Calendar
Meeting of the City of Oakland’s “Privacy and Data Retention Ad Hoc Advisory Committee” – open to the public.
When:
2nd & 4th Thursdays
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Where:
Council Chambers
Oakland City Hall
14th & Broadway
Read the announcement from the City of Oakland City Administrator’s Weekly Report (April 25, 2014):
This committee was created by City Council action during the discussions earlier in the year about the Port Domain Awareness Center (DAC). The goal of the DAC is to improve readiness to prevent, respond to and recover from major emergencies in the Oakland region and ensure better multi-agency coordination across the larger San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of the Privacy and Data Retention Policy is to ensure there are safeguards to protect against potential misuse of the data or violations of individuals’ privacy rights and civil liberties. The meeting is open to the public. For questions about the Ad Hoc Committee, please contact Joe DeVries, Assistant to the City
We need to show up to these meetings and pressure the City to adopt a privacy policy that makes privacy a priority, not only “security” or administrative convenience.
Stop the War on Children from Gaza to the U.S./Mexican Border!
Say No to Racism and War! Stand with children and youth under attack. Solidarity with Palestine and the people of Central America. In support of the call for a national week of actions from 7/17 – 7/24. A united action initiated by the International Action Center – Bay Area and supported by the AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, EBIYC – East Bay Immigrant Youth Coalition, Middle East Children’s Alliance, and American Friends Service Committee.
Come help stop Berkeley Police from getting tasers!
After each mishap or tragedy that occurs these days in Berkeley, we are told that it could have been averted “if only” the police had been issued tasers. The mayor of Berkeley made this claim after six Berkeley police killed a mentally ill transgender woman in her own home last year. BPD officers made the same claim again when a mentally ill man stabbed himself several times. This week, Chris Stines of the Berkeley Police Association (BPA) went to great pains to spread the notion that if a Berkeley police officer had had a taser this past week, he wouldn’t have been assaulted. It is regrettable that the BPA uses these incidents as nothing more than a way to win political points. The issue of how to protect officers as well as the human rights of the citizenry is far more complex than simply giving cops more hardware on their belts.
Of course, these kinds of statements can never be proven. No one can know whether a taser would have prevented the confrontation in which the officer was involved in a fistfight with a suspect who was believed to be mentally ill. The BPA continues to apply steady political pressure to our local politicians and insists that somehow, real safety resides in our ability to meet suspects with electric shocks. At Berkeley Copwatch, we disagree. We believe that it is the duty of the officers to place the well being of the community at the forefront of their efforts. We believe that mentally ill people have a right to treatment and should not be subjected to torture because of a condition which they do not control. It is time for the City of Berkeley to return to the humane approaches for which it was once famous and reject the militarization of care which has overtaken our approach to community health and safety.
Top ten reasons against tasers.
Join the family, friends and community as they demand justice for an innocent life stolen by law enforcement. Yanira Serrano Garcia was murdered on June 3, 2014 by San Mateo County Sheriff’s.
The family seeks accountability from law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office.
Please join us on Friday, July 25, 2014 at 5pm as we meet at the Half Moon Bay Fire Station located at 1191 Main St, Half Moon Bay CA for a rally and march.
The family has asked that you please wear white.
Learn more here: http://
A professor of literature and Black Studies, GAThomas recently traveled to Palestine in May 2014 as part of contingent of college and university professors working out of North America in support of Palestinian solidarity, liberation and freedom from occupation, apartheid and colonization. Replete with photographic images, this talk is a first-hand report-back from the Occupied West Bank facing more and more bombings, repression and kidnappings everyday with the support of what Malcolm X dubbed “dollarism.”
Wheelchair accessible. Refreshments provided.
More info: www.ANSWERsf.org.
Fracking Initiatives Benefit. Friday, July 25.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber, scientist, author, and mother, will discuss strategies for building the movement to stop fracking and protect our communities and climate
This event is a special fundraiser for the dedicated residents of 3 California counties who have collected signatures to put fracking ban measures on their county ballots in November. The oil industry has already shown it will fight these measures. We must show the Bay Area’s strong support for local communities standing up for their rights to clean air, water, energy and a safer climate for our children.
Tickets are $20 but donations beyond the ticket price are encouraged to help fight the power of Big Oil.
Buy tickets now (page on 350BayArea website)
Download flyer (PDF)
To appreciate the power and clarity of Ms. Steingraber’s voice, you could no better than reading the 2012 Huffington Post article summarizing her statement to the Democratic Conference of the New York Senate, in which she addresses both the dangers of fracking and the corruptibility of the legislative process. (New York state subsequently passed a 5-year moratorium on fracking. Challenges to local bans on fracking are now being heard by the state Court of Appeals.)
Visit Ms. Steingraber’s website at http://steingraber.com/
350 Bay Area and co-sponsors invite you to come hear Sandra Steingraber, author of Raising Elijah and Living Downstream, speak about the known and hidden dangers of fracking and how to build a movement to stop this dangerous practice. Sandra co-founded New Yorkers Against Fracking and has been a tireless activist working to prevent fracking in New York and throughout the world.
Ticket sales will benefit efforts to pass voter initiatives to ban fracking in November in San Benito and Santa Barbara Counties. These counties are already being assaulted by oil company propaganda.
Meet at the fountain in Latham Square, in the intersection where Telegraph and Broadway converge across from the Rotunda Building (Oakland City Center/12th St. BART), Oakland.
With Gifford Hartman of the Flying Picket Historical Society. This walk will revisit the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday” that began spontaneously with rank-and-file solidarity with the striking, mostly women, retail clerks at Kahn’s and Hastings department stores whose picket line was being broken by scabs escorted by police.
Within 24 hours, it involved over 100,000 workers and shut down nearly all commerce in the East Bay for 54 hours. In 1946 there were six general strikes across the U.S.; that year set the all-time record year for strikes and work stoppages. The Oakland “Work Holiday” was the last general strike to ever occur in the U.S.. until the November 2nd, 2011 General Strike called by Occupy Oakland, albeit only a one-day event. This walk and history talk will attempt to keep alive the memory of this tradition of community-wide working class solidarity.
See also:
http://www.flyingpicket.org/node/15
http://www.laborfest.net/2014/2014schedule.htm
Join Us for a Birthday Party
for the Berkeley Post Office
It’s the 239th Birthday of the United States Post Office and the One Hundredth Birthday of the Berkeley Post Office! Please join us! These festivities will be one of many events throughout the country commemorating National Postal Heritage Day.
Celebration will include Music, Birthday Cake and a Group Photo!
Be sure to be there!
Brought to you by Save the Berkeley Post Office.
March for Palestine….Chelsea Manning Plaza aka Justin Herman Plaza, Market @Embarcadero in SF.
6,000 people this past Sunday; 20,000 this coming Saturday.
ANSWER COALITION.
On July 16th, Israeli Defense Forces deliberately targeted a group of children playing soccer on a Gaza beach, killing four from the same family and maiming the others—another war crime committed against the Palestinian people.
WE DEMAND THAT
Stop US Aid to the Apartheid State of Israel!
Free all Palestinian political prisoners!
End the collective punishment of Palestinians!
End colonial occupation of Palestine!
Stop the massacre in Gaza! End the blockade of Gaza!
Community Forum on the Albany Bulb: 1:00 PM
Music: 1:30 PM
Performance: 2:00 PM
The San Francisco Mime Troupe creates and produces socially relevant theater of the highest professional quality and performs it before the broadest possible audience.
We do plays that make sense out of the headlines by identifying the forces that shape our lives and dramatizing the operation of these giant forces in small, close-up stories that make our audiences feel the impact of political events on personal life.
To make this work accessible the Mime Troupe performs its shows in local parks at a price everyone can afford: FREE.
October 2014 Nationwide Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation
Just in the past few weeks we have witnessed:
**1000’s of children being driven across the border by US devastation of their homelands and then finding themselves caught between Homeland Security rounds-ups and flag-waving racists
**The District Attorney in Santa Rosa California refusing to charge the cop who murdered 13-year old Andy Lopez
**2 videos that went viral showing cops brutally and unjustly beating Black women
All these and more outrages only serve to underscore more than ever the need for powerful outpourings of resistance in October as envisioned in the Call for a Month of Ressistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation (www.stopmassinceration.net) that was adopted at the meeting convened in New York in April 2014.
Let’s all come together, individuals and organizations and make real plans so this October, so our determination to end all this reverberates across the country and around the world!
October 2014 needs to be a full month of many diverse forms of resistance.
Already, prominent and respected voices are signing the Stop Mass Incarceration Network’s Call for the Month of Resistance.� Join� Ayelet Waldman, novelist, lawyer ; Alice Walker, author; Peter Coyote, actor, author, director; Cornel West,� author, educator, voice of conscience;� Carl Dix,� Revolutionary Communist Party; Noam Chomsky,� Professor (ret.), MIT*; Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson; Michelle Alexander, and 100’s of others who have pledged to be part of the Month of Resistance
Stop Mass Incarceration Network, San Francisco Bay Area 1.pdf
A professor of literature and Black Studies, GAThomas recently traveled to Palestine in May 2014 as part of contingent of college and university professors working out of North America in support of Palestinian solidarity, liberation and freedom from occupation, apartheid and colonization. Replete with photographic images, this talk is a first-hand report-back from the Occupied West Bank facing more and more bombings, repression and kidnappings everyday with the support of what Malcolm X dubbed “dollarism.”
Wheelchair accessible. Refreshments provided.
WPA Berkeley Walk
With Harvey Smith
This walk will explore the “New Deal nexus” in Berkeley that includes Berkeley High School, the Community Theater, Civic Center Park, Post Office art, the old UC Press Building (now being repurposed as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), and the old Farm Credit Building. The tour will also include the incredible mosaic mural on the UC Berkeley campus and photographs of the California Folk Music Project, Western Museum Laboratory, WPA prints at the Berkeley Public Library, and WPA projects on the UC Berkeley campus.
STOP URBAN SHIELD IN OAKLAND!
September 4-8, 2014, in Oakland, California, Urban Shield — a trade show and training exercise for SWAT teams and police agencies — will bring local, national and international law enforcement agencies together with defense industry contractors to provide training and introduce new weapons to police and security companies. Take a stand against the militarization of our community.
Decrease violence in our communities by ending the militarization of the police.
From schools, the border, prisons, to the streets, our communities have become sites of repression and violence at the hands of law enforcement. Ever increasing militarization of our communities has created a culture of surveillance and repression targeting poor communities of color. Community-led solutions addressing poverty and the violence of policing are the best ways to ensure genuine safety, health, and wellbeing for people most vulnerable to state violence.
- We demand the City of Oakland defund all activities related to Urban Shield
- We demand that all city agencies withdraw their participation in Urban Shield.
Our communities refuse to be testing grounds for tactics of global repression.
Local police departments collaborate with federal agencies to share information and tactics through vehicles such as fusion centers to surveil and control targeted communities. These same agencies are also exchanging policing and repression tactics with international security officers including but not limited to the Apartheid State of Israel. The import and export of technology and tactics includes purchasing weapons, training local police forces, and sharing strategies through activities such as Urban Shield. Our neighborhoods have become laboratories in which to test international and domestic warfare.
- We demand an end to all City collaborations with the Apartheid State of Israel.
- We call on the City of Oakland to issue a report on all collaborations between the Oakland Police Department and international law enforcement agencies.
- We call on the City of Oakland to reject all US wars and occupations here or abroad.
Community Self-determination
Our communities know what is required to address the social, economic and political problems we face. Bay Area residents should have decision-making power over how and where resources are allocated in order to build stronger and sustainable communities.
- We demand that Bay Area residents have decision-making power in the process to determine priorities for public safety and emergency preparedness.
- We demand that the City of Oakland invest in community-based programs proven to decrease violence and harm instead of in the increased militarization of its police force and emergency services.
We call on our communities to continue fighting back and resisting state violence and repression.
In the face of growing efforts to police our communities, we must forge alliances to challenge systems of repression and build power in our communities. Understanding prisons, borders, surveillance and policing as tools of global repression is critical to building and maintaining powerful movements for liberation. Gentrification in our streets is colonialism elsewhere. The War on Terror we are living through today is a new formulation of the War on Drugs, and the violence inflicted on our communities necessitates a unified stance against all forms of repression from the US to Brazil, to the Philippines and Palestine.
- We ask our allies and partners to adopt these principles and take a stand against the policing and repression of our communities.
Join Critical Resistance members, allies, friends and other anti-prison activists for an abolitionist liberation BBQ! We will eat, drink, play, dance, share stories from these past exciting months, and affirm our ongoing fight to end the caging of our communities!
Families welcome – we’ll have plenty of activities for kids 🙂
Let’s celebrate our work, build our connections, and raise money so we can increase our capacity to fight prison industrial complex! Bring your friends, your comrades, and your wallet!
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogueon all sides of these critically important issues!
OccupyForum presents
Jiwon Chung and friends:
Theatre of the Oppressed
Internal Oppression
�
As we’ve previously experienced, Theater of the Oppressed is a collection of games, techniques and exercises for using theater as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. It uses the dynamized human body and the charged theatrical space as a laboratory for exploring power, transforming oppression, and finding solutions to the fundamental problems of conflict, inequality, injustice and human suffering. Last time we focused on oppression by external power; this time we’ll explore how internal oppression controls us.
Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed has spread across the Americas and more than 70 countries worldwide. Theatre of the Oppressed is taught in classrooms and in the streets, bringing together students, scholars, administrators, policy makers, and community activists in the pursuit of social justice and human rights. Its use is particularly timely today given the worldwide attention to the rights of the indigenous peoples represented by the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.
Jiwon Chung is a professional actor, director, and a key theorist of Theater of the Oppressed. He is the Artistic Director of Kairos Theater Ensemble, Adjunct professor at Starr King School at the Graduate Theological Union, and past President of the national organization for Theater of the Oppressed. Author of numerous books, articles, and performances, he is considered a pioneer in the integration of somatics, theater of the oppressed, and socially engaged art. The focus of his work is in the application of theater as a tool for social and political change, using Theater of the Oppressed to challenge, resist, and transform systemic oppression and structural violence and to redress large scale historical atrocity and injustice. His approach to performance and social change is informed by his background as veteran, martial artist, and 3 decades of Vipassana meditation.
Announcements will follow.
The Postal Service has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
The Postal Service has started to outsource Post Office services to Staples, replacing union jobs with low-paying, low benefit work.
And we’re fighting against both!
Come help us plan our next steps.
We’ve began the “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management! Here’s the front of the postcard. The campaign has been adopted by Postal Unions, the San Francisco Labor Council and has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, and has gone national!
All four Postal Unions have joined together to support maintaining full service, public Post Offices in every community, with expansion to include postal banking, and to oppose subcontracting and privatization of services. The California Federation of Teachers passed a resolution in support of opposition to Staples. Just recently the American Federation of Teachers, AFCSME and UNITE HERE did too. We are trying to get the Alameda Labor Council to pass a similar resolution.
Check out our correspondence with the President of the American Postal Workers Union, Mark Dimondstein. The APWU has been leading the charge against Staples.
For the last three+ weeks the sidewalk in front of Staples has been ‘occupied’ 24/7 by an intrepid band of San Francisco occupiers with solidarity and support from BPOD members, and they plan to continue there, distributing literature and convincing people not to shop at Staples, indefinitely. Recently tents went up! Go by and say ‘Hi!’ and help them out.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale! The Advisory Commission on Historical Preservation came out with its report, recommending that sales of Historic Post offices be halted until the USPS conforms with historical preservation law. Here is our response. Also the Office of Inspector General’s report on the sale of Historic Post Offices came out recently – anything could happen now since Congress’ “request” that no historic Post Offices be sold until it had come out has been honored and no further Congressional request or mandate has come down. Come help us plan our response.
We have joined with other activists in Berkeley to put a ballot initiative on the ballot to rezone the Berkeley Post Office and other areas in the Historic District to prevent privatization, and also to insure a better Downtown Berkeley. We succeeded in getting the necessary signatures; it will be voted on in November, but Tom Bates and the City Council have nefarious plans to undermine our coalition.
Encouraging articles are still coming out about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. The National Conference of Mayors recently endorsed Postal Banking. Pew Research just held a day-long seminar on Postal Banking.
We are planning our next event, ‘Jam the Sale.’ Spread the work and come help us out!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!