Calendar
Adam and Jeralynn Blueford, the parents of 18 year old Alan Blueford killed at the hands of Oakland Police Officer Miguel Masso on 5/6/12, standing with the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition, will hold a press conference to once again demand justice for their son, present over 1800 petition signatures for the firing of Miguel Masso, and call for accountability from OPD.
Please join us.
Hey it’s warm out and it’s been a while, so the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group is pulling together another one of our fabulous DIY Drive-In movie nights for this week.
DIY Drive-In Returns to Jodie’s! This week: “Network”
Join us this Thursday as we screen “Network” – you remember, the famous source of the mantra “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Well, this Oscar-winning film has a lot more in store than just that one line, and remains fresh for today with its stark truth-telling about the profit motives of the corporate media, and the pacification of the public with mindless infotainment.
Written by Paddy Chayevsky, directed by Sydney Lumet, and featuring a power-packed cast including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter FInch, Robert Duvall, and Ned Beatty.
Come check it out! Treats will be provided.
This film is rated R for strong language, some sexual content, and a scene of violence (source IMDb.com)
Members of Gays Without Borders and the Bradley Manning Support Network are organizing a rally and speak out for this year’s edition of International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia on Friday, May 17th in San Francisco, CA. IDAHO is an annual event marking the day the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its classification of diseases in 1990.
What: IDAHO Rally
Why: Declare Bradley Manning the People’s Grand Marshal of SF Pride
The reason why Gays Without Borders is proudly partnering with the Bradley Manning Support Network for the rally is to continue building on community support declaring him Grand Marshal of the SF Pride parade. Manning is the accused gay U.S. Army Private accused of divulging a massive amount of government documents to WikiLeaks.
He was originally chosen to be a Grand Marshal at Pride, but that honor was rescinded in secrecy by the board of directors of Pride, touching off a global outcry condemning the rescission and unleashing a flood of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender solidarity for Manning.
LGBT activists and straight allies will gather at Harvey Milk Plaza on Friday with enormous colorful banners demanding freedom for Manning and global gay solidarity. There will be an open mike session for people to comment about the importance of IDAHO, the Pride board’s rescission and express concerns for Manning as he prepares for trial.
The UC raided and bulldozed the farm we worked so hard to till and plant last weekend, plowing all of our starts under. So we’re going to replant it. Meet at 11 AM on Saturday, and bring gardening tools, gloves, sunscreen, water bottles, sleeping bag and tent. If you can’t come on Saturday, please come Sunday at 11 am.
Folks are gathering at San Pablo & Monroe in Albany, CA at 11 AM on Saturday, May 18th to replant. Bring tools & food to share.
There may be more information on Faceplant, but your humble submitter don’t play that.
On Saturday, May 18th, Strike Debt Bay Area will host the Bay Area’s Second Debtors’ Assembly. (The first one was held in February. The beautiful posters for both created by SDBA organizer Sandy Sanders are shown below.)
As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt for the basic things we need to live, including housing, education, and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government. All of us are outraged that big banks don’t have to pay their debts, but we do.
Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid—of becoming homeless, of going hungry, of being crippled or killed by treatable illness, or of being trapped in poverty-level jobs. Those facing foreclosure, medical debt, student debt, or credit card debt feel alone, hounded by debt collectors, and forced into unrewarding work to keep up with payments.
Strike Debt is building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. At the Debtors’ Assembly we will come together as a community and begin to rethink debt, not as an issue of individual shame, but as a political platform for collective resistance and action. Come to the Assembly to learn about tools for escaping the closing walls of debt, to share resources and skills, and to magnify our assembled energy. As we share our experiences we can begin to take back from the financiers what they have taken from us: our freedom and our future.
Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
ORGANIZATION INFO: Strike Debt Bay Area is the local chapter of Strike Debt, an international movement of groups working to build popular resistance to all forms of unjust debt. Strike Debt has organized the Rolling Jubilee, the Debt Resistors Operations Manual, and local debtors’ assemblies. Strike Debt supports the creation of just and sustainable economies, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence. We owe the financial institutions nothing. It is to our friends, families and community that we owe everything.
Poster from First Debtors’ Assembly:
Protest at the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Conference
Sunday, May 19, 2013
11:30am-5:30pm
Moscone Center, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco
http://occupypsychiatry.net/occupyapa2013/130513OccupyAPANewsRelease.pdf
CONTACTS:
Matthew Morrissey (415) 722-6317 mattmorr21@yahoo.com
Jim Gottstein (907) 274-7686 jim.gottstein@psychrights.org
American Psychiatric Association Protest
May 19, 2013 — San Francisco
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2013
On May 19th, MindFreedom International, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®), and the California Client Action Workgroup, organized under the Occupy Psychiatry banner, will protest of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 Annual Conference at the Moscone Center, 747 Howard St, San Francisco, California from 11:30 am until 5:30 pm.
The American Psychiatric Association is being charged with serious human rights abuses, coercing people to undergo brain-damaging psychiatric drugs and electroshock, psychiatric profiling, scientific fraud, and psychiatric labeling, including the already discredited Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to be released at the conference.
Psychiatric survivor, psychotherapist and MindFreedom Board Member Matthew Morrissey will speak and MC the protest rally and demonstration which will feature the following speakers:
§ Leonard Roy Frank, psychiatric survivor and editor.” As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote in 2008, ‘Modern psychiatry — with its Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of nonexisting diseases and their coercive cures — is a monument to quackery on a scale undreamed of in the annals of medicine.’ Now is the time for the people to hold the American Psychiatric Association and its members accountable for their crimes against humanity.”
§ Ted Chabasinski, psychiatric survivor and lawyer, who was electroshocked for experimental purposes when he was six years old. “The increased labeling and drugging of children, and the way the new DSM puts everyone at risk for being called ‘mentally ill’ must be stopped. Everyone must realize that they too can be called crazy, not just those who have already been dragged into and trapped by the system.”
§ Chaya Grossberg, psychiatric survivor and healer. “Rather than being a source for healing, the American Psychiatric Association has damaged the souls and bodies of millions of Americans.”
§ Michael Cornwall, PhD, licensed therapist and human rights activist. “The profession of psychiatry lives in a collective state of denial. Psychiatrists are true believers with a religious fundamentalist type of fervor that allows them to routinely injure, and frequently hasten the death of those they are sworn to heal. But the reckoning is upon them. Their blatant human rights violations will not stand the light of day.”
§ James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq., psychiatric survivor and lawyer. “Hundreds of thousands of people are locked up and drugged or electroshocked against their will every day under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association. These are human rights abuses on a massive scale in violation of United States and International Law. The American Psychiatric Association must be held accountable for its role in these horrors.”
There will also be an open microphone for protestors who want to speak. At least portions of the protest will be live-streamed at ustream.tv on the Occupy Psychiatry Channel, http://bit.ly/10kf0cS.
On Friday, May 17th, from 7 to 10 pm, along with protest preparations, there will be a free/donation based screening of Daniel Mackler’s new film, Coming off Psych Drugs: A Meeting of the Minds, at the beautiful Goforaloop Gallery, 1458 San Bruno Ave., San Francisco.
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Come to the very first session of The Politics of Debt reading group on Monday, May 20th at 6:30!
Darwin Bond-Graham will help kick off the discussion and present on public debt as it relates to our personal lives and public institutions. Together we will help shed light on the variety of ways that the debt economy subjects individuals and communities to moral and financial burden. After the initial talk we will break into a general group discussion and lay out the vision for the class.
Members of the SF Commune and Students at San Francisco State University are calling for a direct action at 2PM on Tuesday, May 21st. Organizers say that the action, which will take place on Malcom X Plaza on the SF State campus, is a response to the brutalization and detainment of five individuals who were arrested while visiting students in the SF State dorms on Thursday evening.
More information, photos, video via Political Fail Blog.
We are less than a month away from PFC Bradley Manning’s court martial which begins on June 3rd, more than 3 years after his initial arrest and incarceration. We will be doing a mass mailing to bring in as much support as we can right before his trial begins. Help us in our office stuff letters and eat pizza to save Bradley!
BRADLEY MANNING, a 25-year-old, openly gay, US Army intelligence analyst is facing life in prison and has been held in pre-trial confinement for over 3 years. He endured torture and solitary confinement for the first 10 months of his incarceration. He is accused of sharing with Wikileaks: the “Collateral Murder” video of the killing of civilians and journalists by a US helicopter in Iraq, the Guantanamo Files, the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, & revealing US diplomatic cables. In short, he’s been charged with blowing the whistle on war crimes & telling us the truth.
A Film by Darryl Cherney and Mary Laz Thomson.
Free Outdoors Event/Action.
Please gather at Union Square to hear some speakers and share our bag lunch exchange! Kids performance art! Political music!
We will march to Justin Herman Plaza where we will have more speakers including well known activists in the anit GMO movement.
Come Occupy the Farm Saturday night, and let’s camp out under the stars and stay through to Sunday! There will be free food, workshops, music, kids activities, celebration, and farming, of course!
Bike the Math to Chevron’s shareholders at their Annual General Meeting in San Ramon. Let’s tell Chevron to stop fueling climate chaos and become a renewable energy company!
Light to medium 6 mile ride to Chevron Headquarters in San Ramon along Iron Horse Trail, arriving at approximately 9am
RSVP at 350BayArea.org or join Facebook Event page
Tasers, spit hoods, pepper spray, hog-tie and “the Wrap” : Is this what Berkeley means by the term “Mental Health Services” ? Numerous incidents in Berkeley show that the “compassionate care” we thought was beging given by mental health care professionals has deteriorated into the systematic use of brute force against those in crisis.
SPEAKERS VIDEO CLIPS WORKSHOP
Join us for a public examination of Berkeley’s Emergency Mental Health Services and whether Police should even be involved as responders.
Stockton Courthouse 222 Weber St. @ 2pm
BUS FROM Oscar Grant Plaza TO STOCKTON AT 12:00 NOON (get there early)
To keep the land arable, the earth able to breathe, and the people of San Francisco able to grow and eat local, nutrient-rich, organic food in the city, people will walk to a potential development site on June 1st to plant food, build a village, and hold space together.
We can out-grow the old power structures!
There will be a dialogue and discussion about the loss of urban gardens to development in San Francisco at the Free Farm at 1 pm (thefreefarm.org) This will be followed by a gathering of folks who will take direct action in Jefferson Square Park directly across Gough Street from the Free Farm. We will get ready to move, plant, and hold space at 2pm. Follow us on twitter @LiberateLand or #liberatetheland if you are late!