Calendar
Donald Trump is coming to the Bay Area – let’s show him a real Bay Area welcome by protesting outside.
Starting in April, Berkeley Copwatch is kicking off our ongoing *weekly* copwatching shifts! We’ll be out in the streets most Fridays and Saturdays witnessing and documenting police activity and doing outreach. Please join us!
No experience required — any experience welcome. We’ll train you in the essentials for documenting police activity and staying safe in the process.
If you are able to bring a car and be a shift driver, that would be GREAT! Please let us know in the “discussion” section or by sending Berkeley Copwatch a message.
APRIL COPWATCH DATES AND TIMES
(Check this page for updates)
Friday 4/1 – 8pm
Saturday 4/2 – 8pm
Friday 4/8 – 8pm
Sat 4/9 – 8pm
Friday 4/15 – 8pm
Saturday 4/16 – 8pm
Friday 4/22 – 8pm
Saturday 4/23 – 8pm
Friday 4/29 – 8pm
Saturday 4/30 – 8pm
ABOUT OUR MASS COPWATCH SHIFTS
Since October 2015, Berkeley Copwatch has been holding “mass copwatch” events. 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.
Bay Area – this Saturday 12-3PM #HungerForJusticeSF RALLY – @mayoredlee @jasiri_x @OccupyOakland @ajplus @cnnbrk pic.twitter.com/wA0O1b7Rac
— Raw-G (Gina Madrid) (@RawwG) April 29, 2016
- organizing for public banking
- advocating for Postal banking
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- student debt resistance
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contract
- Presenting debt-related topics at forums and workshops
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early and meet one or two of us before the formal meeting starts, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com .
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.
The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. On every last Sunday we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.
OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over four years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally . Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.
At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.
General Assembly Standard Agenda
- Welcome & Introductions
- Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
- Announcements
- (Optional) Discussion Topic
Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.
Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area
San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv
The Community Democracy Project is your connection to direct democracy in Oakland! Convened out of Occupy Oakland in Fall 2011, we’re gathering steam on a campaign to bring the people back in touch with the city’s resources through participatory budgeting.
Picture this: Across Oakland, Neighborhood Assemblies are regularly
held in every community. People come together to tackle the important issues of their neighborhoods and of the city. At these assemblies, people don’t just have discussions–they learn from one another, from city staff, and they make fundamental decisions about how the city should run. They decide the city budget.
Democratic, community budgeting is a powerful step toward building strong communities, real democracy, and economic justice–and it’s being done all over the world.
The budget of the City Oakland totals more than $1 billion per year. Although part of the budget must be used for specific purposes, still over half of the budget–over $500 billion per year–consists of general purpose funds paid by the taxes, fees, and fines of the people of Oakland. The Mayor and the City Council decide the city budget, with minimal input from the community.
Working together, we will not only get a seat at the table–we will REBUILD the table itself. Participatory democracy is real democracy–join us to say: Local People, Local Resources, Local Power!
San Francisco’s Police Chief Greg Suhr has blood on his hands. Specifically, the blood of Mario Woods, Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez-Lopez, Kenneth Harding, and a whole host of others who his officers have gunned down. Every time SFPD murders Black, Brown, and poor people you can count on Chief Suhr lying to the community and creating a false narrative of officers fearing for their lives.
The Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition demands the immediate firing or resignation of Chief Suhr. With the hunger strikers putting their lives on the line for this demand, Chief Suhr should have been fired yesterday. There will be no peace and definitely no business as usual until our demand is met. Join us in a march and press conference on Tuesday May 3rd, before Suhr is scheduled to participate in a “police accountability forum” and demand #FireChiefSuhr!
We are meeting at 5pm near Divisadero and Geary at Raymond Kimbell Playground and then marching at 5:30 over to the “police accountability forum” at 2266 California Street for a 6pm press conference, demanding#FireChiefSuhr
Join the Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the surveillance state, against Urban Shield, and to advocate for privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, especially by Alameda County and by 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, requirements for “backdoors” to your cellphone 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; its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC, and made Oakland’s Advisory Privacy Committee to the City Council happen. 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).
We have presented our work at the recent RightsCon in San Francisco and will be doing so at Left Forum in New York City.
Stop by and learn how you can help guard our 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
Join the Alameda Jail Fight Coalition in a community forum to build grassroots community power against Alameda County’s $54 million Santa Rita jail construction project to prioritize mental health diversion and community-based solutions.
We will provide an overview of what’s currently happening with the fight, learn from organizers who defeated San Francisco’s new jail, and then we will split into three breakout groups to develop three main strategies:
– Base-building
– Media
– Legislative
Group discussions will be facilitated by community members of the Alameda Jail Fight Coalition and the meeting will be run democratically and non-hierarchically so every voice is heard. We encourage everyone who has a story to share or who is simply concerned with the mass injustices taking place in our community to attend.
Accessibility information: The First Unitarian Church is wheelchair accessible, with wheelchair gender-neutral restrooms. It’s located close to the 12th St. City Center BART station. Free childcare and dinner will be provided. This will be a fragrance-free event. Please refrain from wearing scents such as perfumes/colognes, scented lotions, clothing with strong detergent scents, etc.
If you have any questions or need Spanish interpretation, please contact our local advocate, Tash Nguyen: tash@ellabakercenter.org or 408-499-7912.
*****ATTENTION******
Hunger for Justice SF
Community meeting
Today at UCSF 2pm
400 Parnassus St
UN cafeteria on 2nd Flr#Frisco5 #Frisco500— LolaLolaLola (@Lola_Casanova) May 7, 2016
Focus on Education & Environmental Justice
To join the RPA now, follow this link to the membership form. Print and complete the form and mail it in with a check for your dues, which start at $12/yr. Or, to avoid printing and snail-mailing, you can:
- send an email to info@richmondprogressivealliance.net with the information requested on the form &</span>
- go to the RPA web page & press the “Donate” button in the left column and make a payment for dues. Any additional contribution helps us keep dues more affordable for those with low income and is welcomed.
- organizing for public banking
- advocating for Postal banking
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- student debt resistance
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contract
- Presenting debt-related topics at forums and workshops
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early and meet one or two of us before the formal meeting starts, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com .
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.
The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. On every last Sunday we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.
OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over four years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally . Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.
At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.
General Assembly Standard Agenda
- Welcome & Introductions
- Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
- Announcements
- (Optional) Discussion Topic
Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.
Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area
San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv
With all your love, share and share far and wide:
General Strike, San Francisco, Monday, May 9, 2016
We, the people, invite you to join us for an unprecedented historical moment: a general strike of San Francisco this Monday, May 9, 2016. In honor of the Frisco Five Hunger Strikers and against SFPD killings of our brothers, we urge you to strike from work and school and to boycott any corporate restaurant eating and purchasing.
The time is ripe, and your action is needed now. Because of the Mayor’s unwillingness to fire corrupt police chief Suhr, the Frisco Five have been forced to prolong their hunger strike and have now all been hospitalized. It is time for all of us to action with honor, courage, and sacrifice for those who no longer have a voice, like Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez Lopez, Mario Woods, and Luis Gongora Pat, all unlawfully killed by SFPD.
Instead of going to work or school, join us to peacefully picket in front of San Francisco City Hall starting at 8:00 a.m. Striking for a righteous cause is nothing new. Gandhi led the Swadeshi movement for Indian self-sufficiency. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott against segregation. For farmworkers’ rights, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers held strikes against grapes and Safeway stores. Striking is a successful strategy that all of us can contribute to for the sake of justice.
Wear red and black in honor of our fallen brother Alex Nieto. With all your love, share and share far and wide.
APTP supports the General Strike
Turn up for the general strike at San Francisco City Hall. Called by and in honor of the #Frisco5 Hunger Strikers and against #SFPD killings of our black brown folk/gente, we support the following requests for the strike:
- Strike from work and school
- Boycott any corporate restaurant eating and purchasing
- Wear red and black in honor of our fallen brother Alex Nieto
The time is ripe, and your action is needed now. Because of the Mayor’s unwillingness to fire corrupt police #ChiefSuhr, the #Frisco5 had prolonged their hunger strike even while hospitalized. Now it is time for all of us to take action with courage and sacrifice for those who no longer have a voice, like Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez Lopez, Mario Woods, and Luis Gongora Pat, all unlawfully killed by SFPD.
Join us to peacefully picket in front of San Francisco City Hall. Strike as those before us have done for justice for all of our families and communities. Strike as those before us have done, strategically at key moments to bring the momentum of the movement to a heightened unity, solidarity, and push forward – as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott against segregation; as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers held strikes against grapes and Safeway stores. We will win! ¡Venceremos!
You are the #Frisco500! We are the #Frisco500!
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.
This might turn out to be our last meeting EVER due to recent developments.
Please make attending a priority.
Agenda:
1. Council process for placing our measure on the ballot and OPOA/City
Attorney push back
2. Signature gathering
3. Coalition effectiveness: how are we doing? What needs to change moving
forward? Can we unite with the Black Lives Matters folks to mobilize large
numbers?
Join a discussion on the Sanders campaign, capitalist elections, socialism and the mass movement.
We will start by reviewing an article published in the Workers World Newspaper entitled “Two sides of the Sanders Campaign” by Fred Goldstein: http://www.workers.org/
The next general meeting of the Oakland Justice Coalition. Join us to talk politics in Oakland, endorsements, campaigns, elections, ballot initiatives, canvassing, the Renters’ crisis in Oakland and next steps.