Calendar
The 25th SF IndieFest will be presented at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco from Feb 2nd – 9th, and online through virtual cinema from Feb 2nd to Feb 12th.
More info at https://t.co/zlbTFFeDZK#movies #sfindie #indiefilm #sanfrancisco #film pic.twitter.com/zdigQNFMGi— ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL (@AHITHfilmfest) February 1, 2023
Join the South Berkeley Legacy Project at its Neighborhood History Walking Tour for #BlackHistoryMonth, led by Tina Jones Williams!
Saturday, February 11
10 am – 12 pmRSVP: 510-821-0821 or zach@twcmih.org pic.twitter.com/fFqiPmzWE0
— Terry Taplin🚰🏳️🌈🥑🌹🚲🚍✍️🏾 (@TaplinTerry) February 6, 2023
If you’re interested in getting involved in our family support work, we have a training opportunity with our first responders committee who work directly with impacted families day in and day out.
This training draws on over 10 years of experience of investigating incidents of police terror and providing support to impacted families. We’ll give an overview of APTP’s history, organizing, and trauma-informed family support model. We’ll discuss typical challenges faced by families as well as the needs we seek to address.
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.
For our February meeting we are reading Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It (Verso, Amazon) by Nancy Fraser.
A trenchant look at contemporary capitalism’s insatiable appetite—and a rallying cry for everyone who wants to stop it from devouring our world.
Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In this tightly argued and urgent volume, leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy.
What we need, she argues, is a wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital—and starve it to death.
Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth, Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, and Less is More.
The 25th SF IndieFest will be presented at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco from Feb 2nd – 9th, and online through virtual cinema from Feb 2nd to Feb 12th.
More info at https://t.co/zlbTFFeDZK#movies #sfindie #indiefilm #sanfrancisco #film pic.twitter.com/zdigQNFMGi— ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD FILM FESTIVAL (@AHITHfilmfest) February 1, 2023
Marxism and Problems of Linguistics.
Our speaker is Yusuf Gürsey who is originally from Istanbul, Turkey and currently lives in New Haven, CT. He is a member of the CPUSA, as well as a member of the US Peace Council in Connecticut and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Marxist Education centered in Cambridge, MA. After retiring from being an associate professor of physics in Turkey, he studied graduate level linguistics online at the Virtual Linguistics Campus broadcast from the University of Marburg in Germany. He is an independent researcher, translator and interpreter. His fields of interest in linguistics are historical linguistics (specializing in Turkic and Semitic languages), phonology and socio-linguistics. He is also currently engaged in research in the study of calendars and the history of Middle Eastern peoples, the medieval period and the history of modern Leftist movements.
The current talk will concentrate Joseph Stalin’s “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics” and the language policies of socialist states and some other leftist movements.
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Learn about a plan to destroy California forest land and increase pollution—here and overseas—by producing “biomass,” a false climate solution that does more harm than good.
The plan is to produce wood pellets to burn in for energy that’s supposedly “renewable,” because trees absorb carbon dioxide when they grow back—disregarding the fact that the CO2 from burning wood is all released immediately, while it takes many decades for a new tree to absorb that much. We don’t have that time!
Golden State Natural Resources is proposing to build two of the country’s largest wood pellet production facilities in California’s Lassen and Tuolumne counties, using wood obtained by cutting and removing “trees and other forest materials, of any type and size . . .within a 100-mile radius of each pellet facility.”
The wood pellets would then be transported by rail to ports in Stockton and Richmond, where they would emit methane, dust, and fine particulate matter. From there they would be shipped overseas to burn in power plants converted from coal, releasing CO2 and co-pollutants.
At this webinar, speakers including Gary Hughes of Biofuel Watch will explain the dangers of this plan and the efforts to stop it.
In a comment letter on the scoping plan for the environmental impact report on this project, the Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations, including Sunflower Alliance, wrote: “Wood pellets are a highly polluting, expensive, and inefficient energy source that have no place in a clean energy future. Burning wood for electricity releases more carbon emissions at the smokestack than fossil fuels, including coal, per unit of energy produced.
“Numerous studies show that it takes many decades—to a century or more (if ever)—for cut forests to re-sequester the amount of carbon that is emitted from logging and burning woody biomass for energy, even when forest “residues” (i.e. “waste”) are burned. Producing wood pellets is extremely carbon-intensive because the wood must be debarked, chipped, dried, pulverized, and compressed into pellets. . . Wood pellet production facilities also emit toxic air pollution that harms public health. These facilities are often concentrated in communities of color and low-income communities, worsening environmental injustice.”
For deeper dive on the proposed California project and the perils of biomass, check out this recent episode of Terra Verde on KPFA.
Take a look at how biomass projects contribute to old-growth forest destruction in Canada here.
Find an inspiring story about how North Carolina communities defeated a proposed biomass plant here.
Take action:
If you’re interested in joining a work group to organize opposition, please email action@sunflower-alliance.org
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
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83676331606?pwd=SUtqU1V3OW1SZ0kzQTlMeDhDRXA5dz09
Natylie Baldwin is the author of The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations and co-author of Ukraine: ZBIG’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated. She traveled throughout western Russia in 2015 and 2017 and interviewed a cross-section of Russians. Her writing has appeared in various publications including The Grayzone, Consortium News, RT, The Globe Post, Antiwar.com, and OpEd News. Her websites are: https://natyliesbaldwin.com/ and: https://natyliesb.medium.com/
Baldwin will discuss Ukraine’s history and how it relates to contemporary political and cultural divisions in the country. She will also provide insight on how NATO expansion and other post-Cold War actions by the US-led West looked from Moscow’s perspective, which led to Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine last February.
Save the Date for Next Month’s Green Sunday – March 12 Report from Nicaragua
Panel Discussion: Phoebe Thomas Sorgen, Erica Caines, and Jennifer Sullivan were part of the Alliance for Global Justice delegation to Nicaragua in January titled “Women in Nicaragua – Power and Protagonism.” Did you know that Nicaragua is a world leader in gender equality?
Erica Caines is Co-Coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace – Haiti/Americas Team. Jennifer Sullivan, who is on the Green Parrty International Committee with Phoebe, joins us from Florida. She is treasurer for the GP National Women’s Caucus. Phoebe is the GP-US representative to the Global Green Network.
Sneak preview: https://afgj.salsalabs.org/reportjan23?wvpId=3b43e68b-92fb-431b-b75f-6268ae8dcb1f
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. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows at 7:00 pm, after a 30-minute break. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
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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.
https://t.co/FQYTHaNbc5 things are getting fun during our Monday night women coding nights at the SudoRoom – new flyer and a cool learning mapping project of all the languages spoken in Oakland using Jupiter pic.twitter.com/pUvHtP1sRa
— Sudo Room (@sudoroom) February 12, 2023
Limited seating: sign up now!https://t.co/cKabHzEkyR… pic.twitter.com/LmIkYeEjZz
— Coalition for Police Accountability (@oakcopoversight) February 7, 2023
Please email contact@oaklandprivacy.org a few days before the meeting to get up-to-date location information or obtain Zoom meeting access info.
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay and nationwide.
We fight against spy drones, facial recognition, tracking equipment, police body camera secrecy, anti-transparency laws and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones; we oppose “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” — to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government, and attempts to hide what government officials, employees and agencies are doing.
We draft and push for privacy legislation for City Councils, at the County level, and in Sacramento. We advocate in op-eds and in the streets. We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and believe no one is illegal.
Check out some of what we worked on in 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.
Oakland Privacy originally came together in 2013 to fight against the Domain Awareness Center, Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OP was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network. We helped fight and helped win the fight against Urban Shield.
Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance (we got the strongest surveillance regulation ordinance in the country passed in Oakland!), supporting and opposing state legislation as appropriate, battling mass surveillance in the form of facial recognition and other analytics, mass aerial surveillance, ubiquitous license plate readers, and pushing back against ICE.
On September 12th, 2019 we were presented with a Barlow Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for our work, and on March 16th, 2021 s James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists.
If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:
Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/
Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy
“WATCHING YOU WATCHING US”
Oakland Privacy works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. Oakland Privacy drove the passage of surveillance regulation and transparency ordinances in Oakland and Berkeley and is kicking off new processes in various municipalities around the Bay. To help slow down the encroaching police and surveillance state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.
Join us at our monthly general meeting tonight at 7pm, and tomorrow for two solidarity actions…
The Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) is a Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational organization that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color.
APTP hosts its general meetings on the 3rd Wednesday of every month; since Covid we have been meeting online. If you want to learn more about our work and figure out other ways to plug in, you can join our next general meeting tonight at 7pm. Register to join us!
What: Justice for Steven Taylor Court Support
When: Thursday, February 16 at 9am
Where: Alameda County Superior Courthouse, 1225 Fallon St, Oakland
Steven Taylor was a Black man who was shot and killed in a Walmart while in a mental health crisis on April 18, 2020 by San Leandro police officer Jason Fletcher. His grandmother Addie Kitchen has been leading the fight for justice ever since.
Later Jason Fletcher became the first officer to be charged by former Alameda County DA O’Malley (with involuntary manslaughter). Almost three years later, the trial is finally set to begin in the coming months. This is the first case in which AB 392 (the CA use of force law) will be applied. Tomorrow, February 16th, the court will finally be setting the stage for the trial by appointing a judge, setting dates, and more.
Please join the family of Steven Taylor to support them as the trial against Jason Fletcher begins.
What: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal March & Rally
When: Thursday, February 16 at 12pm
Where: 400 North Point St, San Francisco
WHAT’S THE CALL?
FREE THEM ALL!!
Tomorrow there will be solidarity actions across the world from the Bay Area to South Africa. ILWU Local 10 is shutting down the Port of Oakland and San Francisco on Thursday, February 16 to call for Mumia’s Freedom. We will meet at noon at the ILWU Local 10 Hall and march to Harry Bridges Plaza.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther and revolutionary journalist who was framed for killing a police officer and has been in prison in Pennsylvania for 41 years. Organizers, activists, community members, and friends and family of Mumia will speak on the ongoing legal struggle he faces and the importance of labor solidarity with political prisoners.
We call the Bay Area into the streets to join us in supporting the call to free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
With love and solidarity,
APTP
All are welcomed to stand with Mothers On The March and People from the Community.
We stand with signs and banners and chalk the sidewalk, bringing attention to the crimes of the SFPD.
Our Demands:
-The Police Officers Association be SHUT DOWN!
-The SF POA Be Declared a Non-Grata Organization
-Abolish the ‘Officers Bill of Rights’ – This has been used to protect officers in abusing our communities!
-Jail Killer Cops – we demand killer cops be charged and convicted with murder
-Abolish the Police!
Freedom Rally for Iran 💚🕊❤️
Come join us on February 18th in San Francisco to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran.
Start: intersection of Powell street and Market street
End: Embarcadero plaza
Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm#IRGCterrorists #WomanLifeFreedom pic.twitter.com/JRC78gwrP0— BayArea4Iran (@bayarea4Iran) February 15, 2023
Oakland Greens 4th annual virtual townhall:
Green Party politics: What are best practices for growing the
Our 4th annual alternative political parties event: What are best practices to overgrow for a new system? The Oakland Greens have long voiced that a best practice might be using rallies as candidate recruitment. We think the current system is running exactly as planned and we need a completely new system. What are your ideas?
Virtual doors open att 6 PM (with the best pre-show music diversity!) The discussion begins at 6:30 PM PST on ZOOM:
Turkiye (the new and improved name replacing Turkey) is in a nosedive toward a total collapse. This is an expected route of all neo-colonial countries dependent on imperialism.
A new section of capitalists is using the NATO Gladio criminals to implement a narco-state to keep the economy alive in Turkiye. Privatization and marketization of every aspect of life have come to a total failure. Unprecedented Corruption at every level, bribery, theft, eco-destruction, gang rule, and the rise of deadly attacks, especially on women, shows the limits of a market economy in a dependent, neo-colonial country.
Turkiye is in dire need of funds to make it to the next day. Each day passing in Turkiye is funded and provided by its Muslim, fascist regional countries while imperialism sucks the life out of people every day. Workers and the people pay for these “favors” with hunger, misery, and working below slave wages. In the new world with its budding multi-polar centers, Erdogan is trying to find a new ally in Russia. However, its loyalty to NATO and western imperialism poses unsurpassable challenges.
We will discuss whether Turkiye has any chance of survival by following the 100 years of the capitalist route. The tasks and obligations of the left before and after the May-June elections will shed a light on everyday living in the country.
Journalist Mehmet Bayram recently returned from a long trip to Turkey.
Yusuf Gürsey is originally from Istanbul, Turkey and is currently living in New Haven, CT. He is a member of the CPUSA, as well as a member of the US Peace Council in Connecticut, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Marxist Education centered in Cambridge, MA.
ZOOM LINK
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Meeting ID: 811 3335 0622
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PEACE MARCH etc.
Ends 3pm with a tea party outside Nancy Pelosi’s mansion in Pacific Heights. A flatbed truck will transport marchers.
Details: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/02/05/18854146.php
Big peace rallies are starting up again!
We’re hoping lots of people will find a way to BE THERE in San Francisco at noon on February 19, this Sunday, and to encourage others.
For rallies around the nation, see: https://rageagainstwar.com/rallies/
WHAT: Rage Against the War Machine march and rally
WHEN: Sunday, February 19, 12:00 noon
WHERE: Embarcadero Plaza, SF
WHO: You, your friends, your family
WHY: Stop outrageously excessive military spending. Shift money and energy toward constructing a better world https://rageagainstwar.com/#Demands
Please REPLY to: acgreens2012@gmail.com if you might be there! See the MEET AT BART paragraph below about how we can meet up and go to SF together.
- People often ask: Do rallies and marches do any good? I believe that people standing together for what we want is always worthwhile, and besides, it’s a good way to see people we know, almost like having a party and not having to prepare in advance or clean up after. Also, it’s open air which is great these days.
The rally in Washington, DC has an amazing lineup of speakers https://rageagainstwar.com/#Speakers from across the political spectrum. While there are many topics various groups may disagree on, we are united in being for peace and against war and military spending.
MEET AT BART
With gratitude for this procedure to Steve and Beth and others from LMNOP, Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace, here’s how we can meet up and go to the rally together: meet at the MacArthur BART station at 11:15am to go thru the gate promptly at 11:30. We will sit in the last car so that if you get on at a different station you may still be able to hook up with us because you’ll know where to find us. RSVP if you might be there! Be seen being GREEN!
Rage Against the War Machine
The 2/19 SF sister event is organized by Cynthia Papermaster & Golden Gate Code Pink.