Calendar

Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay.

We fight against “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” spy drones, facial recognition, police body cameras and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones, to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government.

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.

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.

Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance (we got the strongest surveillance regulation ordinance in the country passed in Oakland!), opposing Urban Shield (now gone!) and pushing back against ICE with local legislation.

If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:

contact@oaklandprivacy.org

Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/   Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy

Check out our sister site DeportICE.

“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 Richmond and Alameda County.  To help slow down the encroaching police state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.

Want to get involved with SURJ Bay Area? Come learn about our current work and activities. SURJ moves white people to act for justice, with passion and accountability, as part of a multi-racial majority.

Prisoners started arriving at Guantanamo on Friday, Jan. 11 2002. This Friday, on the 17th Anniversary of Guantanamo Prison, DRAD will join Codepink and allies at a rally and press conference at UC Law School to call for closing Gitmo and prosecution of John Yoo for torture.

Join us to speak out against the injustice! 

Meet up in front of the law school, rain or shine.

Gitmo now holds 40 men, including 5 who have long been cleared for release, and it continues to be a moral stain on our nation as well as enormously expensive. “Maintaining the prison at Guantnamo has cost the American taxpayer $4.8 billion since it opened in 2002, and an average of $454 million every year for the last five years.” ACLU, 2017

Did you know that UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky called for prosecuting John Yoo? That’s right.  A 2014 Nation article said “Chemerinsky’s argument is that Yoo has committed a criminal act – conspiracy to torture – and that at he should be put on trial for it.”

At that time Chemerinsky was Dean of UC Irvine Law School.

This Friday at 12:30 we’re going to deliver a letter of concern to Dean Chemerinsky making him aware of the community’s opposition to John Yoo’s complicity in torture and asking him to take action to protect UC Berkeley law students from Yoo’s toxic theories and criminal actions.

Please Join Us!

It’s past time to shut Gitmo and for Yoo to be held accountable for his illegal actions.

The Japanese Abe government continues to restart nuclear plants throughout the country. At the same time they have accumulated over 1 million tons of radioactive water at the Fukushima plant which they want to release into the Pacifica ocean. It contains tritium which the government is saying is safe in “small amounts”.
The government has also covered up the statistics of thyroid cancer in children in order to continue the cover-up of the dangers of Fukushima. 3.11 Fund for Children With Thyroid Cancer has said that children who have cancer are not being counted by Fukushima Medical University which is controlled by TEPCO and other supporters of nuclear power. There is a growing increase of thyroid cancer and other diseases from the radioactive contamination. The government continues to demand that children and familiar return to Fukushima or lose the housing benefits outside Fukushima.
The danger of another major earthquake that threatens another Fukushima and also would release millions of tons of radioactive water into the ocean.
At the same time the government is pushing ahead to build a new military base in Henoko that will have US nuclear weapons despite mass opposition from the people of Okinawa. The same Abe government is pushing ahead to remove Article 9 that forbids expansion of Japan’s military role around the world.
Stopping another Fukushima and more militarization are part and parcel of the same struggle.

Come speak out to defend the people of Fukushima, Japan and the world.

For more event information:
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com

7 YEARS LATER, WHY HASN’T JAPAN LEARNED FROM FUKUSHIMA?
Cancer rates in children are sky high, radioactive rubbish is piling up and radiation levels are rising. Yet the government bails out the plant’s operator – even as it announces a profit and plans to resume seaside operations
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2136176/7-years-later-why-hasnt-japan-learned-fukushima

Japan undecided on what to do with 1 million tonnes of radioactive water at Fukushima plant
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-02/fukushimas-radioactive-water-still-a-dilemma-for-japanese-gov/9504072
By North Asia correspondent Jake Sturmer in Tokyo
Updated 1 Mar 2018, 11:11pm

Fukushima 4-year-old missing in Japan thyroid-cancer records
https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20170330/news/303309794

Doughnut Economics Reading Group:
Creating a world with neither human suffering nor planetary peril

Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21^st century economist

By Kate Raworth Chelsea Green Publishing (2017)

The capitalist economic system defines every aspect of our lives: the schooling and medical care we get, where we live, and how we sustain ourselves. The system works for a lucky few and exploits everyone else. And it’s a real threat to the survival of our species (and many others) on this planet.

We know the system needs to change—but we can’t change what we don’t understand. We have to know what we’re talking about.

Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics lays out traditional economic theory—still taught as gospel at all the major temples of capitalism—with clarity, authority, lots of graphics, and quite a bit of humor. She exposes the flawed models and persistent myths that keep the system in place. Even more importantly, she presents seven big, basic ideas with which to begin creating the world we want to see. We can indeed build an economy in the “doughnut”—meeting the needs of all while maintaining the biospheres that support us.

All of us need to read this book. We’ve all grown up in this deeply unfair and absurd system; seeing it clearly and getting free of it require a group effort.

So we at Strike Debt Bay Area are sponsoring a group discussion of Doughnut Economics. We’re doing one meeting a month on the 2nd Saturday; we’ll usually do about one chapter per meeting. Please join us!

3rd meeting:

4:30 – 6:00pm, Saturday, January 12th.
Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland

We’ll be discussing the 3rd chapter.

Bring the book (available at your favorite online bookseller and in select local bookstores) and/or your thoughts on the topic (The first and possibly subsequent chapters are available online – http://tinyurl.com/ycysqtde ‘Look Inside’).

The book is an easy read (but full of ideas!) so it’s easy to catch up.

Author website: https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

East Bay DSA’s general meetings (GMs) are held on the second Sunday of each month. These meetings include deliberation and voting on member-submitted resolutions, member announcements, reports from our committees, and more.

Volunteering at the GM is lively, easy, and low-commitment, and hugely benefits the meetings and thus our internal democracy. If you intend to come and would like to volunteer (!), let us know. Use this form, too, if you have child supervision or accessibility needs, including the need for an ASL interpreter.

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 one week after the previous one.

General meetings are run by the Meetings Committee. For questions or comments, or if you are interested in joining the committee, write us at meetings@eastbaydsa.org!

The Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC) focuses on fighting the four pillars of evil: poverty, systemic racism, the war economy and environmental devastation, and on shifting the moral narrative. PPC supporters in the Bay Area have come together to form the Bay Area PPC Steering Committee and hope you can join this effort and share this information with others who may be interested.

AT THE UPCOMING MEETING WE WILL DISCUSS:

– Plans for the March 2019 PPC Bay Area Hearing (dates, times,
locations, format)

– Outreach to local organizations and venues

In the PPC, people directly impacted by the 4 pillars of evil are
central in our work.

We look forward to your participation as we move forward to build the PPC campaign here in the Bay Area and help grow this exciting new movement.

Let us break bread together! Bring a snack to share if you can!

Please let us know if you will need childcare by January 11th.

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

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (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

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.

Thanks to all who attended our previous planning meetings! We’ve established several committees who are working hard to plan this major event. There’s still lots more work to do and plenty of room for you to join in, if you’ve not yet been able to get involved. We’d like to invite back those of you who are already plugged into a committee and all those who were unable to make it, but would like to help us make this a powerful action.

Working committees are policy & program, outreach, logistics & security, media, and fundraising. If you have some time before the 16th, please dm us if you’d like to jump in to one of these committees right away.

Join us to help plan #ThePeoplesMarch – the Fifth Annual March to #ReclaimMLK’s Radical Legacy … A mass mobilization!
Bring your ideas and energy and invite your friends, we’ve got work to do!

Please join us for a special Sunflower Alliance meeting to follow up on our inspiring retreat and make plans for 2019. Old friends and newcomers are equally welcome.  We need your participation and your voice! Come early to hang out and share a potluck lunch.

12:30 PM — potluck lunch
1 – 3 PM — meeting

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

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (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

Last week, over 150 heavily armed police officers came with guns and chainsaws to cut down our trees and trash our homes. Six people – community members and students – were violently awoken and handcuffed at 5 am, on charges of “illegal camping” – because they had put up tents and tarps as shelter from the rain. All of their belongings were seized or trashed.

We reject the UC’s claim that this is about sick trees. This is about razing one of Berkeley’s few public spaces to turn it into privatized, luxury dorms. Some trees were supposedly removed because they were “too close to other trees”. Others were completely removed over health issues that are normally solved by removing a branch. The only thing “wrong” with those trees was that they stood in the way of the construction equipment the UC intends to bring in.

They came in the dark of night, during break, when they knew most students would be away from Berkeley, to make it look like students didn’t care. Join us in the park at 11:30 for a rally, and then march to campus, to show the UC that the park belongs to the People, not militarized cops and not private corporations!

As DPW continually confiscates property at the behest of the city govt, the BOS appears poised to enact SB-1045, a dangerous bill meant to conserve homeless folks with a prior history of 5150 holds in mental institutions without their consent. The city puts these efforts into attacking the poor while the Bayview is still without even a full service shelter after decades of broken promises. The people of SF demand housing and appropriate services.
Join the Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance in exposing these actions of the city of SF, Oakland and Berkeley. Let’s come together and fight back!

This Rally will create an opportunity for folks to speak on their experiences being harrassed by the Department of Public Works, The police and their local city Government. The scheduled speakers will include Gwendolyn Westbrook (CEO of the United Council of Human services), representatives of the United Front Against Displacement, Berkeley Friends on Wheels, Neither Here nor There.

However, this event is open to all to participate!

The topic for the meeting is Looking to 2019. We’ll be having some speakers who will give us an overview of some of the issues that we’ll be addressing in this coming year. The Agenda for the meeting is attached.

These include:

a. Looking toward 2019/2020; The View from Indivisible Berkeley ­ Daron Sharps
b. Update on Urban Shield and Audit the Sheriff ­ John Lindsay Poland, AFSC
c. The Oakland Teacher’s Strike ­“ Jeremy Wolff, Chair of Political Involvement Committee of OEA
d. An Environmental Agenda for California ­ Judy Pope, 350 East Bay (document attached to the agenda)e. The Green New Deal ­ Isaac Silk and others, Representatives of the Sunrise Movement

Potluck at 6PM — Meeting at 6:45PM (Please bring something to share)

Join us 5pm Friday Jan. 25 at 24th & Mission to say NO to the U.S.-orchestrated coup in Venezuela #HandsOffVenezuela
Event page: https://t.co/KOWQOM5kmZ@answercoalition @MLNow @SFGate @Indybay @elteco @CubaVenezCte pic.twitter.com/KMo3aVV0MS

— ANSWER Coalition-SF (@sfANSWER) January 24, 2019

Kamala Harris for President has chosen Oakland for her initial Campaign Launch Rally on January 27, 12:00pm.

What are you going to do, Oakland, when Kamala Harris sets up shop in our town to push her phony “progressive prosecutor” schtick? Her campaign slogan at this point is “Kamala Harris for the People,” but we know she is anything but a candidate for the people, all of the people, those who lost their homes to predatory banks, for instance. She claims to be “tough, principled, fearless,” but we know none of that is true. She’s certainly not tough on the wealthy and powerful. She’s just another ambitious corpocrat trying to pretend she’s further to the left than she’s ever actually been.

She’s pitching herself as “a lifelong public safety and civil rights leader” and it’s time we stand up to say, “hell no.” Jailing people of color does not equal public safety and prosecutors violating defendants’ rights is not civil rights. Among the early staff members she has chosen include her sister Maya Harris, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. We don’t need any more establishment democrats, and definitely not in prosecutor’s clothing.

Her main campaign headquarters will be in Baltimore, but her West Coast operations will be run out of Oakland. Let’s literally run her out of Oakland by not letting her peddle her lies here unchallenged. She doesn’t get to claim her record has been “taking on the Wall Street Banks for middle-class homeowners” without being mocked in public.

This is not a listing for an organized protest at the campaign kick-off rally, but a call for concerned citizens and organizations to make plans to resist her campaign, starting at the very first event. Bare minimum, show up on January 27 with signs and literature to let Kamala stans know how unacceptable this cop is as a presidential candidate. Let her followers on social media know the truth when she spews lies.

When you see photographs of Harris laughing, remember she’s laughing at you, especially if you fall for her liberal claptrap.

Learn more:

A thread on Kamala Harris’s terrible record on criminal justice
https://twitter.com/Copmala/status/1085688776381419520

Kamala Harris: can a ‘top cop’ win over progressives in 2020?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/19/kamala-harris-2020-election-top-cop-prosecutor