Calendar

San Francisco is hosting the 83rd Annual Conference of Mayors June 19th, 2015 – June 22nd.. Around 250 Mayors will be in attendance. This is an opportunity to raise issues locally and nationally that are of concern to us.

• Black Lives Matter
• Gentrification
• Homelessness
• Privatization
• Homophobia and Transphobia
• Immigration
• The Environment
• Corporate Greed
• Wars not People

All are welcome to help plan for actions.

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets Sundays at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheatre at 14th Street & Broadway, often on the steps of City Hall. 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

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for more than three 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)
Occupy Oakland Kitchen Committee: (kitchen@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

OccupyForum presents…

Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!

Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue

on all sides of these critically important issues!

David Hartsough

 Waging Peace: A Discussion on Civil Disobedience for Occupy

and other Activists

 “Any power structure relies upon the People’s obedience to the orders of the ruler(s). If the People do not obey, rulers have no power.’’— Gene Sharp

David Hartsough knows how to get in the way. He has used his body to block navy ships headed for Vietnam and trains loaded with munitions on their way to El Salvador and Nicaragua. He has crossed borders to meet “the enemy” in East Berlin, Castro’s Cuba, and present-day Iran. He has marched with mothers confronting a violent regime in Guatemala and stood with refugees threatened by death squads in the Philippines.

Hartsough has spent his life experimenting with the power of active nonviolence. His is the story of one man’s effort to live as though we were all brothers and sisters. He inspires, encourages and empowers us to help create a world that is peaceful and just. Hartsough will lead a discussion on what it takes to put your body on the line. Where do you find the courage? How do you deal with fear?  How do you deal with arrest and jail? How do your comrades help and hinder? How do you create campaigns? How does a group bent on massive change actually get the job done?

David Hartsough is executive director of Peaceworkers, based in San Francisco, and is cofounder of the Nonviolent Peaceforce. He is a Quaker and member of the San Francisco Friends Meeting. Hartsough has worked actively and internationally for nonviolent social change and peaceful resolution of conflicts since he met Dr. Marin Luther King Jr.in 1956. He is a longtime friend of OccupyForum.

Announcements will follow. Donations to OccupyForum to cover our costs are encouraged; no one turned away!

You’re Invited!
#StopFastTrack Rally at Rep. Pelosi’s Office

What: Now is the time to speak out against Fast Track. With important votes coming up in the next few weeks, we need to turn up the pressure on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to publicly go on the record against Fast Track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Join CREDO; Democracy for America; MoveOn.org Civic Action; Daily Kos; Fight for the Future; 350.org; SumOfUs; Other 98%; Public Citizen; Friends of the Earth; Citizens Trade Campaign; Corporate Accountability International; the Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter; 350 Bay Area and other progressive allies to rally against Fast Track for the TPP.  Can you make it?

Yes, I’ll be there!

O_O Who is watching you? O_O

For a new installation at the Oakland Museum, The Center for Investigative Reporting is teaming up with local artists to host a community-focused look at surveillance in the Town. We’ve literally been driving around Oakland in an old Ford Falcon van to both educate and interview residents about the different types of technologies police use in the name of public safety, and what those technologies mean for our day-to-day lives.

Now, the Off/Page Project – a collab between Youth Speaks and CIR – wants your voice in the mix. We’re hosting an Eyes on Oakland writing workshop at Sole Space that will take a look at some of these surveillance practices that are used right here in Oakland.

Join us as we weave personal experiences, news reports and data points to create poems that explore local viewpoints on surveillance and how you can help shape the conversation. We’ll show you new ways to think like a journalist with your art, and give you the tools to dig deeper into what’s happening in your own community. Selected pieces created during the workshop will be featured in the Who Is Oakland? exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California, which is currently on display until July 12

What exactly does an Off/Page writing workshop look like? Check out our short film, Broken City Poets, to see us in action: https://www.revealnews.org/article/broken-city-poets/

We are encouraging folks 16-22 to attend. There are 15 spots available, please RSVP here: http://bit.ly/1J5z7D3

Questions? Ideas? Email Niema Jordan, the Off/Page Project program manager: njordan@cironline.org

The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers.

We meet every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at the SEIU Local 1000 union hall in downtown Oakland at 6:30 PM.

Our work together encompasses: (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent, and care workers; (2) current campaigns to improve wages for low-wage workers; and (3) efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life. We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.

OptikAllusions is a digital filmmaking collective dedicated to social change, based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to help each other tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We make films in a spirit of collaboration and solidarity, share a lending library of film equipment for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops.

If you’d like to make videos or want to become a member, join us for our weekly meeting and a workshop!

We usually, meet briefly and then work on projects. It’s open to all!

https://omnicommons.org/wiki/Optik_Allusions

Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy Movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges – who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books, Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class- investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians and literary figures, he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges’ message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of mounting environmental destruction and grotesque wealth polarization.

Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates just what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not simply for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at The New York Times. Among his bestselling books are: Empire of Illusion, Death of the Liberal Class; War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (written with Joe Sacco). He currently writes a weekly column for Truthdig.

Hosted by Richard Wolinsky, the veteran producer and host of Book Waves, an interview show broadcast on KPFA Radio.

Tickets: 800-838-3006 or Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, Diesel a Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s Books SF: Modern Times, Online: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1447124

The Berkeley PD chief will present the police department’s “post-incident review of events of December 2014.”

This is an important meeting for the public to attend.  It will be the first disclosure, after six months, of the police narrative of their response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Note:  the meeting will begin at 6pm instead of its usual 7pm starting time to allow more time for public comment and for commissioners to question the chief.

Our streets have been stolen from us, our rights have been stolen from us, our PEOPLE have been stolen from us. It is time to take them back!

It is unconstitutional to repress our right to hold space in the very place that was built on the backs of our ancestors. We’ve been told too many times that we don’t belong here: through the over-policing and criminalization of our communities, through the militarization of the police force, through gentrification, through unlawful curfews and state sanctioned violence against our communities.

The new curfew imposed on our people IS NOT going to stop us from holding space in the streets that BELONG TO US!

Black people and allies, it is time to come together and take back what rightfully belongs to us.

BYP100 Bay Area Chapter, in solidarity with Just Cause’s #OurBudgetOurCity day of action, Black Lives Matter (Bay Area), ONYX, BlackOUT Collective and Black Seed, will take back the streets that WE pay for, the streets that belong to US!

#OurBudgetOurCity is a day demonstrating the priorities that the City can spend their money and resources on – the needs of Oakland’s residents! Oakland’s public officials prioritize the profit-driven interests of developers, investors, big landlords, and protecting windows more than protecting the interests of Oakland’s working class and low income communities.

It’s clear that those of us whose needs are not being met and who are being displaced, suffering from the impact of gentrification, and living under the threat of state violence are not taking it anymore. The Bay Area has been blazing with people all over standing up to take back the rights that we have. June 10th is a day to celebrate all of that, and to show the Mayor, the City Council that we are united in our fight against gentrification and that we demand that our voices and demands be heard.

Take a look at the schedule of actions below.
8 AM: Join tenants to demand the city reinvest in Healthy Housing!

Location: Corner of Telegraph Ave. and West Macarthur Blvd.

11 AM: Justice for low-wage workers! Join fast food workers & community members calling on the City to enforce the Minimum Wage!

Location: Oakland City Hall

3:30 PM: ReInvest in Public Services! Join residents as they call on the City to reinvest resources to fix our roads and address illegal dumping in the flatlands! Location: Oakland City Hall

4:30pm: Press Event @ the Steps of Oakland City Hall to call for a Budget that ReInvests in Oakland!

7 PM: Take back our streets! The new curfew can’t stop us from holding space in the streets

Location: 14th and Broadway.

Please come out and show your solidarity with the people of Oakland fighting in solidarity for the right to take back our streets. WHOSE STREETS?! OUR STREETS!!!

Please bring:

A scarf or handkerchief
Earplugs

We discuss various monetary and debt-related topics. For our next meeting we will read a section from Ellen Brown’s Web of Debt.  It will be chapters 25-28 and cover more on international debt in the Asian theatre and elsewhere.

If people have ideas on what we should study together please bring it up during the next meeting. We encourage participation!  It need only loosely pertain to debt, money, economics, and/or banking.

Here it is as a Google doc

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_VeYBmQOi8FTFEwUDJVdC0wQU0/view?usp=sharing

The Politics of Debt Reading Group is affiliated with the Bay Area Public School and Strike Debt Bay Area.

The program includes a short film “Until All Are Free”, updates and letter-writing

Originating as a day of solidarity for eco-prisoners, June 11 remains anchored in a project of ecological defense and struggle against a society based on exploitation and confinement.

Join us on the annual day of solidarity with long-term eco- and anarchist prisoners, including Marius Mason and Eric McDavid. They were subject to the longest federal prison terms (22 yrs and 20 yrs respectively) of those indicted in the so-called “Green Scare”, targeting radical activists.

In calling for the day, we aim to deepen ongoing support for comrades facing long sentences. We are committed to building a model of solidarity that is both long-term and rooted in our work.

Transitions…
On January 8th of this year, Eric McDavid was released from prison after nine years of incarceration.

Last year Marius Mason publicly shared his new name and use of male pronouns that better reflect his transition to a masculine gender identity.
Join us to discuss ways to support our comrades.

Join us for a discussion of V.I. Lenin’s key writing on the process of overthrowing capitalism, State and Revolution! Todd Chretien, editor of the new annotated edition from Haymarket Books, will present.

Lenin was hiding from the police during the 1917 Russian Revolution while he finished State and Revolution. Lenin’s most widely read—and most misunderstood—book describes the “monstrous oppression of the working people by the state” and how capitalism transforms whole areas of the globe into “military convict prisons for workers.” State and Revolution defends Marx and Engels’s argument that workers must dismantle, or “smash,” capitalist states through revolution from below, and replace them with radically democratic states.

This new edition features an introduction and hundreds of explanatory annotations by Todd Chretien that place Lenin’s work in its historical context. Chretien will kick off a discussion of the key insights from the book and their applicability to struggles against state violence and for liberation today.

This movie tells the story of the many struggles for neighborhood communities against “urban renewal” displacement by the collusion of corporate and city planners. The story is told through the eyes of tenants, city planners, business owners, scholars, and politicians, The Vanishing City exposes the real politic behind the alarming disappearance of New York’s beloved neighborhoods, the truth about its finance dominated economy, and the myth of inevitable change. Artfully documented through  interviews, hearings, demonstrations, and archival footage, the film takes a sober look at the city’s luxury policies and high-end development, the power role of the elite, and accusations of corruption surrounding land use and rezoning. The film also links New York trends to other global cities where multinational corporations continue to victimize the middle and working classes.

Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice as part of our Conscientious Projector Series for the 99%

Wheelchair accessible.

For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
bfuusjev-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net

A man was killed in the morning on Saturday 6/6 by the 76 gas station at the 580 Lakeshore exit in Oakland. Police found him sleeping (or unconscious) in his car. It is not clear whether this was a case of medical emergency where the man simply was not able to follow police orders.

APTP, together with Mr. Hogg’s family members are holding a vigil on Friday 6/12 at 6:00 PM at the location where Mr. Hogg was killed – the intersection of Lakeshore and Lake Park Ave, by the 76 gas station.

WE ARE SEARCHING FOR WITNESSES OF THIS KILLING AND ITS AFTERMATH. Please inbox Anti Police-Terror Project.

A Food Not Bombs benefit featuring Everymen(FL.), a punk/bluegrass band from Florida, The Sour Mash Hug Band, and The Navigator.

All proceeds go to support East Bay Food Not Bombs, feeding the homeless, low income, and disenfranchised in the East Bay since 1980. Funds will go toward the remodeling of a commercial kitchen in the basement of the Omni Commons, for primary use of FNB. Currently EBFNB feeds the hungry 6 days a week. Learn more at https://ebfnb.org/

There will be free food in abundance, of course!

EB Food Not Bombs is a founding member collectives of the Omni Oakland Commons, a collective of collectives stewarding shared space and resources for all of Oakland! The Omni Commons is located at 48th and Shattuck Avenue very near Telegraph Ave. and is a few blocks north of the MacArthur BART station.

Everymen: http://www.everymenfl.com/
Sour Mash Hug Band: http://www.sourmashhug.com/