Calendar
“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society… And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
It turned out to be Baltimore. The police murder of Black, brown and poor people has not stopped despite the Black Lives Matter movement–if anything, instead it has accelerated. An escalation of resistance was due, and now it has begun. Oakland has its own contribution to make to the struggle. Join us in discussing the way forward.
After a period of public comment, the Oakland Public Safety Committee will again take up recommendations from the ad hoc Committee on the Domain Awareness Center Privacy Policy.
— a strong privacy policy in place for the DAC.
— creation of a privacy policy for the City of Oakland
— a surveillance equipment acquisition ordinance, demanding open and transparent processes before acquiring such devices.
The Oakland Privacy Working Group asks you to come and stand and speak in support of these proposals, which will make Oakland a model for privacy across the nation.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers. We meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month.
Our work together encompasses:
- (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent and care workers;
- (2) current 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.
We look forward to learning with you and making change for the better. Please love and support one another. We have a duty to fight. We have a duty to win.
Join us for tabling, flyering, and door-knocking Wednesday May 13 @ 5 p.m. and Saturday May 16 @ noon. Both @ Ashby BART station. #15Now
— 15 Now Berkeley (@15NowBerkeley) May 11, 2015
Join us on May 13th, as the Boycott Sprouts campaign brings the ruckus to Sprouts in Daly City! Let’s make sure they get the message that we don’t want them building a big box Supermarket on OUR public farmland in Albany, CA.
Meet up to coordinate rides and logistics at 5:45 at 3090 King Street in Berkeley, please be on time so we can depart at 6:00 pm!
Commemorate the 30th anniversary of the horrific police bombing of the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia, by coming out to see the new film, ‘Let the Fire Burn.’ The film tells the story of the police attack on the group’s office which burned an entire neighborhood. The bombing was the culmination of an ongoing campaign against the radical Black ecological group.
This event is part of a build up to the ‘No More Locked Doors’ Conference at Qilombo in Oakland on Saturday, May 16th.
“Faith Against Fracking” is an inspirational documentary exploring the intersection of various California communities and expressing our collective responsibility to move the planet off of toxic fossil fuels and onto a truly clean energy economy. Clergy from various faith traditions call on Governor Brown, as a person of faith himself, to ban deleterious extraction practices. Throughout the film, the faith leaders expound on a number of different spiritual themes that hold true across faith traditions, including protecting creation and honoring the Golden Rule.
Download flyer (PDF)
Iceland bailed out its citizens and jailed the bankers. Now they are thinking of a new system for their monetary policy. Join us for a discussion about Iceland, this proposal, and their recovery from their financial collapse.
Reading:
The Politics of Debt Reading Group is affiliated with the Bay Area Public School and Strike Debt Bay Area.
Phil Tagami, developer of the new Global Logistics Center at the former Oakland Army Base in West Oakland, promised in 2013 that “CCIG is publicly on record as having no interest or involvement in the pursuit of coal-related operations at the former Oakland Army Base.”
Now, in 2015, Tagami is poised to allow four Utah Counties to use public money to invest $53 million to turn the new Oakland port project into a massive coal export terminal. If allowed to move forward, millions of tons of dirty, toxic, climate-killing coal will roll through West Oakland on mile long trains, creating toxic pollution in a community already overburdened by heavy industry.
Tagami hopes to close the deal with Utah by June – so NOW is the time to act! Join us to demand that Tagami keep his promise and say NO to coal in Oakland!
This action is being organized by Diablo Rising Tide (DiRT) in collaboration with many allies.
On May 14, just six days before the current contract expires, postal workers across the country will hold events organized around the theme, “I Stand with Postal Workers.” Join us!
With the union’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with the U.S. Postal Service set to expire in less than a month, APWU negotiators and union members are turning up the heat. Postal workers are demanding Good Postal Service! Good Jobs! Good Contract! As negotiations draw to a close, postal workers need a strong demonstration of support.
CSU East Bay Department of Communication and the Graduate Communication Society Presents:
#BlackLivesMatter: Civil Rights Social Justice in the 21st Century
Featuring: Dr. Andreana Clay, Families Seeking Justice panel, three student panels, and a hosted reception.
The Graduate Communication Society at CSU East Bay hosts a graduate student conference surrounding themes related to social justice issues in a 21st Century context. Featuring keynote speaker Dr. Andreana Clay, Associate Professor at San Francisco State University, Her book, The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth Activism and Post-Civil Rights Politics (NYU Press, 2012) explores how youth of color organize and identify as activists in the post civil rights era. Her articles on hip-hop culture, queer sexuality, youth activism, and hip-hop feminism have appeared in several anthologies and academic journals, including Home Girls Make Some Noise!: A Hip-Hop Feminist Anthology, the American Behavioral Scientist, and Meridians: A Journal of Race, Feminism, and Transnationalism. Read her blog, QueerBlackFeminist, at queerblackfeminist.blogspot.com.
Also presenting is the panel Families Seekig Justice with 2015 Gene Young Award Recipient and Oscar Grant’s uncle, Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson; mother of Alan Blueford, Jeralynn Blueford; mother of James Rivera, Dionne Smith Downs; and Angela Naggie, mother of O’Shaine Evans. Families Seeking Justice panel will be moderated by Cat Brooks, co-chair of the Onyx Organizing Committee.
There will be three student panels discussing research on topics related to the following broad themes:
Online activism
Identity and race in the 21st Century
Feminism and gender activism in the hashtag era
Schedule
Noon-12:30 — Check-in
12:30-3:30pm — Student panels
4-5pm — Families Seeking Justice
5-6pm — Keynote speaker Dr. Adreana Clay
6-7pm — Reception
Check back for more info at the conference web site: http://commgscon.blogspot.com
Bay Area comics perform STAND UP! Comedy: Featuring Natasha Muse, with Veronica Porras, Lalique D’Bruzzi and Emily Van Dyke. Natasha Muse is a performer and writer of comedy in the Bay Area. She is also a skeptic, an agnostic, and at least the second funniest trans-sexual you know––guaranteed. Come to the emerging and energizing OMNI COMMONS and laugh with us while you support autonomous education for indigenous Zapatista children.
No More Locked Doors- a conference on political prisoners and revolutionary prisoner support- May16 Oakland pic.twitter.com/RDmWWQbcYQ
— Alyssa (@alyssa011968) April 11, 2015
Join us for tabling, flyering, and door-knocking Wednesday May 13 @ 5 p.m. and Saturday May 16 @ noon. Both @ Ashby BART station. #15Now
— 15 Now Berkeley (@15NowBerkeley) May 11, 2015
No to the War on Yemen!
No to Foreign Intervention!
Yes to self determination of the Yemeni people!
Stop the Saudi bombing!
#HandsOffYemen
UN Plaza
Saturday, May 16th
12pm
- student debt resistance
- organizing for public banking.
- advocating for Postal banking.
- 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
- our next Debtors’ Assembly
- saving the Berkeley Post Office and stopping the Staples non-union takeover of good Post Office jobs
- 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.
PF Publishing invites you to celebrate T. Thorn Coyle’s first novel, dedicated to Alan Blueford, and to all victims of police violence.
Like Water:
a story of love and sudden violence.
a story of a ghost and a city.
a story for our times.
Welcome to the streets of Oakland, CA.
Meet Alex and Jonah.
Best friends since childhood: one poet, one professor, one black, one white. One dead–killed by police with a Taser to the heart–and one bereft, trying to figure out how to go on living…and how to find justice.
“One day he was laughing on a bright summer sidewalk. What seemed liked seconds later, he was gone.”
Come out Saturday, 5/16 at Legionnaire for our 2nd Left Bass Dance Party! Last month, the club was packed by 10pm, the party went OFF, and we raised over $1,800 for BlackOUT Collective. Let’s do it in May for APTP!
LEFT BASS is an Oakland Dance Party for all us activists, organizers, artists, and just plain MOVEMENT FOLKS to shake a tail feather together and continue to support local organizing.
Get down with “Feminist/Panther/Hip-Hop Heroine” Coco Peila, featured DJs Camilo (Queer Qumbia) and Xander (Mondial Afrique) and resident DJs Baagi and T. Rockwell.
This month’s party will benefit the Anti Police-Terror Project (https://www.facebook.com/
Idle No More SF Bay and citizens from front-line refinery communities invite you to attend the second of four walks. The Walk will begin near the Martinez Shoreline Park at the end of Ferry Street in Martinez, and will end at the 9th Street Park in the City of Benicia.
8:00 a.m. Water Ceremony & Registration
9:30 a.m. Walk Begins
This walk is approximately 9.5 miles from beginning to end. There will be vehicles available for people who wish to take breaks during the walk. Medics will also be available. Water will be provided but you should plan to bring your own water in reusable containers.
There are several places along the walk where folks can join the walk – please see the details of the route. For more information and a map of the route, please visit the Healing Walk web site.
Malcolm X and Black Liberation
In honor of the 90th birthday of Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), we have invited Gerald Smith, of the Oscar Grant Committee, to speak on the life and death of Malcolm X and his continuing relevance for the Black Liberation struggle.