Calendar
It has been one month since CA Prisoners began a hunger strike demanding an end to indefinite solitary confinement and the cruel, inhumane and torturous conditions of confinement in CA Security House Units (SHU).
Stand in solidarity with CA prisoner hunger strikers as they enter their second months of an indefinite hunger strike:
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity.
STOP THE TORTURE!
Come help us figure out our next steps as we continue to defend the Berkeley Post Office and the Post Office System against privatization.
Our Occupation has been ongoing for 10+ days now.
Learn about your rights under the US Constitution with respect to being questioned, stopped and/or arrested by police.
One down and no end in sight… A bike ride following ART OUT! in solidarity with CA Prison Hunger Strikers, come out and help bring their message to the public sphere and wake up these sleeping masses. Let’s make their demand a reality!
~*In Memory of Billy “Guero” Sell*~
-Prisoner Demands-
• Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations.
• Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
• Comply with the 2006 recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.
• Provide adequate food.
• Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.
And in Support of the Hunger Strikers 5 Demands.
Bike for the Strike!!
Meet Up at 9 PM Friday August 9th at Oscar Grant Plaza.
Following Art Out 6-9 PM
Brought to you by Onyx, Young Oakland, & Hella Free Store
Sign Making & Bike Repair 2-6 PM
Bi-weekly JAB meeting. 11am, normally at 100 Oak St., but please check here for late changes.
11:00 a.m. : Meet at the Berkeley Post Office, with signs and banners. Hear speakers, and sing with the music.
12 noon : March to CONNECT THE DOTS between FedEx, UPS, and the Blum Center at U.C.
Protest those who want to privatize our public postal service and eliminate union jobs.
We will then return to the Berkeley Post Office
There is a danger that the encampment may be raided and closed soon. Please support our
actions to protect our public property! See you Saturday!
SAVE OUR PUBLIC COMMONS
Committee to Save the Berkeley Post Office
The press has been overflowing with reports on exploding student debt, and the payday lending industry is under increasing public scrutiny. Let’s take this momentum and radicalize it!
Join Strike Debt Bay Area on Saturday, August 10th for our next Ideas Into Action meeting. We will be discussing our ongoing big action at the Berkeley Post Office, and planning continuations or followup actions.
Also
- student debt resistance in light of Congress’ horrible legislation to raise future student loan interest rates.
- Postal Banking
- national Strike Debt connections & media strategy
- putting the payday lenders out of business
- local resources
- next debtors’ union steps
Come join these efforts and bring your own ideas…
Solidarity.
You are not a loan
Strike Debt Bay Area
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the weeks tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: It doesn’t rain in Oakland in August or September.
If you would like to help us monetarily with our work. We don’t need much, but we do keep a phone hotline active and do flyers and posters. Any little bit helps.
Our weekly open meeting for members and supporters to discuss the week’s tasks and projects. Come get plugged into ongoing housing defense work! We have abundant and varied work for all folks in any number of meaningful projects.
Rain location: SF Pizza, 1500 Broadway, Oakland
Occupy and JAB photographer Daniel Arauz is to be arraigned tomorrow.
Everyone knows Daniel. He’s been taking pictures and videos at activist
events around Oakland forever. Most recently he took a great set of photos
for the rally and occupation at the Berkeley Post Office.
Some weeks ago he got pulled down and arrested by OPD for taking
pictures of the freeway blockade by Treyvon Martin protesters. He was
the only person arrested and they took his camera.
On Monday, at 9:00 AM, Daniel will arraigned at Wiley Manuel Courthouse
(7th & Washington, one block from the Police Station) in Oakland.
Please come out and support him!!
Occupy Oakland’s John Torok will be a featured speaker.
Labor is one of the oldest popular movements in modern history with impact on all aspects of life. Throughout its tumultuous history from the first strikes in the Gilded Age to the Great Depression and on to today organized labor has faced many challenges in the campaign to improve the lives of working Americans. Tonight we will be learning more about the labor movement as it stands today, the ideas that guide unions in their struggles, the enduring connection between labor and the broader social justice movement, and how they get the job done. We will be hearing from three labor organizers about their experiences in the labor movement and their ideas for moving union and social justice work forward in the 21st century.
We’ll be finishing up Marazzi’s violence book and adding the last chapter of Graeber’s Debt into the mix.
The Postscript to Ellen Brown’s Web of Debt will be added as a supplemental reading to get a diversity of ideas to debate. Will try to get it photocopied for those who don’t have a copy.
More info. Location map. The entrance is on 22nd St.
There is a racist war against Black & Brown youth! We’re organizing as part of a national call out for Justice for Trayvon Martin Assemblies all over the U.S. on Aug 28. Come out to plan an Oakland action to be led by youth and people of color.
National People’s Power Assemblies website
12 noon press conference, with Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, Stop Mass Incarceration Network, people formerly Incarcerated in California Dept. of Corrections (CDCR) SHUs, SHU inmates’ families, and other voices of support and conscience.
If you want to go and need a ride, let us know at the contact number. If you can give a ride, please let us know as well. Most of us are meeting at the MacArthur BART Station @ 8am, but let us know if that doesn’t work for you and we’ll see what we can do.
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, in support of the California Prison Hunger Strikers and their 5 Demands invite the public to visit an installation of a life-sized mock Security Housing Unit (SHU) Cell on the California State Capitol South Steps in Sacramento.
This stark multimedia installation will allow visitors to acquire a tactile and visceral understanding of the reality of solitary confinement that over 4,000 California prisoners have endured for years and decades, and why this is cruel and unusual punishment deemed torture by the UN and human rights groups. The installation includes images of SHU cells and prisoners and moving testimony from prisoners and others.
On July 8, 2013, 30,000 California prisoners began a hunger strike to end the torture of solitary confinement and for their basic rights and humanity. Their central demand is “comply with the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.” Now, 100’s of prisoners have gone over one month without food and many more in many prisons have supported the strike and gone on and off the hunger strike since its beginning. Millions throughout society support the prisoners, including prominent voices such as Jay Leno, Danny Glover, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Bonnie Raitt and Gloria Steinem; yet Governor Jerry Brown and the California Dept. of Corrections refuse to meet their just demands, have retaliated against the hunger strikers, and have publicly vilified the prisoners and the hunger strike. In a July 6 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, CDCR secretary Jeffrey Beard claimed that the notorious SHU “is not ‘solitary confinement.’”
On July 5, Amnesty International stated that “rather than improving,” conditions in California prisons “have actually significantly deteriorated:” On July 22, 2013, Amnesty International called California Prisons and the CDCR’s response to the hunger strike an “affront to human rights.”
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network states “This is an EMERGENCY! One hunger striker, Billy ‘Guero’ Sell, has already died. Many more people need to stand NOW with the prisoner hunger strikers!”
On July 31st after midnight the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to approve allocating $2 million to continue to develop the Domain Awareness Center that would integrate surveillance cameras from all over the Port of Oakland, the city, BART, AC Transit, traffic cameras, and other sensors into a local ‘fusion’ center that could effectively track private citizens movements throughout the region. Video and data feeds from all over Oakland are to be aggregated and monitored at the DAC, then analysed with license plate recognition software, thermal imaging and body movement recognition software, possibly facial recognition software, and more, all with absolutely no privacy or data-retention policies in place, or substantive debate at the committee or council level about the program.
With an introduction by Bato Talamantez, member of the San Quentin 6, indicted following the “Black August” events of 1971. The SQ6 trial was the longest in CA history. Bato is also an organizer with the current California Prisoner Hunger Strike.
This feature film chronicles the political eduction and prison organizaing of revolutionary hero George Jackson while in San Quentin, covering the last 14 months of his life. Jackson would spend 11 yrs in jail (7 in solitary) for a $70 gas station robbery in 1960.
There is a racist war against Black & Brown youth! We’re organizing as part of a national call out for Justice for Trayvon Martin Assemblies all over the U.S. on Aug 28. Come out to help plan our Oakland action.
National People’s Power Assemblies website
The action will take place at Oscar Grant Plaza beginning at 5:30 PM.
Save Our Berkeley Post Office!
MUSIC on the Downtown Post Office Steps
Hear the latest News
Featuring
Dave Welsh on the Keyboard,
Rude Boy–Vocals and Rap
Hali Hammer with Save our Post Office and more
Damian with Keyboard and Magic
Occupella with Freedom songs
and others
Also: Fresh Juice Party will be doing Chalk Art!
Save our Berkeley Post Office
HALT THE HEIST ~ SAVE OUR PUBLIC COMMONS
Save The Berkeley Post Office
Strike Debt Bay Area