Calendar
Because of the COVID pandemic we will be meeting virtually via Zoom on the first Monday of the month.
Meeting ID: 828 0976 4186
The Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality & State Repression (OGC) is a
grassroots democratic organization that was formed as a conscious united front for justice against police brutality. The OGC is involved in the struggle for police accountability and is committed to stopping police brutality.
In alliance with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) we organized the October 23, 2010 labor and community rally for Justice for Oscar Grant. On that day the ILWU shut down the Bay Area ports in solidarity. Our mission is to educate, organize and mobilize people against police and state repression. Sisters and brothers! The Oscar Grant Committee invites you to join us in this vital struggle.
We meet on the 1st Monday of each month
You can join our discussion list by sending a blank (doesn’t even need a subject) email to
oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s about time the working class won that war.”
So says Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who has a real shot at becoming president of the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America has thrown its weight behind Bernie’s campaign, which has inspired millions of working-class people to get involved in politics and to fight for a better world.
This special edition of East Bay DSA’s Socialist Night School will tackle some fundamental questions about democratic socialism and the Bernie movement. What is class warfare, and how is it related to capitalism? What do we mean by “capitalism” and “democratic socialism,” anyway? And how does the campaign for Bernie advance the cause of democratic socialism?
Join us on Tuesday, January 7 to discuss these questions, in the first of a special four-part series on Bernie Sanders, capitalism, and democratic socialism.
See the readings here: https://www.eastbaydsa.org/night-school/
Accessibility:
The venue and restrooms are wheelchair-accessible. Please message us if you have other accessibility needs such as childcare.
Due to the New Year’s Holiday the January 2nd meeting of the PAC has been cancelled. A Special Meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday January 8th from 5-7pm at City Hall in Hearing Room 1.
Agenda items of possible interest:
4. Chief Privacy Officer report – Privacy Principles status update and implementation
5. Chair/Vice Chair report – 2020 planning, PAC annual report, report tracking, agenda management
6. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Live Stream Camera Impact Report and proposed Use Policy – review and take possible action
7. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – UAS (Drone) Impact Report and proposed Use Policy – review and take possible action
The precarity of Black girls’ lives in school have been made visible by Dr. Monique Morris. Through her writing, advocacy, and now film, PUSHOUT, we now have the language to describe and understand what we see happening to Black girls in schools. Morris’ work has inspired debate and legislation with the recent sponsoring of the Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma (P.U.S.H.O.U.T) Act,” by representatives Ayanna Pressley (D- MA), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). The law identifies the many students made vulnerable by race, gender, and disability positionality and outlines resources and policy recommendations to secure educational spaces for children.
Join Mills College, School of Education for its culminating Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action event: a screening of PUSHOUT and townhall panel discussion moderated by Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey. Dr. Monique Morris will provide opening remarks. In collaboration with the Mills College Black History Month programming and Ethnic Studies Department, we are proud to host this screening of PUSHOUT.
UPDATE: While this event is currently marked as “Sold Out” please join our Waitlist. As seats open up due to cancellations, individuals on our Waitlist will be contacted to secure their free ticket.
Join us in planning, organizing and building for the 6th Annual MLK Day Weekend, including the Monday, 1/20, Rally and March. Come to two remaining planning meetings on Wednesday, 1/8 at Omni Ballroom, and Wednesday, 1/15 at Eastside Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd, Oakland, CA 94606 both at 7pm.
We’re joining with many organizations to lift up the radical legacy of Martin Luther King all weekend long. We invite people and organizations to plan events all weekend, culminating in our 6th Annual Rally and March on Monday, 1/20, at noon at Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway.
We want to lift up the struggles against ICE and Concentration Camps, for Housing for all, against school closures and cops in the schools. We will continue to support the families and community against police violence. We support movements for land and growing our own food. And we fully support the Oakland Climate Strike and Resilient Village organized by Youth Vs. Apocalypse and Mycelium Youth Network: https://www.facebook.com/events/573190676790237/
Look for updates to specific actions here and contact us with your ideas and proposals.
Some agenda items of possible interest:
X. Use of Force Working Group
The Use of Force Working Group will present its revised draft report and a draft of the
Oakland Police Department Use of Force Policy, Department General Order (DGO) K-03.
The Commission will vote to approve the report and the revised DGO. This is item is
continued from 12.12.19. (Attachment 10).
XI. Presentation by National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) of Proposed Pilot
Juvenile Diversion Program
David Muhammad of NICJR will deliver a presentation on the Neighborhood Opportunity
and Accountability Board (NOAB) which will be a community based, restorative, youth
diversion initiative in Oakland. This is a new item. (Attachment 11).
Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses social. Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in EBDSA Labor Committee & learn how you can get involved.
Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses social. Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in EBDSA Labor Committee & learn how you can get involved.
Democracy Under Siege
Join California Common Cause and special guest Leteefah Simon for a conversation on how we take back our democracy.
Speakers include Chesa Boudin (new SF District Attorney-elect), Aaron Glantz (award-winning journalist and author of HOMEWRECKERS), Lee Camp (political satirist, author and activist), Jane Kim (CA Political Director for Bernie Sanders Campaign) and many other great speakers and panelists! All are invited…please come join us celebrate our California progressive activism as we move forward together!!
8:30 am to 9:30 pm. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included with your ticket!
All young people under 25 have their registration fee waived. RSVP HERE for Youth Waiver.
We start a new book for the new year. All are welcome at host Strike Debt Bay Area’s economics book group discussion.
We meet once a month. For January we are reading the first three chapters of “Limits (Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care” by Giorgos Kallis (Amazon, Stanford University Press). For February, the remaing chapters. Not a problem if you will have missed January – the chapters are short and it is easy to catch up for February!
Previous books er have discussed include Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics and Ellen Brown’s Banking for the People.
“In an era addicted to endless growth, Giorgos Kallis artfully explores the power of limits and the surprising freedom that they can unleash. A compelling―and fittingly concise―read for our times.” (Kate Raworth author of Doughnut Economics)
“Western culture is infatuated with the dream of going beyond, even as it is increasingly haunted by the specter of apocalypse: drought, famine, nuclear winter. How did we come to think of the planet and its limits as we do? This book reclaims, redefines, and makes an impassioned plea for limits—a notion central to environmentalism—clearing them from their association with Malthusianism and the ideology and politics that go along with it. Giorgos Kallis rereads reverend-economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his legacy, separating limits and scarcity, two notions that have long been conflated in both environmental and economic thought. Limits are not something out there, a property of nature to be deciphered by scientists, but a choice that confronts us, one that, paradoxically, is part and parcel of the pursuit of freedom. Taking us from ancient Greece to Malthus, from hunter-gatherers to the Romantics, from anarchist feminists to 1970s radical environmentalists, Limits shows us how an institutionalized culture of sharing can make possible the collective self-limitation we so urgently need.” – Book description.
Join us!
Gar Smith (he/him), Guest Speaker
An overview of the invisible health and environmental impacts of the “5G wireless revolution” that lies behind The Internet of Things.
5th Generation (not to be confused with 5 Gigahertz) wireless is not yet activated here, but some 5G-ready Small Cell WTF’s have been installed, and 1000’s are planned! 5G would drastically increase: surveillance, hacking, fire risk, interference with weather prediction, property devaluations, energy use, worker endangerment, industrial clutter, co$t to cities and individuals, adverse health & environmental effects due to radiation! https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2020/01/04/18829432.php
Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
Speaker will be Eugene E Ruyle, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, CSU Long Beach, currently with ICSS in Oakland. Gene will discuss his forthcoming book, Socialism for Americans: A Scientific Introduction to the Global Struggle for Socialism.
Gene’s basic idea is that although socialism takes different forms in different times and places, the revolutionary core of socialism lies in those societies that have actually had socialist revolutions: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, Korea, Vietnam, China, and Cuba. But this does not mean that the struggle for socialism within the imperialist countries is not important. It obviously is, and it must be placed in its proper context. Socialists in the United States are advised to shed their parochialism and embrace a global solidarity with the surviving and thriving socialist camp countries of China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos, as well as other forms of socialism throughout the world.
East Bay DSA’s bimonthly voting general meetings (GMs) include deliberation and voting on member-submitted resolutions, member announcements, reports from our committees, and more.
With our new regular schedule, member-submitted resolutions will be accepted on a rolling basis. Please email them to resolutions@eastbaydsa.org. The submissions deadline for each meeting is three weeks before the meeting.
Want to make sure our meeting runs smoothly? Sign up to volunteer with the meetings committee. This is a great, low-commitment role for new and experienced members alike. Please use the same form if you have child supervision or accessibility needs, including the need for an ASL interpreter.
For questions or comments please contact meetings@eastbaydsa.org.
Agenda TBD.
The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 3 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 3:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months, once Daylight Savings Time springs forward we tend to assemble at 4 PM).
On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 2 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.
OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over five years! 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
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. The Supreme Court’s misguided principle failed to recognize that corporations are legal fictions and only human beings are people. The corruption resulting from this and previous Supreme Court rulings has consolidated our political system into a single party plutocracy – a single “Business Party” witt Democratic and Republican wings controlled by corporate money. Move to Amend formed in response to Citizens United. We have built a Congressional coalition around the “We the People Amendment” (HJR48) that will reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. This forum will address the history of corporate rule, including more recent consolidation of corporate power ushered in with neoliberalism, and describe how HJR48 is a good first step in revoking corporate rule and establishing that “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Lawrence Abbott is a retired Teamster, and Wildlife Biologist working as a Seasonal Political Organizer for the AFL-CIO Alameda Labor Council, and as a volunteer Organizer for Move To Amend, MoveOn, and Indivisible SF/East Bay.
Phoebe Anne Sorgen is a delegate to the Green Party USA National Committee. A long time organizer for a nuke-free, just and sustainable world, she was 2005 Outstanding Woman of Berkeley and 2015 Tom Paine Courageous Spirit awardee. Years ago, she decided to focus on the overarching cure, getting the laws changed that gave profit-motivated corporations the power to ruin our world; so she serves on the Move to Amend Bay Area Steering Committee. She is currently also tackling 5G wireless telecom, an egregious symptom of the corporatocracy.
James McFadden is a UC Berkeley research physicist who facilitates the local East Bay Move to Amend steering committee. He is also an active member of the Green Party of Alameda County and several other political groups.
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. Snacks are potluck. Vegetarian and vegan snacks are always welcome, but we appreciate whatever you can bring! The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows, at 6:45 pm. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
Doors open at 7. We start promptly at 7:30.
Questions? Email info@indivisibleberkeley.org.
ADA Accessibility: The Finnish Hall has stairs leading up to the entrance so is not ADA accessible.
Indivisible Berkeley brings the Trump Resistance to 4000+ of our closest neighbors in Berkeley and surrounding communities.
Our mission is to resist the Trump agenda by engaging our elected officials at all levels of government and promote progressive and democratic values. Read our entire mission statement here.
Participation in Indivisible Berkeley activities constitutes agreement with our terms of participation.