Calendar
Hewlett Packard is developing and supporting a biometric ID system installed in Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank which categorizes citizens by their ethnic background. In the United States, HP is profiting from work with the US prison system and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through a contract with the US Department of Homeland Security ICE Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to speed up the internal process of deciding a person’s documentation status.
Come and learn from art activists about how to make creative and effective art installations and action props that can be used as we confront corporations who profit from suppression.
Surveillance, policing, prison and corporate complicity: let’s take action!
Have you ever needed a document and not known where to find it? Have you ever been told you can’t access a document that you need? Or perhaps you want to request documents from a government agency but don’t know how or what you have a right to ask for.
Don’t fret, we have just the person to answer your questions.
Join the Bay Area News Group’s award-winning investigative reporter and author, Thomas Peele, for a free session on how to access public records. The workshop will provide information about laws governing the release of records as well as how to file Freedom of Information requests.
The session is part of the Independent Journal’s community engagement initiative, which also includes informal public meetings in communities across the county.
Reservations are necessary for the Jan. 22 public access workshop on a first-come, first-served basis. Each attendee must reserve a space. To sign up, visit this signup site.
For more information about the IJ’s community outreach and Peele’s talk, visit Editor Robert Sterling’s blog at blogs.marinij.com/notesonnews.
For details on Peele’s talk, also contact Martin Reynolds, Bay Area News Group senior editor for community engagement, at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com or 510-390-1779.
Jehane Noujaim’s THE SQUARE is a gripping portrait of the Egyptian revolution and the way it has been fought on the front lines with the game-changing weapons of cameras and social media. It is an epic documentary that captures the immediacy and intensity of the protests in Tahrir Square— from the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, to the ousting of Mohammed Morsi in 2013— through the eyes of the movement’s young activists. The Square will be showing all week at the Roxie Theater.
After the movie screening, we will be hosting a Skyped Q and A with Mostafa Ali, a journalist for Ahram Online and member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists.
Co-hosted by the International Socialist Organization
Co-sponsors: Arab Resource Organizing Center & Arab Cultural & Community Center
Pre-sale tickets available! $8 – regular admission. $10-$20 – solidarity price. Please speak w/
For more information:
Website: http://thesquarefilm.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
Trailer: http://bit.ly/1c7OUeG
International Socialist Organization: norcalsocialism.org || socialistworker.org
Arab Resource Organizing Center: http://araborganizing.org/
Arab Cultural & Community Center: http://
The San Francisco Gray Panthers are very concerned about issues of mass incarceration, prison expansion, profiling of minorities and youth, and the criminalization of poverty. Particularly in San Francisco, with such extremes of wealth and poverty, it seems outrageous to build more jail space, when three-quarters of prisoners are there because they’re too poor to make bail.
We are helping to organize two important upcoming events to stop the new jail and we hope you will join us! The first was on January 18th. This one:
Thursday, January 23rd: Speak out at the San Francisco Supervisor’s Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee Hearing on the Jail Replacement Project.
The discussion will be led by a formidable cast of advocates including:
- Cindy Cohn, Legal Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Ms. Cohn serves as counsel in First Unitarian Church v. NSA and Jewel v. NSA, each seeking to stop the ongoing dragnet warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans.
- Daniel Ellsberg, the iconic whistleblower and national hero described by President Nixon as “the most dangerous man in America,” and co-founder of Freedom of Press Foundation.
- Norman Solomon, Journalist, media critic, anti-war activist, co-founder of RootsAction.org, founding director of Institute for Public Accuracy, and author of War Made Easy.
- Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, constitutional lawyer, grassroots organizer, independent columnist, musician, and poet.
Robert Jaffee, a volunteer attorney on the Hedges v. Obama case challenging indefinite detention without trial, will moderate the discussion. He and the panelists will discuss issues including:
Whether dragnet NSA surveillance is constitutional, and the dueling federal court rulings in December
The history of government secrecy, and how it relates to the mounting controversy surrounding NSA spying
How the NSA dragnet threatens not only to privacy, but also freedom and democracy
The role of the press, and the tremendous contributions of Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others
Prospects for legislative reforms in Congress, and opportunities for grassroots action going forward
For more details about the forum, please contact Robert Jaffee at rjaffe2[at]gmail.
You can also RSVP on Facebook, though you don’t have to RSVP to attend.
Proceeds will benefit the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
A full day educational program to mark the anniversary of the ongoing Egyptian revolution. In Egypt, the 25th of Jan this year is going to be a day of action against the continuity of military rule and the atrocities committed by the coup regime.
The program will start from 3 pm and will be all night long until the last person leaves, so you’re welcome to stop by any time!
Program details:
-Film screening of rare footage highlighting different stages of the Egyptian struggle.
– Skype conversations with Egyptians in Egypt and abroad to hear their perspective on the situation.
– A talk by Shimaa from Tahrir Square, an eyewitness to the Egyptian movement who’s currently in Oakland, CA.
– An open forum and a Q/A session on the state of affairs in Egypt since 2011 and up to date.
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
RETURNS
TO UC BERKELEY
ON THE MARIO SAVIO STEPS
JOIN US
Tweeted out by @OccupyUCBerk
Come hang out with the coolest people around: The Berkeley Post Office Defenders. We’ll be continuing to gather signatures to Save the Post Office from privatization (we already got more than 1200…), talk to people, hand out literature and maybe listen to some cool bands.
Lie down on the grass at MLK park, get yourself a bite to eat at the Farmer’s Market, and make your day complete with a visit next door at All of Our’s Post Office.
Meet at the parking lot area first bench and “keyhole area” to rebuild the Albany bulb library which was mysteriously burned down recently.
The Bulb community and supporters will rebuild the Albany Bulb library 1pm to 3pm.
At 4pm we’ll have a pot luck and fire
More info on this issue sharethebulb.org
WMDs in Syria and Iran today, and formerly in Iraq, have been pretexts for U.S. military intervention, not the motivation for intervention. Uranium enrichment has thresholds that play into those pretexts. The seemingly implacable opposition between the U.S. versus Syria and Iran, and formerly Libya as well, is not the result of any fundamental anti-imperialism in these Middle Eastern states, but rather the U.S. policy obsession for financial and military compliance.
Were it not for this U.S. obsession, the rulers of Syria and Iran would welcome foreign investment with open arms, though with protective limits, while they obliterate opposition of the left or right. Nevertheless, U.S.-led military intervention must be unconditionally opposed, while support is given towards building a secular democratic socialist alternative in presently authoritarian states.
Dr. Sharat G. Lin writes on global political economy, the Middle East, South Asia, labor migration, and public health. He is a contributing author to the book Studies in Inequality and Social Justice. He spent two months in Tahrir Square during 2009-2012, including during the initial uprising that overthrew President Mubarak. He is a research fellow at the San José Peace and Justice Center.
Join us for the film screening of Andy Kreamer’s inlightening documentary about life at the Albany Bulb. Come out and learn more about their way of life and their struggle. Also meet activists working alongside in Solidarity with Bulb Residents and how you can get involved.
Hosted by the Marin Peace & Justice Coalition.
Potluck dinner is 6:30 PM followed at 7:30 by the screening of a portion of Jekyll Island: The Truth Behind the Federal Reserve”, directed by Bill Still. Guest speaker Laura Wells, the Green Party’s 2014 candidate for State Controller, will suggest alternatives to our present monetary system, including the option is a state-owned bank, such as the Bank of North Dakota.
More info is at: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/01/01/18748635.php
The struggle over the environment is a struggle over people’s relationship to the planet: who will determine that relationship, the 1% who want to profit from the earth or regular people?
Join a discussion of the environmental crisis, the problems with the market-based solutions pushed by politicians and business, and the potential for new popular movements.
Featuring:
Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism
Brooke Anderson, Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project*
The Public Safety Committee of the Oakland City Council will be discussing the Domain Awareness Center and a new contract for Schneider Electric to implement Phase II of the DAC (replacing SAIC, which was dismissed in part for being a Nuclear Weapons Contrator and in part for being general scum, having defrauded New York City of half a billion dollars)
Subject: Domain Awareness Center (DAC) Phase 2 Contract Award From: Oakland Fire Department Recommendation: Adopt A Resolution Authorizing The City Administrator To: 1) Negotiate And Execute A Professional Services Agreement With Schneider Electric Inc. To Provide Professional Services For Design/Build/Maintain Services Represented In Phase 2 Of The City And Port Joint Domain Awareness Center (DAC) Project For An Amount Not To Exceed $1,600,000; And 2) If Negotiations Fail With Schneider Electric Inc, The City Administrator Or Her Designee Is Authorized To Negotiate And Enter Into A Contract With Another Vendor On The DAC Phase Evaluations Ranking List, Without Returning To Council
Come tell the members of the Public Safety Committee what you think of the Orwellian dystopia that is the DAC!
Come pack the City Council meeting to continue pressuring our elected officials to Do The Right Thing.
Rezoning the Historic District around MLK park would make commercial use of five or six of Berkeley’s historic buildings, including the Post Office, illegal.
Rally: Beginning at 6:30 PM, possibly with the Light Brigade!
City Council Meeting: 7:00 PM
Expected time of beginning of consideration of Zoning Overlay: between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM.
Spaghetti Dinner for the 99% – dinner and program
Our Liberties, Our Voices, Our Lives! featuring
– JERRY MANDER, author and activist speaking on”Can Capitalism Be Reformed to Work for Democracy and Nature?”
– WILL DURST, political satirist
– KAREN MELANDER MAGOON & DEE ALLEN, Revolutionary Poets Brigade
– Local activists will be honored for their work for Peace and Protecting the Rights of People and the Earth
TAKE BACK YOUR POWER: Investigating the Smart Grid
This week there will be two Bay Area screenings of the award-winning documentary, Take Back Your Power. Researchers, energy experts, doctors, environmentalists, and community members share their insights into the problems with ‘Smart’ meters and the ‘Smart’ grid, including damage to health, fires, invasion of privacy, and NO promised energy savings. There will be extensive discussion after the San Rafael screening. To learn more about this film, please go to http://www.takebackyourpower.net.
Prolonged Solitary Confinement and the
Constitution
Brown Bag Presentation by
Jules Lobel, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh
California currently holds several thousand prisoners in solitary confinement in what are known as Special Housing Units (SHU’s) throughout the state. Over 1000 of those prisoners confined in isolation at housed at Pelican Bay State Penitentiary SHU. These prisoners live in 80 square foot windowless cells. Their cells have solid steel doors perforated with small holes with permit some air to circulate and an extremely limited view into the hallway. The prisoners remain in their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day. They only leave their cells to shower, or for exercise in a somewhat larger cell that does get fresh air and very limited sunlight. They never see birds, trees, grass, and only rarely see other people. They receive no phone calls and can make no phone calls to the outside world. They have virtually no programming.
About 500 of these prisoners have been in solitary in these conditions for over a decade. Almost one hundred of them have lived in these conditions for over 20 years. Several years after Pelican Bay was opened, a class action lawsuit challenging solitary confinement as practiced at Pelican Bay was tried in federal court. The Federal District Court Judge refused to enjoin the State’s use of solitary confinement generally, but did hold that mentally ill prisoners, or those at risk for serious mental illness could not be placed there. Professor Lobel is lead counsel in a lawsuit that again – 20 years later- challenges California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement at Pelican Bay.
This talk raises questions of how we define the “cruel and unusual” punishment prohibited by the Constitution. Is solitary confinement cruel for constitutional and moral purposes only if it can be shown that the prisoner is either seriously mentally ill or will become mentally ill? What is the relationship between mental and physical pain imposed on prisoners for purposes of the Eighth Amendment? What makes a practice cruel – should it require a showing of serious mental or physical harm at all? What are “unusual” practices – are practices that we might recognize as cruel but are nonetheless widespread such as solitary confinement – unconstitutional? Should our society accept prolonged solitary confinement as a means to make prisons less violent?
Please RSVP to emui@law.berkeley.edu. Subject: RSVP – Jules Lobel Presentation.
Sponsored by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ewi.htm
—
Elaine T. Mui
Center Administrator
Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy
(formerly Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity)
Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice
University of California, Berkeley
School of Law
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
More information to come…
International Day of Action.
� Meet at Pelosi’s office at 7th and Market 4:30 pm to speak, hear, hand out flyers, etc.
� March down Market Street to Feinstein’s office at Montgomery and Market (McKessen Building)
� Call-and-response chanting, massive phone-call-ins from the street to Feinstein, Pelosi, etc.
and much more!
� Bring signs.
Meanwhile, call Feinstein and Pelosi to stop Fast tracking of the TPP.
Feinstein: (415) 393 – 0707
Pelosi: (415) 556 – 4862
Call NOW!
3:30PM Petition Drive to Restore Parking 50 parking places at the Bulb
430 PM Sunset Hike
3:30 PM: Drop by a table at the Albany Bulb parking lot to encourage people to demand that the city of Albany restore Parking at the BULB so the working class and their dogs and children can enjoy our park. Recently the City has put up NO PARKING signs along the north side of Buchanan Street, eliminating about 50 parking spaces frequently used by visitors to the Bulb. There is no good environmental or health & safety reason that this action has been taken, that road is very lightly trafficked, so there is no case for making it two lanes (going west only). The City is trying to reduce usage of the Bulb and isolate the residents from the community. At this point all the parking spots for the Bulb in the small lot near the porta-potty are filled all weekend long, causing recreational would-be users to drive around in circles, wasting gasoline waiting for a spot to become free, and blocking disappointed users from giving up and driving away to find another place to walk. The only parking alternative is to drive across the bridge over the freeway and fill up spots in the surrounding residential neighborhoods and walk back about a half mile crossing the railroad tracks through a hole in the fence to return to the Bulb. The City and the Sierra Club and other bourgeois groups have been arguing that the residents need to be evicted from the Bulb and the art must be destroyed in order make the area accessible to all community members, but this action dramatically restricting the heavy citizen use of the Bulb gives lie to that rationale. In fact, last Sunday there was an Albany police cruiser patrolling the parking for long periods, as well a a Albany fire truck traversing the dirt roads, apparently aimed at discouraging people from using the Bulb. What seems to scare the City and Sierra Club is exactly the popularity of the Bulb with visitors AS IT IS, uniquely unencumbered by numbing bureaucratic restrictions on artistic expression, camping or recreation, such as walking your dog OFF LEASH. There is to my knowledge no other place on the Bay where you can throw a stick for your dog into the water or create art from washed up debris. We stopped the City Of Oakland from extending parking meter hours a few years back. Recently this December 500 signatures and hundreds of Active Water Gate Residents forced the Emeryville Go Round bus Company to restore the Watergate Bus Stop. We can make the authorities respond to our demands here, as well. 500,OOO DOLLARS has been SPENT TO DESTROY the BULB. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO STOP THIS TIME UNLESS WE HAVE A MASS MOVEMENT. Call or email Orion to volunteer to collect signatures at other times at: ohohorion99@gmail.com (510) 541-3835 For more info on the Bulb see sharethebulb.org
At 4:30 or so after collecting signatures there wil be an Art Walk around the Bulb. This walk was inspired by a burning man funeral that took place at the Albany Bulb January 11th, over 100 people honered their comrade with a Norse-style boat burning and fire works ceremony. It was very moving.
IT COULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IF WE HAD LET THEM DESTROY OUR SPACE OCT. 1st 2012 EVICTION. WE HAVE WON SO FAR.
But many of you haven’t see the BULB I have seen. Please visit by yourself…or join my sunset walk on Sunday, Feb. 2. Heavy rain cancels.
DETAILS
Meet at the parking lot at 1 Buchanan Street Extension, Albany 4:30 pm Bring water. snacks, drinks, & flashlights.Visit the wonderful chair/throne built years ago and still there and inscribed “from me to you” and watch sunset from beach then take a 15 min walk to Osha Neuman’s “Crying Women Sculpture.” There we will share stories of the Bulb, future, present and past, & maybe music. Then go to Mad Mike’s Castle & look through the port hole and see the Golden Gate Bridge framed perfectly in the window. And come back on the Water Trail which has 100s of flag stones and finish at the MOSAIC HEART. The trip should be about 2 hrs. We plan to have minimum disturbance to our friends the residents.
Call me or email me or just show up. To get a preview of art go to:
Google ‘image search’ albany bulb
Orion (510) 541-3835
Check out some of Orion’s songs here:
Interview with Orion on KPFA News about new parking restrictions
GG speaking before Albany Shitty Council on homelessness and the Bulb