Calendar
Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area –
Black and Brown Lives Matter
A Night of Healing for the Community
Oakland CA, November 16, 2014: We are Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area with knowledge and unity! Open to the community a night of sharing, entertainment, Food, and so much more! The Event is hosted by Anita Wills, Executive Director of the Inter Council for Mother’s of Murdered Children. Speakers include Alex Salazar, Dionne Smith, Anita Wills, and others from the community whose lives have been touched by violence. The evening will also include will include Chicken Dinners, Seafood Gumbo, Enchiladas, Peach Cobbler, Potato Pies, Cakes, and other dishes, as well as beverages.*
Speaker Anita Wills will share her experience of traveling to Ferguson within a week of Michael Browns death. Other speakers, Dionne Smith-Downs and Alex Salazar will share their experiences in Ferguson. Alex Salazar spent weeks in Ferguson and has set up Cop-watch Workshops. He is an Activist who will share his experience as someone who has been on the inside and outside of Police Work. We have other speakers from the community, short films, and items such as candles, crafts, baked goods, and good food for sell.
Booth space is available for $25, (inbox for details, ntawls@gmail.com). A $10 donation is requested at the (no one will be turned away for lack of funds). Those who donate $15 or more will receive a free dinner. All proceeds go to the Kerry Baxter Senior Legal Fund (Event is sponsored by the Mary & Patty Bowden Foundation).
David Rovics is a great, revolutionary folk singer of songs of social significance.
You can download most of his music at his web site or over at Soundclick and other places.
Come and hear him play a set in our common space, the Post Office!
You will not be disappointed.
David will give (or will have given) a benefit concert for Tristan Anderson on Sunday, November 16th at the Art House in Berkeley.
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
Front Line of Aceh’s War —
the struggle for independence
The 2004 tsunami suddenly turned the isolated Indonesian province of Aceh into a household name. Yet the deeper story of the Acehnese and their long struggle for independence has been untold… until now. The Black Road is the harrowing account told by journalist and activist.
Billy Nessen, who was determined to find out the truth and tell the world. Nessen lived for many months with the independence guerrillas, was hunted by the military, and eventually spent time in jail in Indonesia.
Billy Nessen spoke came to OccupyForum last Monday and spoke about his work, including his current work with the UC Berkeley students to organize a campaign for divestment from fossil fuels.
“An extraordinary achievement. One of the most courageous and unflinching journalistic efforts I can recall.”
— Johnathan Holmes, ABC Four Corners, Australia
Oakland’s beautiful and wild Knowland Park is under threat, and we need your help at an important City Council vote. Right now, the free public park is home to a range of wildlife, including threatened species, native grasslands, and woodlands.
However, the Oakland Zoo is trying to take over the heart of the park’s 77 acres! – which would displace local wildlife…for an exhibit about species that are regionally extinct due to development. What?!
This would also mean privatizing our public park, and since the zoo has been working behind closed doors with local officials for years, the City Council just might let them do this. Unless we all stand up.
Knowland Park is item 9.2 on the agenda. You can sign up to speak on this item online here.
The zoo will be busing in its employees, and we need to pack the room and show them what democracy looks like. It is absolutely critical that we turn out a BIG crowd.
The Oakland City Council will meet on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 starting at 5:30 pm at Oakland City Hall to vote on whether to grant the zoo additional park acreage. The zoo is trying to take even MORE parkland from the public to “mitigate” for destroying the best of it…and if the Council votes for the zoo on 11/18, that’s it. It would set a terrible precedent.
Join us at the City Council meeting to tell the City Council what the wildlife protection agencies recommended in the first place, and the public has been demanding for years: move the development elsewhere – and preserve the park for all the resident wildlife, including the prime habitat for the threatened Alameda Whipsnake, rather than having to mitigate for its loss.
Sign up here if you can come or want to help out: bit.ly/knowlandmeeting.
FIGHT THE FEE-HIKE!
SATHER GATE. (At the tree between Dwinelle and Wheeler)
The Regents (the administration of the UC) will vote on a $3,300 tuition increase on Wednesday by 2pm.
*** We will discuss actions whether or not they approve fee hikes that day, so that we can proactively organize to roll-back our tuition, and prevent further attempts to raise fees. ***
GA hosted by Cal Progressive Coalition
Twitter:
@CalProgressives
#MoveTheMoney
#OurUniversity
#FundTheUC
Capitalism vs. the Climate: Naomi Klein on the Need for a New Economic Model to Address the Ecological Crisis
Join the Northern California System Change not Climate Change chapter in watching the film interview of Naomi Klein by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now (September 18, 2014).
After the film we will discuss her ideas and her recent book, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, by Naomi Klein.
From http://thischangeseverything.org:
“Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.”
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.
We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight for the next economy and against reckless extraction is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It’s about changing the world—before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink.
We’re currntly reading about our banking system, what’s wrong with it and alternative ways of having one.
This time, we’re reading Positive Money’s proposal for an alternative banking system. Parts 1-4.
You are invited to join EFF next Thursday, November 20, for a free public event on the quickly unfolding national debate on net neutrality, to be hosted at San Francisco City Hall.
The event is Bay Area Speaks: A People’s Hearing on the Future of the Internet, where you are invited to testify at City Hall about why net neutrality matters to Bay Area communities. Attendees will also receive an update from the lawyers, policy analysts, and activists who have been working on the front lines to make sure the FCC takes the right path forward.
Before the hearing, supporters will rally outside City Hall at 5:30pm and are encouraged to bring cell phones, laptops, and flashlights for a cell phone vigil and to hold signs and colorful art to demonstrate support for Internet freedom. Download this image to display on your screen at the rally.
Who: Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps; Amy Sonnie, Outreach Director of the Oakland Public Library; Jay Nath, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Francisco; Corynne McSherry, Director of Intellectual Property at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice; Tim Poznar of Fandor.com; and others.
PLEASE RSVP HERE
The People’s Hearing comes at a key moment in the debate over net neutrality. Last Monday, President Barack Obama issued a statement in support of full, clear net neutrality rules, echoing the demands of the 4 million Americans who have spoken out in favor of the same reforms throughout the year. The FCC is weighing its options now and is expected to act as early as December.
It’s time to make sure California voices are heard in the national discussions.The fight isn’t over yet; come meet us at the front lines.
Autumn brings Recipe, a profoundly funny new work by Michael Gene Sullivan, resident playwright for the Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Central Works serves up the laughs in this delicious take on a circle of sweet old grandmotherly bakers, who just happen to be dedicated to the armed overthrow of the United States government. But baking pies and cakes isn’t enough to satisfy these four intrepid refugees from the 60’s (and 50’s, and 40’s), and their burning desire to “Up the Revolution!”
Read the Radical Recipe Blog!
Pay-what-you-can every Thursday, at the door as available
Pop-up Talk: Javier Arbona on the Architecture of Surveillance
Join geographer and artist Javier Arbona for a brief talk in the Gallery of California History. Arbona will discuss infrastructure and surveillance in the port city of Oakland. Using a foreboding downtown telecommunications building as jumping-off point, he will make connections between the long history of the telegraph in Oakland and state surveillance in our midst today.
This in-Gallery pop-up talk takes place during Friday Nights @ OMCA, featuring Off the Grid food trucks, live music, and more.
Included with Museum admission. During Friday Nights @ OMCA, from 5 to 9 pm, admission is half-price for adults, free for ages 18 and under.
Admission for OMCA Members is always free.
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
An inspiration film about the recent occupation of UC Berkeley land that saved 10 acres from the clutches of privatization. This film is still in theaters but we are hosting a FREE SCREENING in the Open University in Wheeler Hall!
OCCUPY THE FARM tells the inspiring story of a community taking direct action to create a healthier and more just food system and question the stewardship of a precious resource: publicly owned urban farmland.
200 farmers occupy a last piece of farmland in California’s urban East Bay, plant 15,000 seedlings to feed the community and disrupt plans to build a shopping mall. What happens next will change the fate of the land and reveal a new strategy for activism.
From tilling soil to police raids, from lawsuits to overflowing harvests, OCCUPY THE FARM reveals a resourceful, creative, and determined community as it fights against the privatization of the land and responds with direct action to a serious social need: access to healthy food.
The Village Voice calls OCCUPY THE FARM “riveting from the start” and this true story will inspire your community in the power of people working together to make a profound difference. Please share to support!
– See more at: http://
Earth At Risk 2014: Justice and Sustainability Conference, Nov. 22 – 23
From the Conference website: “This November, some of the world’s preeminent strategists in environmental defense, social justice,
and grassroots activism will come together to share their insights and speak toward ONE goal: crafting game-changing responses to address the converging crises we face.
Species extinction, racism, sexual warfare, deforestation, global warming, corruption — all stem from the same root.
For too long environmentalism has hinged on conformity to capitalism and the status quo. For too long social justice work has capitulated to this profoundly abusive culture. We may live on an EARTH AT RISK – but with this great challenge comes a GREAT OPPORTUNITY. This is your struggle, whether you acknowledge it or not. Will you sit on the sidelines as the world burns?”
Featuring four hugely important global activists: African-American author Alice Walker, Indian physicist-ecologist Dr. Vandana Shiva, journalist Chris Hedges and author/philosopher Derrick Jensen. This is not a conference to miss, if you can help it!
For more details, please visit the Fertile Ground Environmental Institute website or the Event Schedule here.
Why Does Capitalism Breed Inequality?
What’s the Socialist Alternative?
Organizing to Win.
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
#OccupyWheeler GA happening at 8 tonight! Big decisions to be made! #occupycal #FightTheHike #takebackyourtuition @theopenuc @bpoffcampus
— OCCUPY CAL (@OccupyCalCampus) November 23, 2014
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
Films From The Frontlines: Screening and discussion with the Global Uprisings media collective
Join the Global Uprisings media for a special screening of their films covering international social movements!
Global Uprisings is an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis and authoritarianism. Since 2011, filmmaker Brandon Jourdan and researcher Marianne Maeckelbergh have produced 24 online viral documentary films about the uprisings, rebellions, revolts, and revolutions that have spread around the world. All of their films are completely free online at www.globaluprisings.org.
Their short films detail social movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US. Their films cover strikes and demonstrations in the UK, the large-scale housing occupations and street mobilizations in Spain, the various general strikes, protests, and factory occupations in Greece, the revolution in Egypt, the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey, the 2014 social explosion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the revolt against austerity in Portugal, and the occupy movement in the United States.
The Global Uprisings series has received hundreds of thousands of online views, been translated into multiple languages, screened at various international film festivals, theaters, galleries, and other venues around the world, used in university and high school classrooms, screened on Democracy Now!, and on the US TV station Free Speech TV.
Global Uprisings Creators
Brandon Jourdan is a journalist and filmmaker who has contributed to Democracy Now!, the NY Times, CNN, Reuters, Deep Dish TV, Independent Media Center, Now with Bill Moyers, Foreign Exchange, and Free Speech TV. With over ten years of experience in documentary filmmaking and journalism, his films have played in film festivals around the world including DocLisboa, Movies That Matter, and the Aljazeera International Film Festival and featured in the 2005 Whitney Biennial, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Contemporary Art Meeting Point in Athens, and the Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight. Since 2011, he has worked together with Marianne Maeckelbergh on www.globaluprisings.org, an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis and authoritarianism.
Marianne Maeckelbergh is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is author of The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy (Pluto Press, 2009). She is co-founder of www.globaluprisings.org, an independent news site and video series dedicated to showing responses to the economic crisis and authoritarianism. She is currently a Marie Curie fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
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.