Calendar
Limited seating: sign up now!https://t.co/cKabHzEkyR… pic.twitter.com/LmIkYeEjZz
— Coalition for Police Accountability (@oakcopoversight) February 7, 2023
Please email contact@oaklandprivacy.org a few days before the meeting to get up-to-date location information or obtain Zoom meeting access info.
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay and nationwide.
We fight against spy drones, facial recognition, tracking equipment, police body camera secrecy, anti-transparency laws and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones; we oppose “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” — to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government, and attempts to hide what government officials, employees and agencies are doing.
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.
Check out some of what we worked on in 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019.
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. We helped fight and helped win the fight against Urban Shield.
Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance (we got the strongest surveillance regulation ordinance in the country passed in Oakland!), supporting and opposing state legislation as appropriate, battling mass surveillance in the form of facial recognition and other analytics, mass aerial surveillance, ubiquitous license plate readers, and pushing back against ICE.
On September 12th, 2019 we were presented with a Barlow Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for our work, and on March 16th, 2021 s James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists.
If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:
Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/
Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy
“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 various municipalities around the Bay. To help slow down the encroaching police and surveillance state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.
Join us at our monthly general meeting tonight at 7pm, and tomorrow for two solidarity actions…
The Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) is a Black-led, multi-racial, intergenerational organization that seeks to build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color.
APTP hosts its general meetings on the 3rd Wednesday of every month; since Covid we have been meeting online. If you want to learn more about our work and figure out other ways to plug in, you can join our next general meeting tonight at 7pm. Register to join us!
What: Justice for Steven Taylor Court Support
When: Thursday, February 16 at 9am
Where: Alameda County Superior Courthouse, 1225 Fallon St, Oakland
Steven Taylor was a Black man who was shot and killed in a Walmart while in a mental health crisis on April 18, 2020 by San Leandro police officer Jason Fletcher. His grandmother Addie Kitchen has been leading the fight for justice ever since.
Later Jason Fletcher became the first officer to be charged by former Alameda County DA O’Malley (with involuntary manslaughter). Almost three years later, the trial is finally set to begin in the coming months. This is the first case in which AB 392 (the CA use of force law) will be applied. Tomorrow, February 16th, the court will finally be setting the stage for the trial by appointing a judge, setting dates, and more.
Please join the family of Steven Taylor to support them as the trial against Jason Fletcher begins.
What: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal March & Rally
When: Thursday, February 16 at 12pm
Where: 400 North Point St, San Francisco
WHAT’S THE CALL?
FREE THEM ALL!!
Tomorrow there will be solidarity actions across the world from the Bay Area to South Africa. ILWU Local 10 is shutting down the Port of Oakland and San Francisco on Thursday, February 16 to call for Mumia’s Freedom. We will meet at noon at the ILWU Local 10 Hall and march to Harry Bridges Plaza.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther and revolutionary journalist who was framed for killing a police officer and has been in prison in Pennsylvania for 41 years. Organizers, activists, community members, and friends and family of Mumia will speak on the ongoing legal struggle he faces and the importance of labor solidarity with political prisoners.
We call the Bay Area into the streets to join us in supporting the call to free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
With love and solidarity,
APTP
All are welcomed to stand with Mothers On The March and People from the Community.
We stand with signs and banners and chalk the sidewalk, bringing attention to the crimes of the SFPD.
Our Demands:
-The Police Officers Association be SHUT DOWN!
-The SF POA Be Declared a Non-Grata Organization
-Abolish the ‘Officers Bill of Rights’ – This has been used to protect officers in abusing our communities!
-Jail Killer Cops – we demand killer cops be charged and convicted with murder
-Abolish the Police!
Freedom Rally for Iran 💚🕊❤️
Come join us on February 18th in San Francisco to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran.
Start: intersection of Powell street and Market street
End: Embarcadero plaza
Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm#IRGCterrorists #WomanLifeFreedom pic.twitter.com/JRC78gwrP0— BayArea4Iran (@bayarea4Iran) February 15, 2023
Oakland Greens 4th annual virtual townhall:
Green Party politics: What are best practices for growing the
Our 4th annual alternative political parties event: What are best practices to overgrow for a new system? The Oakland Greens have long voiced that a best practice might be using rallies as candidate recruitment. We think the current system is running exactly as planned and we need a completely new system. What are your ideas?
Virtual doors open att 6 PM (with the best pre-show music diversity!) The discussion begins at 6:30 PM PST on ZOOM:
Turkiye (the new and improved name replacing Turkey) is in a nosedive toward a total collapse. This is an expected route of all neo-colonial countries dependent on imperialism.
A new section of capitalists is using the NATO Gladio criminals to implement a narco-state to keep the economy alive in Turkiye. Privatization and marketization of every aspect of life have come to a total failure. Unprecedented Corruption at every level, bribery, theft, eco-destruction, gang rule, and the rise of deadly attacks, especially on women, shows the limits of a market economy in a dependent, neo-colonial country.
Turkiye is in dire need of funds to make it to the next day. Each day passing in Turkiye is funded and provided by its Muslim, fascist regional countries while imperialism sucks the life out of people every day. Workers and the people pay for these “favors” with hunger, misery, and working below slave wages. In the new world with its budding multi-polar centers, Erdogan is trying to find a new ally in Russia. However, its loyalty to NATO and western imperialism poses unsurpassable challenges.
We will discuss whether Turkiye has any chance of survival by following the 100 years of the capitalist route. The tasks and obligations of the left before and after the May-June elections will shed a light on everyday living in the country.
Journalist Mehmet Bayram recently returned from a long trip to Turkey.
Yusuf Gürsey is originally from Istanbul, Turkey and is currently living in New Haven, CT. He is a member of the CPUSA, as well as a member of the US Peace Council in Connecticut, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Marxist Education centered in Cambridge, MA.
ZOOM LINK
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81133350622?pwd=dUUyUWppbWt6djVTaElISUhocXpSUT09
Meeting ID: 811 3335 0622
Passcode: ICSS2717rs
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Dial by your location
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PEACE MARCH etc.
Ends 3pm with a tea party outside Nancy Pelosi’s mansion in Pacific Heights. A flatbed truck will transport marchers.
Details: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2023/02/05/18854146.php
Big peace rallies are starting up again!
We’re hoping lots of people will find a way to BE THERE in San Francisco at noon on February 19, this Sunday, and to encourage others.
For rallies around the nation, see: https://rageagainstwar.com/rallies/
WHAT: Rage Against the War Machine march and rally
WHEN: Sunday, February 19, 12:00 noon
WHERE: Embarcadero Plaza, SF
WHO: You, your friends, your family
WHY: Stop outrageously excessive military spending. Shift money and energy toward constructing a better world https://rageagainstwar.com/#Demands
Please REPLY to: acgreens2012@gmail.com if you might be there! See the MEET AT BART paragraph below about how we can meet up and go to SF together.
- People often ask: Do rallies and marches do any good? I believe that people standing together for what we want is always worthwhile, and besides, it’s a good way to see people we know, almost like having a party and not having to prepare in advance or clean up after. Also, it’s open air which is great these days.
The rally in Washington, DC has an amazing lineup of speakers https://rageagainstwar.com/#Speakers from across the political spectrum. While there are many topics various groups may disagree on, we are united in being for peace and against war and military spending.
MEET AT BART
With gratitude for this procedure to Steve and Beth and others from LMNOP, Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace, here’s how we can meet up and go to the rally together: meet at the MacArthur BART station at 11:15am to go thru the gate promptly at 11:30. We will sit in the last car so that if you get on at a different station you may still be able to hook up with us because you’ll know where to find us. RSVP if you might be there! Be seen being GREEN!
Rage Against the War Machine
The 2/19 SF sister event is organized by Cynthia Papermaster & Golden Gate Code Pink.
Tomorrow (2/19) from 4-6pm we will be continuing our reading group of Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” at the Omni Commons. So far we have finished the first two chapters and we will be discussing Chapter 5 and we will pick up on reading Chapter 3 together. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/8mpzFTaUSs
— Community Liberation Programs (@comlibprograms) February 18, 2023
NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:
occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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 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 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)
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 six years, since October 2011! 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
https://t.co/FQYTHaNbc5 things are getting fun during our Monday night women coding nights at the SudoRoom – new flyer and a cool learning mapping project of all the languages spoken in Oakland using Jupiter pic.twitter.com/pUvHtP1sRa
— Sudo Room (@sudoroom) February 12, 2023
As part of BCLT’s newly launched project on biometrics, we will be hosting a virtual symposium on February 22 and 23, 2023 titled ‘Biometrics Regulation: Global State-of-Play’. Join us to hear leading global experts in the fields of law, public policy, social science, and computer science discuss existing data protection regulations for biometrics and future pathways for ethical innovation. We will discuss real-world innovations in Digital ID, facial recognition technology, and commercial digital wellness. Registration is now open!(opens in a new tab)
The aim of the virtual symposium is to discuss the global state-of-play for biometric data protection. We want to think more critically about biometric technologies as well as biometric regulation. As a result, we want to merge conversations on data protection compliance with broader technological, social and policy issues in different biometric technologies.
Neither biometrics technology itself nor legal frameworks for data protection are new concepts in today’s age of Big Data. But the past decade has witnessed an increasing diffusion of innovation across the globe with global technology supply chains, a reconfiguration in geopolitical alliances, and experimental domestic regulation by different jurisdictions for data and emerging technologies. The data economy is both premised on and sustained by the generation, use and transfer of large amounts of data (quantity) as well as different types of data (quality). This symposium therefore, is one of the first events organized by BCLT that seeks to explore global legal perspectives on data protection.
Specifically, this symposium is focused on biometric data and its role in three different socio-technical innovations – digital ID and service delivery, facial recognition and AI, and commercial digital wellness. We are seeing more investment in and uptake of these innovations across the world as well as by different actors (governmental, private, and humanitarian). Further, these three innovations indicate a gradient in regulation – with more regulations focused on digital ID, and fewer regulations directly focused on commercial digital wellness. Within these regulations however, there are differing degrees of data protection-related rights and obligations.
The symposium has two elements – a descriptive element and a future-facing element.
- The descriptive element brings together interdisciplinary panels from the fields of law, computer science, social science, and public policy. These panels will outline innovations in the selected biometric technology, the privacy harms or security risks that these innovations entail, the existing legal regulations and compliances for biometric data, and the impact of these regulations (or the lack thereof) on the identified harms and risks.
- The future-facing panel will bring together legal practitioners, human rights researchers, public policy practitioners and social science researchers to outline global policies, strategies and alliances that can encourage the development of ethical and responsible biometric technologies.
The symposium will comprise of 4-panel discussions, each for a duration of 60 mins. In each panel, speakers will present for 45-50 minutes, and the remaining time will be reserved for Q&A.
CANCELLED
We have a rare opportunity to work together to make national headlines for our sites. The Palestine, OH scandal has been flooding the news and it’s about to die out. We need to catch that wave before it’s gone. Let’s work together to bring attention to the fact that this isn’t just happening in E. Palestine. California is its own environmental trainwreck.
We’re working with a media consultant and will get national news coverage if we get enough participation from all EJ groups in CA. We’ll have a press conference in Los Angeles while groups across CA are live streaming their solidarity gatherings to us in LA.
#JCRCBayArea stands with the people of Ukraine. Join our friend @IgorTregub for upcoming events in the #BayArea commemorating one year since the invasion of #Ukraine began:#Berkeley (Thursday, 2/23): Civic Center Park by the flagpole at Martin Luther https://t.co/TtKFvWvPce… https://t.co/xyCN7K550b pic.twitter.com/XWIn3glPfJ
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) February 22, 2023
A timely discussion: “Police Reform in Oakland and Berkeley, Is it Working?” The event is hosted by the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.
The discussion of Oakland will start with Darwin BondGraham, co-author of the acclaimed new book The Riders Come Out at Night, an explosive history of the Oakland Police Department. An award-winning investigative journalist, he serves as News Editor of The Oaklandside. The second Oakland speaker, Millie Cleveland, directed the Violence Prevention Project for West Oakland and is active with the Coalition for Police Accountability.
For Berkeley, we will hear from Kate Harrison, the author of Measure II, which created the independent Police Accountability Board (PAB), and of restrictions on Berkeley’s use of force, militarized equipment, and automatic license plate readers. Then John “Chip” Moore, current Chair of the Berkeley PAB, will update us on the Board’s efforts and challenges. �
Jim Chanin, a nationally prominent attorney in civil rights and police accountability, has been deeply involved in these issues in both Oakland and Berkeley for many years. He will conclude the panel with “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Zoom information:
Join Zoom Meeting on Feb. 23
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84239203881?pwd=d1dBYkF6VjFuQWMwNzl5eTJwblJ5Zz09
Meeting ID: 842 3920 3881
Passcode: wdrcgm
Help build the March 21 national day of action demanding that banks stop funding climate disaster. Third Act and others have called this event to highlight the Banking on Our Future campaign: a national effort to pressure the Big 4 Banks—Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo—to stop financing the climate crisis.
Participants pledge that they will close their accounts and credit cards with these banks if they don’t shift to clean, renewable investments.
Wells Fargo, headquartered here, is one of the biggest fossil fuel investors worldwide. Join weekly actions at Bay Area Wells Fargo bank branches to educate customers about this campaign and build momentum for the March 21 day of action.
WHEN
Every Friday until March 21
WHERE
Check here to find the times and locations of upcoming Friday Wells Fargo visits.
Helpful, detailed information on how to move your money here.
San Francisco’s 3Girls Theatre Company returns to a full schedule of live performances for the first time since March of 2020, when their New Works Festival-literally only days away from taking the stage-was shut down by the pandemic.
First out the gate will be the organization’s long brewing production of ‘Tasha, written by Black playwright, activist and former Oakland Mayoral candidate Cat Brooks. Brooks, who looks to the late Ntozake Shange and her play For Colored Girls … as an inspiration both in general and especially for ‘Tasha, began writing the play in 2015. ‘Tasha finally debuts it its entirety when it opens on February 24 only weeks after the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
‘Tasha
The story of Natasha Mckenna who at the age of 37 died while in custody at a jail in Fairfax Virginia is the basis for ‘Tasha. The play is based on years of research and rewrites by playwright Cat Brooks who says, “Natasha started talking so loudly I had to get up and write what she was saying.”
This one-woman play explores Natasha’s life and murder at the hands of law enforcement using a taser from the point of view of several characters both real (Natasha’s mother, Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, Fairfax’ Sherriff now and then, and Natasha herself), as well as imagined (the nurse who declared Natasha dead, and an activist fighting against police brutality in Fairfax County.) Mckenna who was in a mental health crisis at the time is quoted in the play saying “You promised you wouldn’t kill me” only 30 minutes before her death by stun gun.
Begun in 2015 (the same year Natasha died), Brooks brought the work into several of 3GT’s development programs who ended up sending both Brooks and her creative partner, ‘Tasha dramaturg and director Dr. Ayodele Nzinga to speak with of those close to Natasha and inquire further about the circumstances surrounding her death. The results of those interviews were incorporated into the final script.
“I deeply believe in spirit and ancestors, says Brooks. I feel like Natasha chose me. And this was a story that for whatever reason, I was the vessel to tell it.”
Counting Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, but especially Ntozake Shange who also called Oakland home and wrote the seminal and groundbreaking, For Colored Girls among her influences she notes, “The influence of poets who help us see the world and what is worth fighting for is in all my work.”
Brooks not only ran for Mayor of Oakland in 2018, but also co-founded the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) to rapidly respond to state violence in communities of color. She is also the Executive Director of The Justice Teams Network (JTN), a project in partnership with Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
Brooks’s partner in the creation of the ‘Tasha as director and dramaturg is Oakland’s first Poet Laureate, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga – also known as WordSlanger. Among her many other accomplishments, Nzinga is recognized by the August Wilson House as the only director in the world to complete the August Wilson Century Cycle in chronological order.
More information on Cat Brooks can be found HERE
More information on Ayodele Nzinga can be found HERE
‘Tasha Schedule
Friday, 2/24 @ 7:30pm (Opening Night)
Saturday, 2/25 @ 7:30pm
Sunday, 2/26 @ 2pm
Thursday, 3/2 @ 7:30pm
Friday, 3/3 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 3/4 @ 7:30pm
Sunday, 3/5 @ 2pm
Thursday, 3/9 @ 7:30pm
Friday, 3/10 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 3/11 @ 7:30pm
Sunday, 3/12 @ 2pm
Thursday, 3/16 @ 7:30pm
Friday, 3/17 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 3/18 @ 7:30pm (Closing Night)
The Wilmington Ten, State Repression, and African American Politics in the 1970s – Kenneth Janken
In February 1971, racial tension surrounding school desegregation in Wilmington, North Carolina, culminated in four days of violence and skirmishes between white vigilantes and black residents. The turmoil resulted in two deaths, six injuries, more than $500,000 in property damage, and the firebombing of a white-owned corner grocery store, before the National Guard restored an uneasy peace. Despite glaring irregularities in the subsequent trial, ten young persons were convicted of arson and conspiracy and then sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison. They became known internationally as the Wilmington Ten.
This lecture addresses three general questions: What occurred in Wilmington in 1971 that climaxed in civil unrest and acts of violence? Why were ten individuals, most of them high school students, framed for crimes emanating from those disturbances? And how did a movement develop to deliver them justice, what was the significance of that movement for our understanding of the African American freedom struggle, and how might such an understanding inform thought and actions today to build an equal society?
Speaker: Kenneth Janken – Kenny to his friends – is an American historian and professor of African American studiees at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1991. His research focuses on 20th-century African American history, and his most recent book is The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (2015), which won the Clarendon Award from the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society for outstanding book on that region.
In addition to the history of the Wilmington Ten, he is the author of two biographies: Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African-American Intellectual (1993); and White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (2003), which won honorable mention in the Outstanding Book Awards from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. He has also published academic articles on topics such as the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement in the 1940s, African Americans and world affairs, school desegregation in North Carolina, and a forthcoming history of the post-war Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. South. He is currently researching a biography of anti-fascist-cum-socialist writer Cedric Belfrage, who in 1948 co-founded and edited the National Guardian.
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 811 3335 0622
Passcode: ICSS2717rs
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Get out of the rain and start building power with your comrades at our EBDSA Spring General Meeting, tomorrow from 11AM-1PM. We'll be meeting at Omni Commons to vote on important resolutions, reflect on our role in the UAW strike, and hear from an exciting panel about OEA! pic.twitter.com/DGav6HKdZp
— East Bay DSA 🌹 (@DSAEastBay) February 26, 2023