Calendar
Backup location if Paris Baugette has no seating: Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater, outside of City Hall.
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
- organizing for public banking
- advocating for Postal banking
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Tiny Homes for the homeless.
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contract
- student debt resistance
- Promoting the concept of Basic Income
- fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitive ticketing and fining schemes
- Presenting debt-related topics at forums and workshops
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early and meet one or two of us before the formal meeting starts, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com .
Strike Debt – Principles of Solidarity
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
We also oppose debt because it is an instrument of exploitation and political domination. Debt is used to discipline us, deepen existing inequalities, and reinforce racial, gendered, and other social hierarchies. Every Strike Debt action is designed to weaken the institutions that seek to divide us and benefit from our division. As an alternative to this predatory system, Strike Debt advocates a just and sustainable economy, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence.
Strike Debt is committed to the principles and tactics of political autonomy, direct democracy, direct action, creative openness, a culture of solidarity, and commitment to anti-oppressive language and conduct. We struggle for a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression.
Strike Debt holds that we are all debtors, whether or not we have personal loan agreements. Through the manipulation of sovereign and municipal debt, the costs of speculator-driven crises are passed on to all of us. Though different kinds of debt can affect the same household, they are all interconnected, and so all household debtors have a common interest in resisting.
Strike Debt engages in public education about the debt-system to counteract the self-serving myth that finance is too complicated for laypersons to understand. In particular, it urges direct action as a way of stopping the damage caused by the creditor class and their enablers among elected government officials. Direct action empowers those who participate in challenging the debt-system.
Strike Debt holds that we owe the financial institutions nothing, whereas, to our friends, families and communities, we owe everything. In pursuing a long-term strategy for national organizing around this principle, we pledge international solidarity with the growing global movement against debt and austerity.
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 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. 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 four 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
- 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
Every week, the Community Democracy Project holds a space for community leaders, volunteers, and members to discuss current events, important issues impacting our communities, or to share a skillset.
On September 18, 2016, we’re proud to host the People’s Community Medics! They will conduct a training on how to provide first-aide to victims of gun shot wounds.
Read more about them below:
The People’s Community Medics (PCM) was founded in 2011 by Sharena Thomas and Lesley Phillips when members of the Oscar Grant Committee we learned that BART police refused to call an ambulance for 20 minutes for fatally wounded Oscar Grant, despite the passionate pleas for medical help from his friends who were detained at the Fruitvale station by police. That experience as well as our knowledge that 911 calls often do not result in an ambulance arriving in a timely manner to Black neighborhoods largely inspired us to teach our people basic emergency first aid so that we can help one another until an ambulance arrives.
The People’s Community Medics is a collective of volunteers that shares its knowledge of basic emergency first aid for free with community members and residents.
Oftentimes residents of Black, Brown and poor communities need to know how to treat medical emergencies until an ambulance arrives. Calling 911 does not guarantee that an ambulance will arrive promptly in low-income and communities of color; because of this inequality, we have lost numerous loved ones unnecessarily.
We do not need to depend solely upon the state to assist us when a medical emergency is in progress; it is an act of self-determination when we help one another in our communities. We are creating a people centered alternative by educating ourselves and resisting the emergency health system’s neglect of the people.
We reached out to a fellow activist who is a healthcare worker and together we developed a training curriculum and learned how to treat seizures and bleeding traumas like gunshot wounds and stabbings. The PCM launched in March 2012; since then we have been giving free trainings on treating seizures, bleeding traumas and gunshot wounds to 100s of folks in Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, Berkeley, Seattle and Oxnard, California.
The People’s Community Medics’ trainings immediately resonate with people. We hope that one day every child will be taught basic first aid in school. We have been invited to present our training at various events and for different organizations. A few days before May Day 2012, a young man from Occupy Oakland came to the aid of a shooting victim and he utilized the first aid training he had learned from the PCM; the ambulance did not arrive for 47 minutes; unfortunately the woman succumbed to her injuries.
At our trainings, we hand out free first aid packets that have gloves, gauze, an instruction sheet in English, Spanish and Chinese, Emergen C (for diabetics) and a “know your rights” pocket card from Berkeley CopWatch. At some of our trainings we have served free, hot cooked food and given grocery bags of food free to the people. We have also had open mic speak-outs at some of our trainings.
You can reach us at 510-239-7720 or PeoplesCommunityMedics@gmail.com and at www.PeoplesCommunityMedics.org.
DONATE: rally.org/f/fipNEDARNFw
Liberated Lens Collective is a community media project based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We believe that story telling belongs to everyone. We do not depend on mainstream media or an expensive film school: we empower ourselves to make our own images!
We learn by doing. We teach eachother. We work horizontally, and operate by consensus. We make films in a spirit of collaboration, inclusivity and solidarity, maintain a film equipment library for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops, and host film screenings. In May 2015 we organized the Films 2 The People Short Film Festival.
To be updated about what we do, join our announce mailing list: Liberated_Lens.announce@lists.riseup.net
To get involved, come to our meetings! We’re open and happy to welcome you, no matter your experience level. Sometimes, the meetings turn into creative workshops!
Friday’s powerful action was the beginning of a major organizing push that can end Urban Shield in Alameda County once and for all. Bring your people to get involved in the next steps to defund and end Urban Shield. We believe that we can defund and end Alameda County’s hosting of Urban Shield, but we need your support to win this fight.
Sign the petition online – https://
Sign up for our email list at stopurbanshieldnow@gmail.c
Open as many homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…
We anticipate that Sheriff will be making some major moves to push forward the jail expansion soon, so we are ramping up our opposition and could use all the support we can get. Here are some ways you can help:
Come to our next organizing meeting.
Sign onto our letter of opposition
Like our Facebook page to stay in the loop and amplify our social media presence.
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 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. 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 four 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
- 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
Liberated Lens Collective is a community media project based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We believe that story telling belongs to everyone. We do not depend on mainstream media or an expensive film school: we empower ourselves to make our own images!
We learn by doing. We teach eachother. We work horizontally, and operate by consensus. We make films in a spirit of collaboration, inclusivity and solidarity, maintain a film equipment library for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops, and host film screenings. In May 2015 we organized the Films 2 The People Short Film Festival.
To be updated about what we do, join our announce mailing list: Liberated_Lens.announce@lists.riseup.net
To get involved, come to our meetings! We’re open and happy to welcome you, no matter your experience level. Sometimes, the meetings turn into creative workshops!
Writing letters to people behind bars is one of the most vital ways of providing direct support.
The level of isolation and lack of agency produced by prisons and jails raises the stakes of communication with the outside world, and receiving a letter is a simple way to brighten someone’s day by creating human interaction and communication.
Come to the Ella Baker Center and help us respond to the letters we’ve received from people locked up in prison.
We are getting lots of questions about upcoming ballot initiatives, Prop 47, and our work and we need your help to respond. You will also get a chance to begin writing to a pen pal!
This letter writing night will also be our September member meeting – we hope you will attend and get an update on our campaigns and how you can plug in.
Vegetarian dinner will be provided.
LETTER WRITING NIGHT
RSVP NOW
Let’s keep incarcerated people connected to their communities and the movement they are a part of!
Join us to fight for a livable wage for all Bay Area workers! We collaborate in principled reflection and action on what the Bay Area livable wage would be and where we are at on the right to a livable wage.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds Community and Power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers.
Our work together encompasses:
(1) The concerns of precarious, care and contingent workers,
(2) 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.
Oakland Livable Wage Assembly meets every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:00 PM at the SEIU Local 1000 Union Hall, 436 14th Street #200, Oakland, CA
Please love and support one another ~ We have a duty to fight ~ We have a duty to win!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568668586707336/
Open as many homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…
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 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. 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 four 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
- 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
Liberated Lens Collective is a community media project based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We believe that story telling belongs to everyone. We do not depend on mainstream media or an expensive film school: we empower ourselves to make our own images!
We learn by doing. We teach eachother. We work horizontally, and operate by consensus. We make films in a spirit of collaboration, inclusivity and solidarity, maintain a film equipment library for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops, and host film screenings. In May 2015 we organized the Films 2 The People Short Film Festival.
To be updated about what we do, join our announce mailing list: Liberated_Lens.announce@lists.riseup.net
To get involved, come to our meetings! We’re open and happy to welcome you, no matter your experience level. Sometimes, the meetings turn into creative workshops!
An invitation to a class on the
Structures of Racialization
At the Bay Area Public School
A free university in the Omni Commons
When the English first got to Virginia, in the early 1600s, they didn’t see themselves as “white.” It took a century for their colonialism to produce the concepts of race and white supremacy.
We’ve been fighting racism, white privilege, white supremacy, and institutional racism since then. And still, a Trump can come along with his “dogwhistle” politics, and get an instant white following at varying degrees of frenzy. Today even the most liberal cities cannot stop police racial profiling – while thee illiberal ones officiate over “stop and frisk.”
Ø What are we missing?
Ø If racism is just a “divide and rule” strategy, why has it always worked so well? Why does it still work so well?
Ø How is it that new groups, like immigrants and Muslims, can be continually targetted for racial assault (victim de jour)?
Ø If race is a social construct, what is the structure that has been constructed?
Ø Is it an economic structure? A cultural structure? What?
Ø How deep culturally does it reside in this country?
Ø Is “race” a noun or a verb?
This class will look at the the structures of policing today, of segregation yesterday, and of colonization and slavery the day before that. If the “modern concept of race” was constructed socially at a particular moment, does that imply an ending we can programmatize?
This class will be mostly discussion and dialogue. We will have to address our prejudices about prejudice in order to get to the issues of structure. There will be non-mandatory readings on line for the class. It will also be open to other texts that class members wish to propose.
Facilitator: Steve Martinot
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.
Note: At our November meeting we changed our meeting date from the first Tuesday of the month to the first Monday, starting December 5th
The ACLU of CA has prioritized working on bail reform and we are currently setting meetings with folks across the state to work through some critical issues as we begin to pull together this campaign as well as a coalition of folks who are interested in working on it with us. As an organization doing critical work in the bay area, we very much need your input and would love to have you come to our first bay area meeting (You don’t have to agree to join the coalition to come to this meeting).
Our first bay area in-person meeting will be October 6th from 12-2pm at the ACLU NorCal office in San Francisco.
We will provide a light refreshments for those of you who attend. Please RSVP by Tuesday, 9/27 and please feel free to forward this email to anyone else who might be interested.
Last but not least, and regardless of whether or not you can make it on the 6th, please take a moment to fill out our short community surve
Help fight the plan to build more jail space at Santa Rita!
The Oakland Advisory Privacy Commission meets monthly, addressing the surveillance technology OPD and the City of Oakland already possess and wish to possess. It’s first task is to develop a generalized Surveillance Equipment Regulation Ordinance governing how such equipment is to be assessed and procured.
Scroll to the bottom here for agendas and video of previous meetings:
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 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. 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 four 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
- 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