Calendar

NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:

occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 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 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)

On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over six years, since October 2011! 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

Join the Hasta Muerte Movie Night: Prison Strike Screening of “Attica” (1971) Film screening and social!

We will be capping off the 2018 Prison Strike with a free screening of “Attica”, a documentary about the prison uprising in the New York that led to a massacre of prisoners following intense state repression to their revolt. ( read more here: https://libcom.org/history/1971-the-attica-prison-uprising)

The film screening will be followed by an informal social (we’re currently working on getting some food!), as well as a Q and A session with a person from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC).

More on the Hasta Muerte Coffee Collective Space here: http://www.hastamuertecoffee.com
(Hasta muerte is not affiliated with this event, nor is the Facebook event organizer)

Join us for an exciting and inspiring evening with Berkeley-based activist Xan Joi, a self-proclaimed radical anti-racist Jewish and white lesbian feminist and now author. She will share stories and wisdom found in her new book “But What Can I Do?” gained from her experiences driving around the country over 400,000 miles since 9/11 in her veggie-oil powered box truck.

Her “radical ride” has mobile billboards emblazoned with large, pointed anti-war, anti-violence, pro-peace, pro-empowerment missives all four sides.

Xan shares her stories of engaging in dialogue with both the ‘choir’ and the ‘other’, organizing, and strategizing actions. Her book is an inspiring communiqué aimed at creating a common, shared knowledge base from which to foment individual and collective action dismantling patriarchy, racism, war, misogyny and creating the kind of society we want all to thrive in!

Come join us! Bring an organic snack to share, if you want!
Sponsored by BFUU SJC.

Oakland needs a public bank!

The future Public Bank of Oakland will save our city millions of dollars in bank fees and interest charges. And it will earn millions more every year! It’s the best way to divest from Wall Street and keep our money in Oakland to benefit our community, not private banks’ shareholders. All around the country, the movement for state and municipal public banks is growing rapidly. To find out how public banking works, visit

friendsofpublicbankofoakland.org and publicbanking.org.

What’s happening now with Public Bank of Oakland?

Global Investment Company, the group doing the PBO feasibility study, has turned in their report to the City of Oakland staff and to staff in Richmond, Berkeley, and the County of Alameda, which all contributed funds for the study. The study will be presented to the Oakland City Council finance committee on September 11. We want the committee to accept the study, and recommend to the full Council that it direct staff to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the business plan.

What can I do?

Call City Council–especially the finance committee members! Say that you support public banking and you want to see the business plan RFP issued as soon as possible. In this election year our voices are especially strong. When you call the councilmember who represents your district, be sure to mention you’re a constituent.

District 1:             *Dan Kalb 510-238-7001

District 2:             *Abel Guillén 510-238-7002

District 3:             Lynette Gibson McElhaney 510-238-7003

District 4:             *Annie Campbell Washington 510-238-7004

District 5:             *Noel Gallo 510-238-7005

District 6:             Desley Brooks 510-238-7006

District 7:             Larry Reid 510-238-7007

At-large:              Rebecca Kaplan 510-238-7008

*Finance committee member

We’ll spend most of the time discussing our strategy for Tuesday morning’s meeting.

Other items on the agenda:

Introduction of our new social media person (!)
Outreach/fundraising report (Leah)
Reportback from Sunday’s event (Sylvia)
Reportback on California Public Banking Alliance meetings (Susan, etc.)

OTU’s Mission

The Oakland Tenants Union is an organization of housing activists dedicated to protecting tenant rights and interests. OTU does this by working directly with tenants in their struggle with landlords, impacting legislation and public policy about housing, community education, and working with other organizations committed to furthering renters’ rights. The Oakland Tenants Union is open to anyone who shares our core values and who believes that tenants themselves have the primary responsibility to work on their own behalf.

Monthly Meetings

The Oakland Tenants Union meets regularly at 7:00 pm on the second Monday evening of each month. Our monthly meetings are held in the Community Room of the Madison Park Apartments, 100 – 9th Street (at Oak Street, across from the Lake Merritt BART Station). To enter, gently knock on the window of the room to the right of the main entrance to the building. At the meetings, first we focus on general issues affecting renters city-wide and then second we offer advice to renters regarding their individual concerns.

If you have an issue, a question, or need advice about a tenant/landlord issue, please call us at (510) 704-5276. Leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will get back to you.

 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 1^st 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

Join the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International for a public forum:  ‘Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice: Women Leading Solutions on the Frontlines of Climate Change.”

This free event will be an extraordinary gathering of women leaders from across the United States and around the world, joined in solidarity to speak out against environmental and social injustice, draw attention to root causes of the climate crisis, and present the diverse array of visions and strategies with which they are working to shape a healthy and equitable world.

International advocates, grassroots, Indigenous, and frontline women leaders, and policy-makers, will discuss topics including the intersectionality of gender and environment; Indigenous rights; the just transition; women and forest protection and regeneration; fossil fuel resistance efforts; women and agro-ecology/soils; environmental racism; and women’s leadership and calls for action within a climate justice framework.

Speakers will include:

• Pennie Opal Plant – (Yaqui & undocumented Choctaw & Cherokee) Co-Founder of Idle No More SF Bay, Co-Founder of Movement Rights, and Signatory on the Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth Treaty
• Honorable Mary Robinson – President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, former President of Ireland
• Mirian Cisneros – (Kichwa) President of the Pueblo of Sarayaku, Ecuador
• Annie Leonard – Executive Director of Greenpeace USAl
• Amy Goodman ​- Host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!
• Jacqueline Patterson – Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Environmental and Climate Justice Program
• Kandi White – (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) Lead Organizer on the Extreme Energy & Just Transition Campaign with the Indigenous Environmental Network
• Antonia Juhasz – Energy author, investigative journalist and analyst, specializing in oil
• Wanda Culp – (Tlingit) Artist and forest defender, and Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network Regional Coordinator in the Tongass, Alaska
• Dr. Gail Myers – Agri-Cultural Anthropologist, Co-Founder of Farms to Grow, Inc., and co-initiator of the Freedom Farmers Market in Oakland, California
• Leila Salazar-López – Executive Director of Amazon Watch
• Doria Robinson – Executive Director of Urban Tilth, Representative of the Climate Justice Alliance
• Morissa Zuckerman – Representative with Sunrise Movement
• and many more

RSVP

Tax the Rich rally with Occupella sing along 7 Years on Solano Anniversary Celebration

Top of Solano in front of closed Oaks Theater,.

The very first Tax the Rich Rally was September 12, 2011. Occupy NYC began the following Saturday in 2011.

EBC will host a mail night at our office to respond to the increasing amount of correspondence we’ve been receiving from people in prisons and jails across the country. We are getting lots of questions about prior ballot initiatives including Prop 47 and 57, advocacy support, requests for pen pals and EBC’s work at large. We will also be sending information to people inside about how they can get involved with our priority bills.

Please RSVP to Emily@ellabakercenter.org

Come protest the Bank of Montreal’s involvement in financing Oakland’s unwanted coal terminal.

We will be demonstrating outside the conference of Principles for Responsible Investment, running concurrently with Global Climate Action Summit. Inside the conference, bankers and investors will be discussing responsible investment.

Outside we will be asking why the Bank of Montreal won’t renounce its plan to finance the Oakland coal terminal.

The Bank of Montreal has been instrumental in attempting to raise the $$ to finance the proposed coal terminal on the Oakland waterfront. They lobbied to get $50 million from the State of Utah and proposed to raise $200 million from pension funds, downplaying if not outright concealing that coal is involved. You can read more about this at NoCoalinOakland.info.

We want to stop the Bank of Montreal (which claims to practice socially responsible financing) and warn pension funds and other institutions that they may be targeted for this toxic and risky investment.

If there is no funding, there will be no terminal!

This is an informational event with leafletting, colorful banners, creative picket signs, chants, singing, and possible street theater.

You can also sign our Open Letter to the Bank of Montreal at tinyurl.com/BMO-letter

West Oakland Punks with Lunch is a guerilla not-for-profit Harm reduction outreach organization providing food and other necessities to people experiencing homelessness.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to volunteer with us! We just ask a few simple guidelines to keep PWL running smoothly.

Please come wearing closed toed shoes and dressed appropriately for the weather. We ask that you show up with a non-judgemental, come as you are attitude. Be ready to work hard and have fun!

Wednesday:  Mobile Outreach

Meet at: 36th and MLK                Hours: 6pm-8pm

We do mobile outreach from 56th St. and MLK all the way down to 30th and MLK.
We provide snacks, water, hygiene and harm reduction supplies.
If you are interested in volunteering Wednesdays, please email us at:
oaklandpunkswithlunch@gmail.com

Sunday: Fixed Sites

Meet at: 2630 Union St.               Hours:    Prep 1pm-3pm, Distribution: 3pm-6pm
We have two fixed sites on Sundays. One at 35th and Peralta St. from 3:30pm-4:15pm and the other at 4:30pm-5:15pm. Ideally we stay on time, but we don’t beat ourselves up if we are a little late.  You have the option of staying for only prep, only distribution, or BOTH!  Sundays are the perfect day to get to know our organization for the day, or continue working with us to grow as on organization.

In May 2018, Oakland joined a growing number of California cities and counties that are currently passing meaningful surveillance oversight laws.

The new law requires that the Privacy Advisory Commission be notified if the city is spending money or seeking outside grant money to be spent on any hardware or software that could potentially impact privacy. Notably, Oakland’s law specifically includes provisions that forbid non-disclosure agreements and protect whistleblowers.

Oakland has been at the forefront of local efforts to pass pro-privacy measures for many years now. Back in 2013, after a controversial measure to approve federal grant money to construct a “Domain Awareness Center,” the city created the PAC. This body, composed of volunteer commissioners from each city council district, acts as a privacy check on the city when any municipal entity (typically the police department) wants to acquire a technology that may impinge on individual privacy.

It appears to be the only municipal entity like this anywhere in the nation.

So to help us understand what’s going on with the Oakland PAC, we’ve invited Raymundo Jacquez III, an Oakland attorney, and a member of the PAC, to the next edition of Ars Live.

Raymundo Jacquez III joined the Youth Law Academy (YLA) at the Centro Legal de la Raza in 2014. He earned his J.D. from UC Davis School of Law, Martin Luther King Jr. Hall in 2014, and his B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Chicana/o Studies from UCLA in 2008. Jacquez is passionate about improving access to the legal profession for students of color, civil rights law, police accountability, education, and social justice.

As the YLA Program Director, Jacquez manages the mentorship program, coordinates internships, and advances the group’s Diversity Legal Pipeline for undergraduate students. He brings his experience as a youth organizer, educator, and lawyer to the YLA to engage students in a critical examination of the legal system and hopes to motivate students to realize their unique potentials as agents of change in their community.

Ars Live takes place on the second Wednesday of every month at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland (3629 MLK Way – they have the best tater tots you’ve ever eaten).

Doors open at 7pm, and the live filming is from 7:30pm to 8:20-ish. Stick around afterward for informal discussion, beer, and snacks. Can’t make it out to Oakland? Never fear! Episodes will be posted to Ars Technica the week after the live events.

The event is free but space is limited, so get there early if you want a seat.

 Chris Hedges shows us in America, The Farewell Tour, a country that should

Shame us, a land of rampant and deadly drug addiction, of escape into gambling and pornography, of zenophobic scapegoating – a country where the super rich exploit the poor and vulnerable. He is calling us out for having become a corporate state where the dignity and worth of the individual no longer matter.

This is a profound and provocative examination of America in crisis, convulsed by pathologies that have risen from the sense of hopelessness. Hedges examines our retreat into gambling, pornography, and drugs as Americans attempt to cope with an economic collapse that has left so many out of work and others working two or even three jobs just to stay afloat. As our society unravels, we also must face global upheavals, specifically the emerging catastrophes wrought by climate change. He argues that we must reverse the corporate coup d’etat destroying our country and combat the current crisis by waging a cultural, moral and even spiritual resistance.

 Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported from more than 50 countries. He spent 15 years at The New York Times as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief. He is the author of twelve previous books, including the bestselling American Fascists, Death of the Liberal Class,and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, The University of Toronto, and in  the New Jersey prison system. He is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute.  His work has appeared in Harper’s,

  The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Adbusters, Granta,  and Foreign Affairs.

 Norman Solomon is a  media critic, former U.S. Congressional candidate, and a journalist with ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is also the author of numerous books and a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

Tickets: $15 brownpapertickets.com, Pegasus Books (3 stores), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, East Bay Books, Mrs. Dalloway’s, Books Inc Berkeley), $18 door

Mass Action: Stand With Communities, Not Corporations!

The It Takes Roots-hosted Solidarity to Solutions Summit is a popular assembly for all progressive social movements to gather, discuss and debate the critical strategies, solutions and proposals for collective action that will tackle the root, systemic causes of capitalism and climate change.

The gathering aims to critically examine the neo-liberal, corporate agenda of the Global Climate Action Summit and highlight the democratic, grassroots solutions being cultivated by Indigenous communities, communities of color and working class peoples around the world.

This assembly is built on the shared belief that to successfully tackle these intertwined crises, we need to take action in solidarity with the self-determination of communities on the frontlines of ecological and economic collapse.  This means following their leadership in replacing the dig, burn, drive, dump systems that are destroying the planet with localized systems of caring and sharing being cultivated by those same communities.

It Takes Roots is a multiracial, multicultural, multi-generational alliance of networks and alliances representing over 200 organizations and affiliates in over 50 states, provinces, territories and Native lands in the U.S. and Canada, and is led by women, gender nonconforming people, people of color, and Indigenous Peoples.  It is an outcome of years of organizing and relationship building across the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and Right to the City Alliance (RTC) alongside Center for Story-based Strategy and The Ruckus Society.

Sol2Sol Schedule of Events

• Saturday, September 8, 10am: Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice March, Embarcadero, San Francisco
• Sunday, September 9: 8am Traditional Ohlone Ceremony and Welcome at the Shellmounds. Community Solutions Tours, Art Builds & Action training, Bay Area
• September 10, 8am: Mass action Against Climate Change Profiteers at Parc 55 Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin St, San Francisco
• Tuesday, September 11: It Takes Roots Solidarity to Solutions Summit at La Raza Park, San Francisco
• Thursday, September 13, 7am: Mass Action at the Global Climate Action Summit at 736 Mission St, San Francisco