Calendar
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!
On the night of May 27, bulldozers and backhoes rolled into Gezi Park, a tiny island of trees and grass at the center of Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, and started ripping it apart. This was part of a government project to “pedestrianize” the historic square—what that meant in this case, according to many blogs, was turning one of the last open green spaces in the city into a shopping mall. No community organizations or local people were asked what they thought about the plans for the park, devised by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which included rebuilding historical barracks that were demolished in the 1940s and adding sidewalks to make the square more friendly to pedestrians.
Four days later, after nonviolent protesters occupied the park and survived attacks by the police that included tear gas and water cannons, they’ve won at least a temporary victory thanks to a court decision. In fact, Istanbul’s mayor, Kadir Topbaş, just announced that there was never any plan to build a mall. It’s an amazing 11th-hour turnaround, but it didn’t happen without a battle.
Protesters began gathering in the park as early as Monday, May 27, and word spread through social media as more pro-park, anti-government Turks showed up to sit in front of the bulldozers. By Wednesday, the police were involved, and they responded to the nonviolent protests with aggressive tactics—what really got everyone’s attention was a photo from Reuters showing a young, apparently peaceful environmentalist in a red dress getting pepper-sprayed by a gas-masked cop. That image became a symbol of the “occupation” of Gezi Park, as well as the cops’ terrorization of the protesters.
We will join Liberate the Land at 950 Gough St in SF to march in Solidarity with those brutalized by Turkish Police for merely trying to save a park from being torn down.
This is a non-permitted march (yay) and there will be a constructive direct action that takes place after the march. Talk to folks there about the details, or just come along for the ride! We need livestreamers, video, signs in solidarity with Taksim protesters, and most of all, you.
Strike Debt Bay Area, loosely affiliated with Strike Debt (check out their latest video) and Occupy, is dedicated to educating people about and organizing resistance to debt, and finding alternatives to our current system of debt slavery.
Join us! You Are Not a Loan! Or Alone.
All are welcome! Come see how you can plug in to the debt resistance movement.
We will first meet all together and then divide up into working groups:
Study & Research (people interested in tackling specific research questions, reading books together, etc.). Currently there are a number of reading groups active.
Direct Action (people interested in organizing against Post Office closings, Wells Fargo and other debt possessing targets)
Debtors’ Union (tactical work for collective organizing against private and public debt)
Alternative Institutions (Alternative currencies, public banking, communal living, and more!)
Then we will come back together for general discussion.
Our web page.
Our Facebook page.
Follow StrikeDebt (NYC) on twitter.
Latest StrikeDebt Analysis: Death By For-Profit Health Care.
A Conversation: Take Our Economy Back From Wall Street
Matt Taibbi, Ellen Brown, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Gar Aperovitz.
This is actually a three day conference. More information here.
How often do you get a chance to join with other creative minds discussing how best to redesign the banking systems of nations, in ways that would create new prosperity for millions and help to rebuild local economies?
Join pioneering policy makers, civic leaders, banking entrepreneurs, innovators and ordinary citizens interested in learning about one of the most critical undertakings of our time: creating a truly prosperous, democratic and sustainable new economy.
On Sunday night, June 2nd from 7 – 9:30pm, Matt Taibbi will speak on “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squds, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.” He will join Ellen Brown, Author of Web of Debt and her book (newly available on 6/2/13) The Buck Starts Here, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of Iceland’s Parliament, in a discussion of how we can move from a two-tiered justice system (one favoring the financial elites and one for the rest of us) to a more just and democratic system where we can reclaim our economic sovereignty from Wall Street banks and the US Congress.
OAKLAND (UN)FAIR CARNIVAL AND MARCH
We are graduate students, undergrads, faculty, workers, lecturers, and others concerned about DEFENDING QUALITY AND ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC EDUCATION and BUILDING SAFE AND SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACES at the UC.
Thursday June 6
(un)Fair Carnival and Musical March::
12pm: Start at Oscar Grant Plaza. We’ll be stopping by the hotel where high-level administrators are attending a conference with panels on how to suppress protests and public events like ours.
People’s Public Forum::
If you want to join us just for the People’s Public Forum:
1pm: Converge at Snow Park before we head to the Kaiser Center (300 Lakeside Dr.) at 1:30 for a People’s Public Forum. We are hopeful that the administration will let us speak inside the Oakland Room #1015 as per their original plan, but we are prepared to hold a press conference with speakers outside of the building if they refuse. Come one, come all.
President Obama is coming to Palo Alto for a fundraiser, and hundreds of people are gathering to meet him with a powerful message: stop the Keystone XL pipeline!
Over the last couple months, thousands of organizers across the country have met President Obama at events across the country to tell him we expect him to stop the pipeline. Just 6 weeks ago, over 1000 folks gathered in San Francisco, and over 150 in Atherton to tell the President no pipeline! It’s the South Bay’s turn again to show the President we want him to stand up for the climate and stop Keystone XL.
We know that this decision is about siding with Big Oil or the people. We may not be able to make it into an expensive fundraiser, we will make sure that we are heard. There will be signs and banners there already; all you absolutely need is to be ready to make some noise.
Come join us on Thursday for what is sure to be a fun time.