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!

The Alameda County Jail Fight Coalition is calling health care workers and community members to attend the Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board meeting where they will be discussing the Sherffis proposal to build a new “mental health unit” at the Santa Rita Jail. The sheriff thinks he can get the Mental Health Adviory Board to rubberstamp his proposal – join us as we demand real accountability and real solutions to our county’s needs. We need to let the Mental Health Adviory Board know that the community and healthcare workers are opposed to the use of jail as mental healthcare.

Stand with us in our demands to:

1. Stop all construction plans for the new jail
2. Invest in alternatives to incarceration and community health
3. Divest from incarceration and policing

If you can’t make it, you can still take action:

Sign here to add your name to the growing list of healthcare providers who oppose this project.
https://www.change.org/p/board-of-supervisors-health-workers-in-bay-area-denounce-new-mental-health-jail

Sign here if you are a California resident opposed to this project.
https://www.change.org/p/alameda-county-board-of-supervisors-no-new-jail-in-alameda-county

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.

The “Dakota Acces” Pipeline (DAPL) is a $3.8B, 1,100 mile fracked-oil pipeline currently under construction from the Bakken shale fields of North Dakota to Peoria, Illinois. DAPL is slated to cross Lakota Treaty Territory at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where it would be laid underneath the Missouri River, the longest river on the continent.

Construction of the DAPL would engender a renewed fracking-frenzy in the Bakken shale region, as well as endanger a source of fresh water for the Standing Rock Sioux and 8 million people living downstream. DAPL would also impact many sites that are sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous nations.

The DAPL is a massive project being organized by a shady group of the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies and banks. They have offices in cities around the world. Putting direct, nonviolent pressure on the corporations building and funding this project is critical for supporting frontline resistance to DAPL.

Why Target Obama?
Obama has been one of the most outspoken presidents on indigenous rights, and one of few to visit a Native American reservation during his time in office. The reservation that he visited happened to be the Standing Rock Sioux Nation (the same tribe with a lawsuit against this pipeline). President Obama also has the power to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke the permit for this pipeline, and we want him to be referenced in press articles as a possible decision maker on this as the issue continues to escalate. We think that with dozens or even hundreds of actions, we’ll be able to convey to the press that the movement is calling on him to step in as the decision maker.

https://actionnetwork.org/events/san-francisco-stands-with-standing-rock-no-keystone-by-any-name

http://www.350bayarea.org/no_dapl_oak_160913

https://nodaplsolidarity.org/

Come at be part of making Oakland history!

Agenda:

1. Update on communications
2. Update on budget
3. Discuss canvassing/events staffing: what’s working, what isn’t
4. Welcome new volunteers to the campaign
5. Discuss enabling legislation coming forward

Photographers! Know your rights when you cover marches, demonstrations and other movement actions. Know how to protect yourself, who is on your side, and where the lines are in the real world.

Have you ever wondered:
* Can police confiscate my camera or images?
* What are my rights to photograph or film police themselves?
* Is it safe to stay after a dispersal order?
* What additional rights, if any, does a press pass confer?

We’ll hear from activist photographers, seasoned photojornalists, and movement lawyers on these questions and more. Even if you don’t consider yourself a “photographer” but take cell phone pics/video at protests, this workshop is for YOU too!!

Sponsored by Class Conscious Photographers/Silicon Valley DeBug and Pacific Media Workers CWA Local 39521.

Open as many homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…

Our weekly PARTY to get this hackerspace together, to provide a venue for those things that otherwise cannot be worked out through day-to-day practice.

Potluck! – bring your own tasty dish!

Sudo room, located in the southwast corner of the ground floor, is a creative community and hackerspace. We offer tools and project space for a wide range of activities: electronics, sewing/crafting, 3D and 2D manufacturing, coding, and good old-fashioned co-learning!

Hours: The space is open whenever a member is present. Come visit! Best times to drop in are evenings between 7 and 9pm. See the calendar for recurring meetups and upcoming events: https://sudoroom.org/calendar

Draft agenda:

• Alameda County Mental Health Advisory Board Meeting report back and next steps
• Turnout for Friday’s meeting
• Outreach

• NOTE DAY CHANGE – ONE TIME ONLY. MEETING IS ON THURSDAY INSTEAD OF WEDNESDAY.
• Join the Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the surveillance state,  against Urban Shield, and to advocate for privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed around the Bay Area, including the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, the BART Board of Directors, and by the Oakland and Berkeley City Councils.
• We are also engaged in the fight against Predictive Policing and other “pre-crime” and “thought-crime” abominations, drones, improper use of police body cameras, ALPRs, requirements for “backdoors” to your cellphone and against other invasions of privacy by our benighted City, County, State and Federal Governments.

OPWG originally came together to fight against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OPWG was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network; its members helped draft the Privacy Policy that puts further restrictions on the now Port-restricted DAC, and made Oakland’s new Privacy Advisory Commission to the City Council happen.  We were also the lead in having Alameda County pass the most comprehensive privacy and usage policy in the country for deployment of “Stingray” technology (cell phone interceptors).

We have presented our work at the recent RightsCon in San Francisco and at Left Forum and HOPE in New York City.

If you would like to attend our meeting would like a quick introduction to what we’re doing before we dive right into the thick of things, send email to  contact@oaklandprivacy.org and one of us will show up twenty minutes early to give you some background on our work.

Stop by and learn how you can help guard our right not to be spied on by the government.

If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to:

oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe AT lists.riseup.net

Check out our new website.

For more information on the DAC check out

• DAC FAQ
• Oakland Wiki Domain Awareness Page
• Oakland Privacy WordPress

You’re invited to join us tonight to discuss justice and injustice at UC Berkeley, and how to build a student organization on campus.

The ISO will hold a discussion about UC Berkeley’s history of complicity with sexual harassment, and its censorship of a student-run course on Palestine, and plan how to expand socialist organization on campus.

We are asking if anyone in the community has any information, eyewitness accounts or video showing the unjust killing of Colby Friday, shot in the back by Stockton Police Officer David Wells.

The community can no longer tolerate Stockton police officers shooting their citizens in the back – it is the same tired narrative that repeats time and time again.

From Luther Brown, James Cook and James Rivera Jr., all shot and yet these officers all still work, are promoted and are allowed to stalk the streets for their next victim.

Your family many be next. Take this seriously – we don’t want to be out there for you next.

Justice 4 Colby Friday Facebook

Want to learn how to work toward eliminating the cops? Want to hear how we challenge the notion that policing keeps us safe? CR Oakland regularly offers this workshop that looks at the role and history of policing in the U.S., the way it has impacted various communities, and how people have resisted and challenged its inherent violence. This workshop also goes over how we can reduce our reliance on policing by highlighting the various ways that building up community strength and practices lead to true safety that does not depend on law enforcement.

OccupySF 5th Anniversary picnic and open mic. Bring your own food. Bring your own drink. Bring instruments. Bring megaphone.

Bring sings and banners!