Calendar
Bring secret government surveillance out of the shadows. Tell the Berkeley City Council to vote yes!
You can take action today to protect our diverse Bay Area community from unaccountable police surveillance. The Berkeley City Council is currently considering a crucial surveillance technology ordinance that would ensure transparency, accountability, and oversight of these technologies. Tell them to vote YES.
This ordinance comes at a crucial time. Right now, ICE is trying to access local databases as it escalates attacks on Bay Area neighborhoods.
With your help, Berkeley could be the first city in the Bay Area to adopt an ordinance that requires transparency for surveillance technologies. The people of Berkeley have the right to reject dangerous surveillance technologies before local law enforcement agencies can acquire them.
Law enforcement shouldn’t be able to acquire surveillance technology in secret, yet it happens every day. Our local elected leaders must be empowered to intervene.
The Berkeley City Council will be voting very soon on this ordinance. Similar legislation is under consideration by city councils in Oakland and Davis. The Bay Area is part of a nationwide movement to fight secret and discriminatory surveillance. Take action now to stand for community control of police surveillance.
On March 13 Berkeley is poised to become the first California city to follow in Santa Clara County’s footsteps and adopt a comprehensive surveillance transparency framework. Surveillance Equipment Regulation Ordinances (SERO) mandate use policies for all spying equipment and audits of how the equipment was used. They get rid of secret surveillance and let the community know what is happening.
Berkeley’s ordinance has been in development since July of 2016. It is time to make it law. Come out to show your support and mark this historic occasion. There is an alternative proposal on the agenda which waters down real transparency. We need you to defeat it and pass the real thing.The meeting starts at 6pm. We expect the item to come up in the 7-8pm range.The meeting could go quite late. Light Brigade at sunset outside the Berkeley Council Chambers.
Berkeley Can Become A City of Refuge
by Sameena Usman and Brian Hofer
The Time For Surveillance Transparency is Now
by Tracy Rosenberg
This message was brought to you by the folks at Oakland Privacy. Oakland Privacy has been fighting for transparency in law enforcement surveillance operations since 2013.
The Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission, the first municipal citizens privacy commission in the country, was built out of Oakland’s resistance to the Domain Awareness Center.
You may be interested in checking out the Oakland Privacy website, which has information about our other projects fighting against the surveillance state.
On Wednesday, March 14th, 2018 will be the one of anniversary of Elena “Ebbie” Mondragón, who was killed by two Fremont cops; Sgt. Jeremy Miskella & Det. Joel Hernandez in an undercover operation.
Please join us as we remember Elena “Ebbie”, an not let her name just go in vain or be forgotten, by from the violence of the police.
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On Tuesday, March 14th, 2017 Elena “Ebbie” Mondragon was 16 years old and pregnant, when two Fremont Undercover Police officers; Sgt. Jeremy Miskella & Det. Joel Hernandez where on an undercover sting operation.
Elena was with three of her friends at a apartment complex, near Cal State East Bay in Hayward, when Sgt. Jeremy Miskella & Det. Joel Hernandez shot at the moving car, as the driver was backing out to leave the apartment complex, saying he was ” accelerating towards the police car” and that the officers “feared for their lives”.
Sgt. Jeremy Miskella & Det. Joel Hernandez ended up shoting 7 bullets at the car, missing the driver while 5 of the bullets hit Elena, killing her.
Sgt. Jeremy Miskella is now the Board of Directors President for the Fremont Police Association and Det. Joel Hernandez is still a detective for the Fremont Police Department.
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Want to endorse this vigil?
Feel out this google form: https://goo.gl/forms/
Endorsements:
– Anti Terror Police Project
– Idriss Stelley Foundation
– Justice For Josiah
– National Brown Berets
– Prisoners Reentry Program
– Resistance SF
– South Beach District 6 Democratic Club Of San Francisco
– Together We Stand
– Youth Leadership Council LGBT center SF
Join UCLA Professor of History Kelly Lytle Hernandez for a discussion about her upcoming book: City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965. The event will feature a conversation about the Ella Baker Center’s current work led by Eric Henderson, Policy Associate.
This event is being hosted by the UC Berkeley Center for Research on Social Change.
El Cerrito Shows Up#Enough #ICEoutofCA
Please join us today & every Wednesday 6 – 7 PM
West entrance El Cerrito Plaza nr Daiso, San Pablo Ave & Carlson.ECSU rallies weekly to speak out in favor of equality and justice. #NoHatehttps://t.co/Wotbz2eRWM pic.twitter.com/E88ORoKhhq
— IndivisibleELCERRITO (@ECindivisible) March 14, 2018
Please join us from 6 to 7 PM at the west entrance to El Cerrito Plaza, intersection of San Pablo Ave & Carlson Ave. We’ll meet on the side nearest to Daiso.
The ECSU goals are to create a significant community presence to speak out in favor of equality, justice, inclusiveness and more. We say NO to hatred, racism, white supremacy and nationalism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism.
You can bring your own sign with your own words expressing what you stand for and against. Use BIG lettering so people in cars can see! We’ll also have some sign-making materials.
We’re from the El Cerrito area. Our Show Up location is at the borders of El Cerrito, Richmond and Albany — all are welcome!
We will assemble lawfully, and won’t block the sidewalk. All locations we select will be wheelchair-accessible. To participate you must commit to non-violent and respectful conduct. Family-friendly.
Come by our open Orientations every First and Third Thursday of the month at 6pm! We’ll introduce you to the variety of ways you can get involved at the Omni, whether through joining a working group or a collective—or starting one of your one. Write our Communications Working Group with questions: comms@omnicommons.org
Come by our open Delegates Meetings every First and Third Thursday of the month at 7pm! We’ll give space to brief announcements, updates from working groups, proposals up for consensus, and discussion around important issues. The schedule is created weekly at the following url: https://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom
Activists in Berkeley calling for emergency protest today in response to reported ICE arrests. pic.twitter.com/QWwBAhYAhY
— Scott Morris (@OakMorr) March 16, 2018
Uncolonized is a short documentary film about a native family who decided never to enroll their two daughters into the public school system, choosing instead to homeschool them from birth. Chris is Potawatomi and Chasity is Navajo. Their daughters Nathaney and Mimicah, ages 11 and 7 at the time of filming, carry both of their parents’ lineages in the their blood, but also in their way of being.
The film takes a critical look at the historical experiences of native children inside of the US public education system, and brings clarity to the decision of this family to keep their daughters out of the public school system, and therefore keep them UNCOLONIZED.
https://www.facebook.com/events/3557968982…
REGISTER HERE: bit.ly/baypower (it’s FREE!)
2018 is going to be a big year. Let’s get ready to win big for our communities!
Join us to build power together in our second annual mass training on March 17th. Trainings will include how to build a sanctuary neighborhood, participate in direct action, win electoral campaigns, and get started in organizing. We have new trainings, a new campaign section, and caucus time including for youth, labor folks, and seniors and people with disabilities. Whether you’re a new or experienced activist, join us to skill up and find out how to plug in!
Childcare and lunch provided; please register at bit.ly/baypower. Space is ADA accessible; more accessibility details upon registration.
We will have silk-screening, so bring a shirt to print on!
Schedule:
10:00 – 11:15 Opening program
11:30 – 1:00 Skills trainings
1:00 – 1:30 Lunch provided
1:30 – 2:30 Campaigns and caucuses
Join your fellow Bay Area activists to build a strong community of resistance and justice – to build power for 2018!
East Bay DSA hosted its first ever Medicare-for-All strategy meeting in February, where we generated ideas for tactics to expand our healthcare campaign. Now we’re hosting a follow up meeting to continue developing these ideas into actionable plans that can make us an even stronger force in the struggle to decommodify healthcare!
Please join us on March 17 to keep the momentum going as we develop specific tactical plans around four areas of interest that emerged at the first meeting.
- Labor Outreach (e.g. presenting at union meetings, joint town halls)
- Media Development (e.g. YouTube channel, Facebook, informational socialist reporting)
- Direct Action (e.g. against debt collection agencies, putting pressure on capitalists and politicians in their neighborhoods)
- Direct Community Services (e.g. Medicaid enrollment, volunteer at free clinics)
During the meeting, we’ll spend ample time in small groups devoted to each of these interest areas and then reconvene for a large group discussion and debate on them. Please be sure to fill out the RSVP to indicate what strategies you’re most interested in discussing! All are welcome, whether or not you were there in February. We’re so excited to continue developing these ideas with you on March 17!
The venue is wheelchair accessible, and you can contact Matt with any accessibility questions.
The South Berkeley canvass team cordially invites you to a friendly neighborhood potluck. After The Big Canvass on March 10, get together with your comrades for some tasty treats and socialist cheer.
All are welcome! It’s a potluck, so bring something tasty to eat or drink!
Join the campaign for effective police oversight this weekend!
WHAT: Fan out across Berkeley to gather signatures to put police oversight on the local November ballot!
All out for a fun day! We’ll supply the petitions and will orient you on how to get the most signatures possible. You just bring your walking shoes.
We’ll be going out to talk to Berkeley voters for the next eight weekends. Please reply to this email, or call 510.517-8379, to let us know you can join us Saturday at noon.
Outreach Committee
P.S. You may find today’s Daily Cal article on racial disparities in Berkeley policing helpful as you think about how to talk about why we need real oversight for the BPD.
Berkeley Community United for Police Oversight
P.O. Box 9312, Berkeley, CA 94709
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.
- Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions
- Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
- money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
- Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
- Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
- Promoting the concept of Basic Income
- Advocating for Postal banking
- Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, 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.
he Watsonville Canning Strike – Lessons for Us All
A presentation by Peter Shapiro, labor activist and author of the book “Song of the Stubborn One Thousand.” Followed by a discussion.
Thirty years ago, Watsonville, California was the “frozen food capital of the world.” In September 1985, 1000 mostly Mexican women workers at the town’s largest plant were forced out on strike when the owner tried to bust their union. Few, if any, of the women had any strike experience. Their local union was barely functioning. But they organized themselves, held out for 18 months, forced the plant owner into bankruptcy, and won a contract from the new owner after a five day wildcat strike.
Before we even start, let’s remember Marx’s warning to “those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.” Our discussion will get as for into Chapter One as possible. We will read, paragraph by paragraph from the Penguin edition (translated by Ben Fowkes, 1976).)
Seating is limited, so plan to come early. We start promptly.
FREE – but hat will be passed for donations to NPML
About Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
A weekly discussion series inspired by our respect for the work of Karl Marx and our belief that his work will remain as important for the class struggles of the future as they have been for the past.
For our full schedule, go to icssmarx.org
NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:
occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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 for some reason the amphitheater is being used otherwise and/or OGP itself is inaccessible, we will meet at Kaiser Park, right next to the statues, on 19th St. between San Pablo and Telegraph. 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. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)
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 six years, since October 2011! 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
Worshiping Power: An Anarchist Vision of Early State Formation
Where do states come from, what causes them to arise, and how do they develop? The old dogmas that the State protects and uplifts humanity, or even that it is a necessary evil, have been thoroughly discredited. But many newer theories, that explain state formation within a single optic, or that suggest a single cause, or a linear, progressive evolution, also fall short.
This new book traces multiple pathways of state formation, describing patterns that arise within many different societies with different models of the family, religion, warfare, commerce, and economic production. Rather than being ancient history, state formation is a continuous process, given that perhaps the only feature universal to state formation is the resistance it provokes. As a result, states are continually falling apart, being overthrown, or struggling to maintain their power.
People who fight today against the problems of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, anyone who seeks to regain control over their lives, becomes wrapped up in this process as they run up against state authority.
Articulating the ongoing history of state formation—from divine states centered around new sites of spiritual production to democratic states arising from corrupted revolutions—allows us to better understand the ways states today attempt to govern, limit, or repress our movements today.
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist from Virginia who currently lives in Catalunya. He is the author of How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Nonviolence, “An Anarchist Solution to Climate Change,” “A World Without Police,” and other works.