforcement. Workshops are facilitated by healthcare workers and community organizers.
Food First is the original food policy think tank, founded in 1975 by activist author Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins. Over the years, they’ve produced action-oriented research and analysis in order to help build the movement for food justice and food sovereignty around the world. Their projects range from working to stop ‘land grabs’ in the Americas to pollinator restoration and farmer to farmer education. Their Food Sovereignty tours to places such as Italy and Cuba are well known and sought after.
The October gala gathering celebrates the work Food First has contributed to the food justice movement and provides an opportunity to learn more about their organization. There is no cost to attend and no pressure to contribute financially, though opportunities to do so will be available if you so desire.