Calendar

Here’s your chance to learn more about market-based approaches to solving the climate crisis and an opportunity to engage with local proponents.  Efforts to put a price on carbon pollution are underway at the state and national levels.  Come hear about proposals such as a carbon tax, existing programs such as California’s cap and trade auction, and other efforts to transition toward a clean energy economy.

OccupyForum will take a field trip to COPWATCH’s Berkeley meeting.

COPWATCH is an activist group dedicated to monitoring police and protecting citizens, whose slogan is: “Refuse to be Abused.” Beginning in 1990, Copwatch ran street patrols to document police harassment of homeless people on Telegraph Avenue. Its newsletter highlighted patterns of intimidation, selective enforcement, misinformation and excessive oversight by police. Over the next decade, Copwatch held hundreds of “Know Your Rights” trainings. Copwatch spearhead demonstrations, filed complaints, used its documents to build court defense,  spoke out at investigative hearings, stood up against pepper spray and other brutal policing techniques (check their website for a full description). They have been a force to be reckoned with on every level to stop systemic police brutality, and a model for organizations in other cities.

We have the good fortune to be invited to their November meeting in Berkeley. This is gonna be deep: they’re discussing what they’ve learned recently, and want to work on regarding the militarization of police, police accountability, training, your rights on the street for yourself and others, how to be a copwatcher, and more:

� Millitarization of police and how to draw that down
� Immediate triage situations: how to behave on the streets / intervention in police stopping people, including African Americans, homeless/veterans, etc.
� Police Accountability
� Police Training
� Copwatcher training, including your rights on the streets
� Longer term strategies for dealing with police violence

In the meantime, you can take a look at “These Streets Are Watching” beforehand to get acquainted with the issues and to formulate questions.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKeM6zWfAjs

How did two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas wind up arrested on terrorism charges at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota? Better This World follows the journey of David McKay (22) and Bradley Crowder (23) from political neophytes to accused domestic terrorists with a particular focus on the relationship they develop with a radical activist mentor in the six months leading up to their arrests. A dramatic story of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal, Better This World goes to the heart of the War on Terror and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in post-9/11 America.

A co-production with ITVS, Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega’s Better This World has been called “Riveting” by The Washington Post, “Mind-boggling” by New York Magazine and “sharply focused & superbly put together” by The Hollywood Reporter. The film was given the Writers Guild of America’s Best Documentary Screenplay Award, Gotham Independent Film’s Best Doc Feature Award and an IDA Creative Achievement Award. Additional honors include Best Documentary Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival and 3 National Emmy Nominations – including one for Best Doc.

Supporting local filmmakers since 2009

JOIN CODEPINK, WORLD CAN’T WAIT, OCCUPYSF Action Council and others at the huge PEACE banner

Theme this week is: Remembering Pirate Mike’s (Stephen Michal Clift) Legacy

Feel free to bring your own signage, photos, flyers. Additional signs and flyers provided.

Pirate Mike and other Veterans for Peace have participated in this vigil highlighting various justice issues and with Codepink at Beale and Creech AFB’s against DRONES

All are welcomed!

Come support the Alameda Renters Coalition and their fight for a moratorium on rent increases and a rent control ordinance.

At the special meeting, the City Council will receive a study on the City’s rental housing market, prepared by BAE Urban Economics (BAE).  To address the rental housing market, including rapidly rising rents and low vacancy rates in Alameda, City staff will also present a range of policy options that the City Council may consider, including consideration of a temporary moratorium on rental increases or evictions without just cause.  The BAE rent study and the staff report for the special meeting will be available on the City’s website by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28, 2015.

Join the California Nurses Association at a free special Labor Screening of “This Changes Everything,” a flim by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, based on her best-selling book about climate chaos.

The film will be followed by a conversation among rank-and-file workers who have been impacted by ecological crisis and labor leaders whose unions are throwing down for climate justice.

As Naomi recently told union members: “Our current economic model is not only waging war on workers, on communities, on public services and social safety nets. It’s waging war on the life support systems of the planet itself. The conditions for life on earth. Climate change: It’s not an “issue” for you to add to the list of things to worry about it. It is a civilizational wake up call. A powerful message – spoken in the language of fires, floods, storms and droughts – telling us that we need an entirely new economic model, one based on justice and sustainability.”

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpuSt_ST4_U.

Not available on Nov. 4th? Join us for an alternate screening on November 11th at UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco: https://www.facebook.com/events/151574678528299/.

A march for peace, humanity and an end to the corruption and oppression that keeps us all from our higher evolution.

The million masked march is collective of peaceful protesters coming together to stand against oppression and the denial of our rights. To show that we, as citizens, stand together peacefully but firmly against injustice, oppression, corruption, brutality, and corporate greed.

We stand together in support of rights and fair treatment for the homeless and displaced, for honesty and transparency in government, for equality for all people, regardless of class, gender, sexuality, religion, or affiliation. We don the masks to become one thing. United. We are the voices of those unheard, or that cannot speak up.

Unofficial location info from the Facebook page comments:

In terms of the march plan, we are near 100% certain we will be starting at the Embarcadero this year; most likely at the plaza.

Gather at City Hall 9am until 5pm
Marches begin rush hour 5pm
MillionMaskMarch.com

A gathering  to celebrate Pirate Mike’s life  – after the Million Mask March.

We will be gathering in an already-planned party at 101 Market after the Million Mask March; it will now of course become a party celebrating our beautiful comrade. Comrades! – Pirate, Cody, Kyle, Frankie Rivera

Screening of “This Changes Everything”
Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis
Thursday November 5th  8 pm
Wednesday November 11th at 6 pm

Hi All — Your friends at Diablo Rising Tide with Anthropology and Social Change at CIIS, and The New Nothing Cinema are co-hosting a screening of This Changes Everything

Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.

Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. (Read more about the film below)

Our friends at Incite/Insight encourage critique and dissent, and so there will be a small panel of folks on hand (participants TBA) to facilitate an after-film discussion. We hope to see you here to watch and reflect on what is one of the most high-profile polemics on the environment in a long time.

ADMISSION: FREE
RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1661621180779856/

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY

A Very Special screening of :

A VERY HEAVY AGENDA
by Robbie Martin

Post-9/11, the War on Terror had outlived its usefulness.

the U.S. needed a new enemy, so they chose an old one — Russia.

Part 1: A Catalyzing Event – 10.15.15

Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were ubiquitous in the news media as they took every available opportunity to market to America an aggressive preemptive war policy. But from where did their ideas originate? The answer is a tightly knit and eminently well placed group of neoconservative thought leaders, chief among them Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan. Part 1 begins in the panicked weeks after 9/11, as Kagan et al. seized upon the hysteria surrounding the anthrax letter attacks to further shape America’s perception of reality, planting the seeds for endless future military engagements. George W. Bush may have been understandably perceived as an idiot, but watching these wonks and academics drive the ideological engine for his administration belies a much more sophisticated strategy at play.

(only part 1 will be screed on the evening)

COMING SOON :

Part 2: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The New Neocons 11.1.15

After the Cold War, the US-NATO reach expanded significantly to take in most of the old Soviet Union clients in the Warsaw pact. Neoconservative darling Robert Kagan and his diplomat wife Victoria Nuland played key roles inside and out of various administrations and think tanks as they greased the skids for a US-sponsored coup in Ukraine. Part 2 shows the resurrection of old cold warriors from beltway depths to deliver blatant propaganda with techniques reminiscent of a red scare era that had only just faded from memory. US-funded outfits like Radio Free Liberty are pitted against Russia’s RT as each nation accuses the other of waging an ever more desperate and transparent “Information War”.

Part 3: Maintaining the World Order 11.15.15

“When the Berlin wall fell, our work wasn’t finished”. — Victoria Nuland, November 2013

“Fuck the EU” — Victoria Nuland, February 2014

While stage managing the American empire has undoubtedly proved to be a more difficult task now than in the bipolar world of the cold war era, it is not for lack of greed or hubris that the Kagans and others continue to sell their vision. Did they create these ideas because they truly believe in America’s right to be the dominant force in the world? Or, do these ideas help sell weapons and control resources like oil and rare minerals? Part 3 shows interview footage of an obscure PNAC member (Thomas Donnelly) taking credit for the ominous “New Pearl Harbor” phrasing in the notorious ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ document. But the evidence shows the genesis of the concept to be patriarch Don Kagan, in conjunction with his son Fred, in prior writings that call for ‘a catalyzing event’. Other newly sourced footage shows the pair advocating for a US military ground invasion of Palestine on September 12th, 2001 and displaying an unnerving prescience about the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax letter attacks.

“We’re an empire now and when we act we create our own reality, and while you’re studying that reality—we’ll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” – Karl Rove

When you take stock of the mindset of people who not only have access to the nexuses of power, but who trade in forming and widely disseminating arguments that justify bringing America closer to a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia, it shows something more plainly Machiavellian at work, with an aim ultimately much more sinister than simply spin.

A Very Heavy Agenda is a joint production between Media Roots & RecordLabelRecords

Produced/Edited/Created by: Robbie Martin

Original Score by: Fluorescent Grey

Twitter: @FluorescentGrey

Music: soundcloud.com/fluorescentgrey

The City Attorney of San Francisco has requested a Summary Judgement in the Case of Nieto Family vs San Francisco City and County for the unlawful death of their son Alex Nieto. This means that the City has asked the Court to dismiss the case because they think there is not enough evidence for the Family to win. (This is apparently a typical move.) The Family (through their Attorney Adante Pointer) has already presented arguements to the contrary as to why there is sufficient evidence favoring the Nietos case. This is new evidence brought forth in the Discovery process. Today there is a public hearing in which the Judge will decide whether to grant or dismiss the City’s motion.

This is a public hearing.

The San Francisco Law School and UC Hastings Chapters of the National Lawyers Guild, invite you to join their esteemed panel for a discussion of the legal issues surrounding the wrongful conviction of Kevin Cooper, the death penalty and the mass incarceration of People of Color. In 1983, Mr. Cooper was convicted and sentenced to death row for the killing of a family of four in Chino Hills, San Bernadino County. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest. Mr. Cooper was scheduled to be executed in 2004, but was granted a stay of execution by the Ninth Circuit. On May 11, 2009, his petition for habeas corpus was denied en banc, upon which five judges of the Ninth Circuit dissented, stating that they believed he was innocent based on evidence tampering by the San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department.

Mr. Cooper’s attorney, Norman C. Hile of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Carole Seligman, a member of Mr. Cooper’s Defense Committee, will serve as panelists. Mr. Cooper will be participating on the panel from San Quentin.

A film about discrimination and social reproduction in the French School System.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/139761004

Every year, hundreds of French students go through the agrégation de philosophie, a national philosophy contest to become a philosophy teacher. Through the story of Louis, Cherihene, Lyess, Marc and Stefanos, 5 students from radically different social backgrounds, the film dives into the medieval institution of La Sorbonne and the core of French style, old-school elitism.

Color – 34 minutes – 2015

The screening will be presented by the director and will be followed with a facilitated conversation on the topic of power and discrimination in education.

The Political Affairs Readers Group (Communist Party, USA Berkeley/Oakland) invites you to a discussion of

Capitalism and Climate

As background for the discussion we suggest the following readings:

Naomi Klein, “Capitalism vs. the Climate”
http://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/

Xiaochen Zhang, David Wei “Climate Creates Chances across Pacific”
http://en.people.cn/n/2015/0929/c90000-8957130.html

For more information, including the articles as Word documents, contact: pareadersgrp [at] yahoo.com

This event is  designed to bring together folks from progressive organizations across the Oakland left to plan for the 2016 elections. 

Let’s all get together to organize a progressive slate for Oakland 2016 elections: Saturday, Nov 7, 1 pm, First Congregational Church

— Dan Siegel (@DanMSiegel) October 22, 2015

Barbara Lee and Max Anderson (Berkeley City Council member) will host a public meeting on structural/institutional racism.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee will join Berkeley Councilmember Max Anderson to address the issue of Institutional and structural Racism. It is time that we bring this issue out into the open. We cannot continue to do the same things that we have been doing and expect a different result. We all must be part of the SOLUTION.

This event will give you an opportunity to frame our narrative and come up with a way forward regarding issues of racial inequities. You can contact Tasion Kwamilele, the Hon. Barbara Lee’s Communications Manager at tasion.Kwamilele@mail.house.gov for additional information.

By all means, please be at this most important event.

Information received from:
The Bay Area Civil Liberties Coalition http://bayareacivilliberties.org/?p=1

Sponsored by the Peace and Freedom Party, in Conjunction with the Oscar Grant Committee.

This forum will begin with stories from families whose lives have been forever changed by police violence. After this practical introduction, we will explain why the Oscar Grant Committee insists on linking “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter,” and then turn to broader social and political issues. Discussion will follow our presentation.

Doors open at 2:00. Program starts promptly at 2:30. Free, but please buy food and drink at the pub!

Featured guests include Patrisse Cullors – co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Jayda Rasberry – Dignity & Power Now, Thao Nguyen – Thao & The Get Down Stay Down.

A major highlight of the even will be the present of many formerly incarcerated women and trans people who have been leaders and members of CCWP over the years.