Calendar
The Peace and Freedom Party presents
Honor Black History
In celebration of Black History Month and the struggles of Black students and
activists which created it, we are inviting two scholar/activists James Garrett, and
Ray Tompkins, to join former Black Panther Gerald Smith, to discuss these
historic struggles including the 5-month student strike at San Francisco State
University in 1968-69 which led to the first Black Studies Program in the country.
CELEBRATE BLACK HISTORY MONTH
This is part of our on-going Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every
month. Doors open at 2 pm and the program will start promptly at 2:30 pm. The
forum will end by 4:30 pm, but folks can stay and talk as long as you like.
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The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and anti-war
movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy,
ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.
www.peaceandfreedom.org
- student debt resistance
- organizing for public banking.
- advocating for Postal banking.
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- ongoing study group
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- our famous Strike Debt radio program
- staging Debtors’ Assemblies
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts
- Working on ways to kickstart the drive for basic income
- and much more!
Strike Debt – Principles of Solidarity
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
We also oppose debt because it is an instrument of exploitation and political domination. Debt is used to discipline us, deepen existing inequalities, and reinforce racial, gendered, and other social hierarchies. Every Strike Debt action is designed to weaken the institutions that seek to divide us and benefit from our division. As an alternative to this predatory system, Strike Debt advocates a just and sustainable economy, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence.
Strike Debt is committed to the principles and tactics of political autonomy, direct democracy, direct action, creative openness, a culture of solidarity, and commitment to anti-oppressive language and conduct. We struggle for a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression.
Strike Debt holds that we are all debtors, whether or not we have personal loan agreements. Through the manipulation of sovereign and municipal debt, the costs of speculator-driven crises are passed on to all of us. Though different kinds of debt can affect the same household, they are all interconnected, and so all household debtors have a common interest in resisting.
Strike Debt engages in public education about the debt-system to counteract the self-serving myth that finance is too complicated for laypersons to understand. In particular, it urges direct action as a way of stopping the damage caused by the creditor class and their enablers among elected government officials. Direct action empowers those who participate in challenging the debt-system.
Strike Debt holds that we owe the financial institutions nothing, whereas, to our friends, families and communities, we owe everything. In pursuing a long-term strategy for national organizing around this principle, we pledge international solidarity with the growing global movement against debt and austerity.
We ask that all of our coalition members join us this monday on the steps of City Hall as we let the Mayor know that we will not be silenced by the bread crumbs he, the chief and the DOJ have thrown us.
We have a duty to fight for our freedom and we wont stop until we get justice.
OccupyForum presents…
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue on all sides of these critically important issues!
The Stolen Election in Ukraine 2004,
and What Was Done About It :
Orange Revolution
(Documentary film and discussion)
Presidential elections, Ukraine, 2004. One candidate is backed by the post-Soviet regime. Eight weeks before the election the opposition candidate is seriously poisoned. He survives, but with a severely disfigured face.
In the final voting, blatant vote fraud hands the election to the regime. Instantly, Ukranians pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. Fed up with censored media, corruption, and rule by wealthy oligarchs, they take over the capital, Kyiv, to enforce their will. Through snow and freezing temperatures they stand their ground, blockading government buildings, demanding a new election.
Through the eyes and in the voices of the Ukranian people, Orange Revolution tells the story of a people united, not by one leader or one party, but by one idea: to defend their vote and the future of their country.
Discussion and Announcements will follow. Donations to OccupyForum to cover our costs are encouraged; no one turned away!
Valero CBR proposal poses major risks. Public comment, Feb 8
Outrageous. Benicia City Staff is recommending approval of Valero’s dangerous crude-by-rail proposal, despite the “significant and unavoidable” impacts to air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, biological resources and public safety outlined by the Final EIR, which clearly identifies the “No Project Alternative” as the “Environmentally Superior Alternative.” Staff declares that federal preemeption prevents it from objecting to rail-related hazards, even as it parrots Valero’s arguments about the blessings of lowered GHGs and increased jobs and economic benefits.
Make sure you’ve already submitted your comments to the City of Benicia or at least signed the petition opposing the project. The Planning Commission will take public comments on the Final EIR on February 8th before it votes whether to approve the use permit for this project. City Staff has just issued the following instruction for speaking at the hearing:
1. Individuals can sign up by calling the Planning Department (707-746-4280). As of Tuesday there’s only an answering machine to take messages, so it seems we have to wait until Monday the 8th to phone.
2. Individuals can sign up for others besides themselves when signing up in person on the 8th! (Guess what Valero will do with this one!)
3. You don’t have to use your real name.
Here’s the announcement on the City’s CBR web page as of 2/2:
IF YOU WISH TO COMMENT DURING THE HEARING: Due to the large amount of public interest with this project, the City will be instituting a sign up system in order to speak during the public hearings. Interested members of the public will be allowed to speak in order of sign up. Sign ups will be available on the day of the meeting(s) from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Community Development Department. If you are unable to come in person, please call 707-746-4280 to be added to the list. At the hearing, please go to the sign up table just outside of the Council Chambers. Your name will be called in the order in which you signed up. You do not have to sign up in order to speak. However, you will not be called on until those who have signed up have spoken. In order to accommodate the public, we have arranged for overflow rooms in City Hall with the hearing streaming for you to view and listen. You can also view the event live from the City’s website.
Why we should make every effort to testify: If approved, this project would allow the Benicia refinery to transport 70,000 barrels per day of crude oil in two 50-tanker-car trains, instead of shipping the oil by tanker. The project would add to, and not replace, crude already brought to the refinery via pipeline. The Final EIR lists many serious unmitigatable environmental impacts should the project be approved.
Let’s remind the Planning Commission that federal preemption did not cause the San Luis Obispo County staff to roll over and automatically approve a crude-by-rail project within its own jurisdiction. Instead, it understood that it had the power to affect what happens uprail by denying the rail project it was asked to rubberstamp.
Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community is asking all allies to attend the Benicia Planning Commission meeting on February 8 at the Benicia City Hall, 250 East L Street, Benicia. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m., but supporters are urged to arrive by at least 5:30 p.m.—if not earlier—to get the best seats and to arrive before Valero’s supporters.
Getting There: Andrés Soto, CBE’s Richmond Organizer, is arranging car pools from Richmond, gathering at the Bobby Bowens Progressive Center at 4:00 p.m. and departing at 4:30 p.m. If you need a ride or can drive to Benicia, please contact Andrés at andres@cbecal.org or at 510.282.5363.
Please RSVP here.
Background
Updates can be found at the Benicia Independent.
The project documents can be found on the City of Benicia website.
OTU’s Mission
The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists dedicated to protecting tenant rights and interests. OTU does this by working directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacting legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and working with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares our core values and who believes that tenants themselves have the primary responsibility to work on their own behalf.
Monthly Meetings
The Oakland Tenants Union meets regularly at 7:00 pm on the second Monday evening of each month. Our monthly meetings are held in the Community Room of the Madison Park Apartments, 100 – 9th Street (at Oak Street, across from the Lake Merritt BART Station). To enter, gently knock on the window of the room to the right of the main entrance to the building. At the meetings, first we focus on general issues affecting renters city-wide and then second we offer advice to renters regarding their individual concerns.
If you have an issue, a question, or need advice about a tenant/landlord issue, please call us at (510) 704-5276. Leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will get back to you.
Every member of the City Council says they want to stop the displacement of Black, Brown and poor people from Oakland. But there’s no better way to displace a population than to take away their access to work. Yet again, our elected leaders have failed to live up to their rhetoric or prioritize the interests of the people they represent.
The behind-closed-doors deals that are made by Oakland city officials must end. Pushing an RFP that cuts services to Oakland’s unemployed (primarily Black and Latino males) must be illuminated just as our allies have done with the mayor’s illegal protest curfew, the corrupt E. 12th St development process, and the domain awareness center.
Join us on Tuesday, February 9 at 1:30 pm at Oakland’s City Council Chambers to let the Council President and CED members know WE ARE PAYING ATTENTION AND WE DEMAND TRANSPARENCY. This illegal RFP designed to circumvent the mandated process must be stopped. Come make your voices heard.
Remember last week how we got thousands of people out in the streets to for our Tackle Homelessness Super Bowl Protest? And remember how we made #TackleHomelessness trend on twitter. And remember when nearly every major publication in America wrote about it and showed the world the fuckery perpetrated by Mayor Ed Lee?
Yeah, that was rad.
This Tuesday, February 9th, it’s time for the next step. I just received this from the Coalition on Homelessness:
#TackleHomelessness Superbowl Protest Next Step
Please come to speak during public comment at SF Board of Supervisors Feb 9 Tuesday at around 4:00.
The Mayor is scheduled to speak at 2:00, we are going to have a silent vigil that will be homeless people led/convened. We have about 30 shirts for folks to wear for silent vigil inside chambers. We are NOT planning on disrupting, just putting pressure on the Mayor with our very powerful presence.
We would appreciate support from the broader community to speak in public comment, which should take place no earlier then 4:00, but likely much later.
The Mayor will not be there for public comment, but it is OK to direct comments towards him.
We are demanding:
$5 million to go immediately to house homeless people
Moratorium on criminalization of homeless people
Sustained commitment from the city to end homelessness, which includes identifying progressive revenue source.
Stop (racist) displacement of 139 Fillmore Families
Action/Rally Wednesday, February 10th 4 – 5pm
Come stand with us to protect SF’s remaining (3%) Black population and to bring the Black Community back to our city.
#blackhomesmatter
#savemidtown
Critical San Francisco Police Commission meeting on tasers.
Please come and stop this escalation of force by SFPD.
Police Chief Greg Suhr will be formally recommending that the SFPD be given tasers at the next Police Commission meeting,
Please come and speak loudly and vociferously against the escalation in the use of force by the already unaccountable SFPD. SFPD should never be given lethal instruments of torture, such as tasers.
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 Tuesday 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 Privacy Working Group to organize against Stingrays being acquired by law enforcement agencies, against Urban Shield, and for various privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, especially by Alameda County and the Oakland City Council. We are also engaged in the fight against Predictive Policing and other “pre-crime” and “thought-crime” abominations, drones, improper use of police body cameras, and against other invasions of privacy by our benighted City, County, State and Federal Governments.
OPWG originally came together to fight against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OPWG was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network, and its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC.
We were also the lead in having Alameda County pass the most comprehensive privacy and usage policy in the country for deployment of “Stingray” technology (cell phone interceptors).
Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s right not to be spied on by the government & if you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to:
oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe AT lists.riseup.net
For more information on the DAC check out
Chinatown Community & Workers Hold Lunar New Year Rally Against New Project by Lawbreaking Employer
Balaji Enterprises, owner/operator of the Holiday Inn Express Oakland Airport, violated the Oakland minimum wage ordinance, manipulated time-card records, and withheld evidence from City investigators, according to a new report from the City of Oakland.
Meanwhile, the City is poised to give Balaji Enterprises a permit to build a new Hampton Inn on a valuable downtown Oakland parcel – with no public process or community input. On Thursday, Chinatown high school students and hotel workers will hold a Lunar New Year rally at the site of the proposed hotel, calling on the City to deny the permit and ensure transparency and community involvement in planning for the site.
“The City of Oakland is on the verge of making a back-room deal with a hotel company that breaks the law and exploits workers – according to the City’s own report. We should have a voice in deciding what gets built in our community, so we can make sure this project benefits our families and our future.” said Joshua Fisher Lee, Executive Director of AYPAL, a Chinatown-based community organization comprised of students from Asian Pacific Islander immigrant and refugee families living in Oakland.
The City’s report details several violations of Oakland’s minimum wage ordinance affecting 37 workers. Investigators found that Balaji rounded off time-clock records to avoid paying workers for all hours worked; imposed unreasonable rules to prevent workers from using sick leave; reduced workers’ hours, blaming the passage of the minimum wage ordinance; and withheld a notebook tracking employee work hours from investigators.
Chinatown worker and community groups expressed dismay the report’s findings – and at the possibility of the same employer opening a new hotel in their neighborhood.
At Thursday’s rally, youth groups will adorn the fenced-off lot with Lunar New Year decorations and play interactive games to celebrate the Chinatown community and create a positive vision for a project on the site that would benefit youth and low-wage workers.
Participants will include youth leaders from AYPAL; Marriott and Marriott Courtyard Hotel workers and members of UNITE HERE Local 2850; and community allies from East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and Asians 4 Black Lives.
“I’ve watched classmates and even members of my family get pushed out of Oakland – because of rising rents and cost of living, my cousins who also grew up here had to move out of state. Youth in our community are dealing with a lot of problems, like gang violence. This land is empty – we have the chance to create something that would create safe spaces for youth to learn and have access to more opportunities, instead of a hotel that treats its workers poorly,†said Jason Le, a junior at Oakland High School and AYPAL youth leader.
BACKGROUND: For several months, the Oakland Planning Department has been considering approving Balaji Enterprises new Hampton Inn in downtown Oakland with no public hearing process. The decision on whether or not to approve the hotel is delegated solely to Planning Director Rachel Flynn, who came under criticism last fall for asserting that there is no affordable housing crisis in Oakland. Balaji already operates two local hotels, the Hampton Inn Alameda and Holiday Inn Express, where workers have reported low pay, no health benefits, shorting of workers’ pay, and humiliation from managers. The site of the new hotel is only blocks away from the Marriott Courtyard and Marriott Hotels, where union workers worry that the opening of a poverty-wage hotel nearby will make it difficult to maintain the standards and benefits they have fought to win and maintain over the years. Community activists believe the project will exacerbate the East Bay’s crises of inequality and displacement, and that workers at the new hotel will not be able to afford to live in Oakland. Last November, hundreds of hotel workers and community members marched from the lot of the proposed hotel into City Hall, where former workers of the Hampton Inn owners have testified to City Council about not being allowed lunch breaks, earning poverty wages with no benefits, and being fired for getting hurt on the job. The community protest of the proposed Hampton Inn comes on the heels of broad community opposition to the proposed development of market-rate housing at the nearby East 12th Street parcel.
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The demand for justice is happening and needs you!
A film by Ron Blatman and KQED Public Television. We will also be honoring Sylvia McLaughlin who died recently at 99 years of age. She was always a most gracious friend of our BFUU and her daughter and granddaughter were treasured and active members for some years in the 90’s. So we are honoring her showing these two episodes which show how she was literally one of the miracle workers who in the 1960’s who saved this beautiful and magical bay that every human inhabitant (the Miwoks and Ohlone) of the Bay has depended on. From the earliest inhabitants 5,000 years ago through the Gold Rush, the Mexican period, the Gold Rush, the Earthquake and Fire of 1906, to Silicon Valley, we all have needed this bay which drains a third of California. Now the Bay is one of the world’s leading economic, academic, recreational and cultural regions. Narrated by Robert Redford, don’t miss two of the four episodes of “Saving the Bay” which highlights an unforgettable journey around the waters of the Bay.
Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Ctee as part of our Conscientious Projector series.
Free to the public.
Wheelchair accessible.
Ph:510-275-4272
For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
bfuusjev-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net
Sponsored by the Coalition for Police Accountability.
We were asked by the Federal Monitor team to convene a community event in which folks who had had encounters with OP
D in the last two or three years would give testimony about their experiences. The Monitor are interested in hearing directly from those who had negative experiences. They want to know what happened — when, where – and whether or not a complaint was filed, and, if so, what was the outcome, so they can do follow up.
We promised to convene such a meeting. This is an opportunity we should not miss to counter the Schaaf cheerleading about how much progress OPD has made, despite the fact that there were 7 killings of African-American males in the last year! The City is anxious to get out from under Federal oversight and the Monitor wants an ‘on the ground’ assessment of whether OPD behaves differently than they did in the ‘Riders’ era, or whether things are basically still the same.
Please share this widely — especially with those who are likely to have been impacted directly, or even indirectly, as observers, and we hope youth will be encouraged to attend, along with their parents.
No City officials (including police) have been invited to attend — only the Federal Monitor team.
There will be no panel discussion — the whole evening will be devoted to hearing testimony from the community!!!
In conjunction with Strike Debt Bay Area
Mehrsa Baradaran talks about her new book
How the Other Half Banks:
Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy
How the Other Half Banks is a history of banking for the masses in the United States, the story of how it has failed in the last thirty years – to be replaced by predatory payday lenders and their ilk – and the case for Postal Banking (find out about this!) as the way to once again provide banking services at reasonable rates for the tens of millions of unbanked and underbanked.
Mehrsa Baradaran is Associate Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law
See Mehrsa Baradaran on YouTube
Friday: At the Green Arcade Bookstore in SF.
Also in Oakland on Saturday at 6:00 PM a the Laurel Bookstore at Oscar Grant Plaza.
Event flyers:
strike debt – baradaran flyer color
strike debt – baradaran flyer color 4up
strike debt – baradaran flyer bw
strike debt – baradaran flyer bw 4up
SF Mime Troupe presents: “COINTELSHOW: A Patriot Act”, by L.M. Bogad on February 12 & 13 in SF
Follow Special Agent Christian White on a cheerfully creepy tour of declassified government surveillance documents. White probes the redacted (blacked-out) texts of the FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence Programs, searching for the words erased in the name of the Freedom of Information Act.
Learn fun techniques for the infiltration of activist groups, how to earn benefits and a pension as an agent provocateur, and how to, in the words of J. Edgar Hoover, “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” your neighbors! Read on!
Tickets: FREE but you must reserve a seat!
JOIN US FOR A SHIFT: LATE NIGHT MASS COPWATCHING
· February 12, 10 PM – 1 AM
· February 27, 8 PM – 11 PM
Since October 2015, Berkeley Copwatch has been holding “mass copwatch” events that invite folks to join us for a shift. It’s been fun and very empowering to have up to five cars full of copwatchers patrolling our city and on the scene when police stop people.
This month we have two shifts scheduled. Please join us; we will train you in the essentials of copwatching, how to document and how to stay safe!
Contact us at (510) 548-0425 or berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com to learn where we will be meeting.
Food Not Bombs will be hosting a fundraiser for Oakland’s Omni Commons, and YOU’RE invited! This event will last pretty much ALL DAY– from 2pm until late in the evening (10 or 11pm).
Come prepared for:
*A DANCE PARTY! (or several)
*Readings and book signings!
*Open mic!
*A DELECTABLE vegan meal!
*Meeting the best friends you’ll EVER have!
…and MORE!!!!
FEATURING: (And this list has only just begun…)
Antioquia: https://antioquia.bandcamp.com/
Carol Denney: http://www.caroldenney.com/
Bicicletas por la Paz: www.bicicletasporlapaz.com/the-band/
Maracatu Pacifico: http://www.maracatupacifico.com/#!/bio
V.E.X.:
http://moirascar.blogspot.com/
http://thebaybridged.com/2015/06/10/get-to-know-moira-scar-and-v-e-x/
Interested in performing? Decorating? Cooking? Promoting? Reach out to Saryta at srod622@gmail.com and Arthur at arnoldmcpeebles@gmail.com.
Presale tickets coming soon!
PRESALE suggested donation: $10 to party, plus $10 to guarantee your seat at the FEAST! Nom nom nom nom nom.
DOOR suggested donation: $15 to party, $10 to eat, $25 for the Full On Experience.
ABOUT THE COMMONS:
The Omni Commons is comprised of several Bay Area collectives with a shared political vision—one that privileges a more equitable commoning of resources and meeting of human needs over private interests or corporate profit.
We invite you to join us in establishing a safe, productive place to pool resources for the collective use and stewardship of the greater community. A space that fosters an ethic of radical collaboration across disciplines and between individual collectives, creating a living model for future radical spaces. https://omnicommons.org/
CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU!