As of right now, Biden is still planning to turn on federal student debt payments on September 1, 2022. That’s forty-eight days from now. The payment pause, if you need a reminder, is a Trump-initiated policy from March 2020, which Biden has continued to warm-up and serve to the American people. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on Biden’s big promise to cancel student debt. Here at the Debt Collective, we’re not holding our breath: we’re organizing.

That’s why we’re getting ready to go on a debt strike – withholding payments for money we never should havve had to borrow in the first place.

As prices reach record highs and wages fall to record lows, turning on student loan payments is nothing but a cruel blow to working people, struggling to make ends meet. Millions will not be able to pay, and may risk falling into default. We can’t pay – and we won’t pay. <

Debt strikes are not a joke and we don’t broach calls to go on debt strike lightly. For many people, there are safe ways to get to $0 monthly payments, therefore refusing to pay into an unjust system.

This is why we are having a DEBT STRIKE INFO SESSION on Tuesday, July 26 at 7:30PM EST to discuss options for safely striking. Whether you are strike-ready or strike-curious, join this session to know what options are on the table for you to fight back against the creditocracy.

We’re not in debt because we live beyond our means; we’re in debt because we’ve been denied the means to live.

In other words, we didn’t start the fire.

See you Tuesday.

XOXO,

The Debt Collective

We are hosting a mass call on Reproductive Justice and are excited to learn with and from organizers involved in the struggle around abortion access and beyond. We hope you'll join us on zoom on Wednesday 7/27 from 8-9:30pm EST. Register here: https://t.co/YcusL2D6OQ pic.twitter.com/TuR7ffkmp9

— DSA National Abolition Working Group (@DsaAbolition) July 13, 2022

Register here

This webinar from The Climate Center will explain how climate-smart agricultural practices can sequester significant amounts of carbon while also improving soil health, increasing water retention in the soil, and making the land more drought-resilient and productive. They’ll also talk about what investments are necessary to support farmers in changing to these practices.

Speakers:

Patricia Hickey, Managing Director at the Carbon Cycle Institute

Albert Straus,  founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery

Baani Behniwal, The Climate Center’s Natural Sequestration Initiative Manager.

While adopting these practices is essential and important, beware of suggestions that they can be financed by selling “credits’ to emitters of greenhouse gases. Such carbon market schemes do not reduce the rate of GHG emissions and serve as an excuse for polluters to continue climate destruction.

This conversation will explore how this betrayal occurred and focus on the lessons for today, especially for women, students, and indigenous people in our hemisphere.

Featuring:
Stephen Durham,
Co-author of “On the nature of the Nicaraguan State” and coordinator of Freedom Socialist Party’s work with the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment

To benefit the $100,000 Freedom Socialist Fund Drive; donations requested

Sponsored by Freedom Socialist Party
For more information, visit socialism.com, call 206-722-2453, or email SeattleFSP@socialism.com.

We are so excited to announce
"Black Future Parade" !!!

It's a Black Future Parade themed event featuring Black artists, poets, chefs and guest speakers who are coming together to put Afrofuturism into practice !

Omni Commons
4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland
Sunday July 31st 12-8 pm pic.twitter.com/2J2c6IKYnY

— Omni Commons (@omnicommons) July 18, 2022

What are the motives and likely effects of Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan? We will be looking at these questions in the light of the interlocking crises of the US empire, US capitalism and the US Democratic Party. We will start the discussion with short presentations by ICSS members Gene Ruyle and Raj Sahai and other invited speakers, including David  Ewing, Chair of the US-China Friendship Society.

LOGIN INFORMATION

Our Zoom room will be opened up as usual at 10:15 am for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc.. The program (and recording) will begin as close to 10:30 am as possible and will end at 12:30, but the Waiting Room may remain open later for informal discussion.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2591082607?pwd=WUh2TUZ5Z0tWeFdJNWcvMjY5cnNJQT09

Meeting ID: 259 108 2607
Passcode: ICSS2717rs
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Alameda County Board of Supervisors Meeting on AB 481Find the Zoom link for the Board meeting here!

The American Friends Service Committee has let us know that next week, the Board will be reviewing a military equipment use policy from Sheriff Ahern that would continue to authorize using his arsenal of military weapons for any purpose, including future pre-dawn raids on families. The sheriff’s military equipment inventory includes over 450 assault weapons, 3 armored vehicles, 162 drones, and much more. See the full toolkit from AFSC here, and make your voice heard on the issue on Tuesday!

This coming Tuesday, Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors will be voting for the first of two times on the sheriff’s draft policy on militarized equipment. Since AB 481 passed, all law enforcement agencies in California are required to list their militarized equipment (drones, robots, “less lethal” beanbag rounds, chemical weapons like flashbangs, tear gas, and pepper spray; armored vehicles, rifles). They’re also required to write policies dictating how each piece of weaponry is to be used. These policies must be approved by a governing body (a county board of supervisors, or a city council), and they must be presented at meetings where members of the public can comment.

The sheriff’s office has done all right at listing the equipment. They’ve done remarkably poorly at writing useful, restrictive policies, even though restrictive policies save lives. (To wit, they haven’t ruled out using their tank-like BearCat as a shooting platform, even though all the uses of it they enumerate in the policy are defensive. They haven’t ruled out using flashbangs when children are likely to be present. They haven’t ruled out aiming less lethal ammunition at the parts of the body where they are likeliest to cause death or permanent injury.) And in fact, they’ve used this policy implementation process to lobby for *more* militarized equipment (four pepperball launchers, to be used in Santa Rita Jail).

On Tuesday, Aug. 9, Supervisors will be voting for the first time on the policy. American Friends Service Committee has– again!– written a helpful guide to writing a comment. You can share your comment with supervisors in writing before 3 pm Monday (send it to CBS@acgov.org), you can read it aloud during the meeting, or you can do both. All public comment at Tuesday’s meeting will come at the beginning, 9:30 am.

Zoom link for the meeting: Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting

Know your rights! Learn tips for documenting police in protest situations. Join us Wednesday, August 10 at 6:30pm to learn your rights in police interactions, strategies for documenting police, and specific tips for copwatching at protests. pic.twitter.com/aLcqZHK46M

— Berkeley Copwatch (@Copwatch411) August 5, 2022

Feed the Hood 22 + #ShockGForever 2 is fast approaching! Join us and the Digital Underground crew August 13, 9 AM @ East Oakland Collective, 7800 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland.

More info and volunteer registration – https://t.co/v9d12aDEt3. pic.twitter.com/ULdsLB13z5

— East Oakland Collective (@EOakCollective) July 27, 2022

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the the online invite.

For August, 2022 we’re reading the first four chapters of  Beyond Money – A Postcapitalist Strategy, by Anitra Nelson. Available at Pluto Press, Amazon.  For September, we’re reading the remaining chapters.

‘A fascinating portal into arguments about why we need to get beyond money’ – Harry Cleaver

What would a world without money look like? This book is a lively thought experiment that deepens our understanding of how money is the driver of political power, environmental destruction and social inequality today, arguing that it has to be abolished rather than repurposed to achieve a postcapitalist future.

Grounded in historical debates about money, Anitra Nelson draws on a spectrum of political and economic thought and activism, including feminism, ecoanarchism, degrowth, permaculture, autonomism, Marxism and ecosocialism. Looking to Indigenous rights activism and the defence of commons, an international network of activists engaged in a fight for a money-free society emerges.

Beyond Money shows that, by organising around post-money versions of the future, activists have a hope of creating a world that embodies their radical values and visions.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, and Beyond Money.

The México Solidarity Project, SINTTIA, and the continuing importance of international working class solidarity

The presentation will include clips from a documentary film and current footage from Labor Notes 2022 Conference with commentary. Not pedantic or dogmatic — more observational with moments of humor (sorely needed).

Our speaker, Anne Lewis, is an independent documentary-maker and professor of practice at UT-Austin. Her work reveals working class people fighting for social change. Anne was associate director/assistant camera for HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. After the strike, she moved to the east Kentucky coalfields where she lived for 25 years. Documentaries she produced, directed, and edited include: ANNE BRADEN: SOUTHERN PATRIOT; MORRISTOWN: IN THE AIR AND SUN, a working class critique of globalization; JUSTICE IN THE COALFIELDS about the UMWA strike against Pittston; ON OUR OWN LAND about community organizing against stripmining; CHEMICAL VALLEY about environmental racism; FAST FOOD WOMEN; and A STRIKE AND AN UPRISING (IN TEXAS).

Anne recently completed a series of print and video pieces with Jennifer Harbury about the U.S./Mexico border, and RAULRSALINAS AND THE POETRY OF LIBERATION: UN TRIP. She is a proud member of the executive board of the Texas State Employees Union, TSEU-CWA 6186. www.annelewis.org

LOGIN INFORMATION

Our Zoom room will be opened up as usual at 10:15 am for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc.. The program (and recording) will begin as close to 10:30 am as possible and will end at 12:30, but the Waiting Room may remain open later for informal discussion.

ZOOM LINK

GOOD FOR SUNDAY, August 14, 2022 ONLY
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2591082607?pwd=WUh2TUZ5Z0tWeFdJNWcvMjY5cnNJQT09

Meeting ID: 259 108 2607
Passcode: ICSS2717rs
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,2591082607#,,,,*4821017269# US (San Jose)
+16694449171,,2591082607#,,,,*4821017269# US

Dial by your location
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

Maybe you’ve been getting our emails for months or years but never come to a DSA event. Maybe you’re a veteran leftist with decades of battles under your belt. Maybe you’re a new member ready to take the next step and get organized.

Wherever you’re coming from, we want to hang out with you!

🌹  Hear what we’re currently working on

💪  Get more involved in critical fights right here in the East Bay

🥨  Eat some snacks

Right now, we’re grappling with a conservative attack on our reproductive rights, a looming climate catastrophe, and a Democratic establishment unwilling to fight for working people. But at the same time, Amazon and Starbucks workers are building power in their workplaces and DSA is fighting for a Tax the Rich ballot measure in Oakland.

There’s never been a more pressing time to make the jump from socialist to *organized* socialist. And that starts with meeting your comrades and taking action. Plus, it’ll be fun, we promise. Join us!

Invite all your union friends and the socialism-curious!

Look for us at Snow Park (the corner of Harrison St and 19th Street next to Lake Merritt).

John Fisher, son of the late Donald Fisher (of The Gap and related corporate wealth), personifies the connections between these two struggles.  Not only is Fisher (the younger), principal owner of the A’s, pushing for the gentrification grab at the Howard Terminal, but he is a major force in the push for charter schools. not only in Oakland, but nationally, through the Kipp Schools network.

Given the continuing struggles on both fronts, with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) / Oakland Police Department (OPD) repressive actions at the Parker Liberation School this week, and more protest about the Howard Terminal project, despite the votes of the city council, it is important to revisit these critical issues and the broader corporate politics involved.

Jack Gerson is a retired Oakland teacher who writes on and analyzes  issues related to education, politics, public health and the pandemic.  Before retiring, he was on the executive board and bargaining team of the Oakland teachers union (OEA).  Among other things, he helped organize OEA’s campaign to bail out schools not banks and end foreclosures, and the Occupy Oakland education committee’s 18 day occupation of Lakeview Elementary in 2012 to protest school closures.

Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows at 7:00 pm, after a 30-minute break. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 895 5984 4652

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Dial by your location

+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)

Please plan to stay all day. Bring hats, water, lunch, chair or blanket. There preps are an opportunity to lean into the long history of nonviolent direct action, working with affinity groups and Consensus Process decision-making, jail solidarity inside and outside of jail, with plenty of practice in role playing. Contact: weddress777@gmail.com