Calendar
2018 will be the year California gives serious attention to legislation, that provides a real path to Universal Healthcare in the State. If you’ve ever wondered about the intricacies of our current healthcare system, and the historic progress in California under the ACA; or policy options that can successfully move California toward Universal Healthcare, then you’ll want to attend the IB Healthcare Team’s Forum coming up on Saturday, April 28th from 11 to 3, in Berkeley (lunch provided). Save the Date!
The forum will feature two expert speakers from UC Berkeley; Robin Flagg, PhD, MPH, and Ken Jacobs,Chair, Center for labor Research and Education.You’ll come away from this informative session with a greater understanding of how the system works, proposed policy changes, and possible directions for action. Please save the date, Sunday April 28th. This event is free.
For additional details on the forum, please contact Steve Lehman at:
Speaker Bios:
Robin Flagg, PhD, MPH, is a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and at the Haas School of Business. Her research interests include: State health care politics, expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and health care and the aging population. Flagg is a recipient of the School of Public Health’s Committee on Teaching Excellence Award.
Ken Jacobs is the chair of the Labor Center, where he has been a labor specialist since 2002. His areas of specialization include low-wage work, labor standards policies, and health care coverage. Jacobs leads a multi-campus program providing research and technical assistance to consumer stakeholders and policy makers on the effects of the Affordable Care Act, and measures to cover the remaining uninsured in California. Along with colleagues at UC Berkeley and UCLA, he is consulting for Covered California on issues related to ACA implementation. During 2017-18 he has served as a panelist at informational hearings of the California Assembly Select Committee on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage. His work has been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio.
This family-friendly festival is free to all and will offer free health screenings, interactive fitness workshops, live music, free healthy lunches, garden workshops, free children’s face painting and activities, vendors, info on alternative health options and more.
Ona Zene Yeshitela, coordinator of Uhuru Health Fairs & Festivals nationally, asserted that
“The dire state of health faced by African families in Oakland is well known and well documented.” Reports by the Alameda County Department of Health show grave disparities in life expectancy, maternal health, infant mortality, chronic disease, medical care access and overall health and well being. Some of these statistics include:
A person of African descent born in East or West Oakland can expect to die almost 15 years earlier than a white person born in the Oakland hills.
The rates of Asthma for African-American children is 2.5 times higher than the overall rate in the county.
Diabetes in Alameda County is at 13% for African-Americans compared to 5% for caucasians.
High blood pressure is 48% for African-Americans, 28% for caucasians.
According to Yeshitela, the long term goal of the health festivals is African self-reliance. The Uhuru Health Festival is harnessing the vast resources of the Bay Area, putting these crucially needed resources in the hands of our under resourced African community. And we are inviting people from all walks of life to participate and contribute.
To get volunteer or support the Uhuru Health Festival and for more information, contact 510-763-3342 ext. x5 or email oakland [at] uhuruvolunteer.org
The African People’s Education and Defense Fund is a national 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to defend the civil and human rights of the African community. APEDF builds programs and institutions that are addressing the grave disparities faced by the African community in health, healthcare, education and economic development. Apedf.org
Black Star Industries is building economic development and commerce for and between African people worldwide. http://uhurupies.org/about/story.php?store=stpete
And in #Oakland join us on Saturday, April 28, 12 pm at Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th & Broadway to #FreeMumiaApr30 https://t.co/HEUk25pLS0
— Terri Kay (@TKOakWWP) March 29, 2018
Join us as we pick up the work of the 2018 campaign. We will vote on endorsements in District 2 and for Alameda County District Attorney and begin to plan for the summer’s activities. Draft Agenda includes:
1) Endorsements:
- Presentation of Pamela Price for Alameda County District Attorney
- Present Nikki Fortunato Bas for District 2 Oakland City Council
2) Our Revolution Reportback
3) Discussion and Planning for May General Meeting with BBQ
4) Announcements and other Event Information
May 26, Time TBA. Our General Meeting will be combined with a Memorial Day Weekend BBQ and Fundraiser. Let your friends and family know!!
Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers union with César Chávez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chávez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the 20th century – and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change.
Opening Remarks by Jesse Arreguín – Mayor of Berkeley
Film Followed by Discussion Panel: Farm Labor Organizing in 2018
Facilitated by Felipe Ocampo – Ecology Center’s Berkeley Farmers’ Markets
Panelist from Swanton Berry Farms – UFW Certified and member of our Berkeley Farmer’s Markets
A radical movement is tightening its grip across America. The collateral damage? WOMEN. @BirthrightFilm is a must-see → https://t.co/d6ixdbGXDP pic.twitter.com/WN1JFcTBFV
— ACLU of Northern CA (@ACLU_NorCal) April 19, 2018
Please come to our Inequality Seminar on Sunday, 4/29 at 11:00 AM at the OMNI!
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.
- Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions.
Our next seminar/workshop will be on April 29th. Check it out and make sure to come! - Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
- money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
- Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
- Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
- Promoting the concept of Basic Income
- Advocating for Postal banking
- Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, 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.
Remember that chant “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie?
There’s a new one now: “Nina, Nina, Nina”!
Nina Turner, President of Our Revolution, is coming to the East Bay to help us send to Sacramento and the Alameda County DA seat three corporate-free, people powered WOMEN.
No one is more eloquent than Nina Turner, President of Our Revolution. Her grandma told her about three bones in the body (Ask her!) — she’s got all three!
Nina Turner brings a powerful message to the Bay Area Saturday, April 28th at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School from 6pm-8pm.
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was attacked as mostly “Bernie Bros” – young men operating on social media. Never true. Here are the new “Bernie Bros” four WOMEN, dynamic, experienced, and out to help us take back our government!
No one is a more determined and successful champion of all kinds of voters than Jovanka Beckles, Richmond City Council person, now Assembly District 15 candidate.
Gayle McLaughlin has been leading Richmond and the East Bay for years. Now she’s going (for us) for Lieutenant Governor.
https://gayleforcalifornia.org/
Pamela Price promises to be an innovative, corruption-free Alameda County District Attorney, and she and Jovanka have endorsed each others’ corporate-free agendas.
These four women are people-people. They listen carefully. They craft solutions creatively. They fight resolutely for all of us who want corporate money out of politics, who want medicare for all now, who want the broken justice system fixed.
Come, celebrate and support four women who are fighting for us! Buy tickets here. http://www.jovanka.org/our_revolution_s_people_powered_women
THERE IS NOW AN 8:00 PM EVENT AS WELL. THE 6:00 PM EVENT IS FULL.
TICKETS FOR THE 8:00 PM EVENT HERE.
OAKLAND! SAN FRANCISCO! BAY AREA!
What’s up!
On THIS SATURDAY @ 6pm we will be hosting a FREE event @ Oakland Technical High School. We love Oak Tech and are grateful that they’ve opened their doors up for us again!
Please RSVP, share the event with your friends, and bring your whole crew.
This isn’t just going to be inspirational, it’s going be practical and detailed on how we can build change together!
See you on Saturday!
–Shaun
ROAR will be a space to gather, build, and learn from each other’s struggles and continue to build an anti-racist front in the Bay Area and beyond. During these times more and more attention is being paid to those of us who use direct action and hold liberatory and revolutionary politics. We can use this moment not only to inspire others through our actions, but to also inspire with our ideas. To draw a line not just against this or that politician, or this or that alt-right figure, but to construct revolutionary positions such as returning land to the indigenous, centering black folks and their perspectives, community self defense, taking care of one another, putting women and gender non conforming people to the front, obliterating borders, opening prison doors, and gaining our freedom from the state, capitalism, and all the other damning institutions.
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Anti-Facism Movement
Anti-Patriarchy, Transphobia + Homophobia Anti-Racism in Education Black + Brown Resistance Black Liberation/Black Power Community self-defense Crisis Relief Alternative Models/Disaster Solidarity History Lessons from Movements past Indigenous Struggles |
Intersections of racism and disability
Muslim struggles Political Prisoners Policing Prison Abolitionist Radical Self-Care Undocumented + Immigrant struggles Youth Liberation Queer Liberation & Legacy |
Wealth & Income Inequality: A Two-Part Workshop by Strike Debt Bay Area
Everywhere we look, everything from the headlines to our paychecks to the tents under the freeway remind us that rich people are getting richer and poor people are getting poorer. But it can be hard to understand exactly how and why that is happening. If we can’t understand it, we can’t change it. And change it we must!
After a look at the causes of runaway inequality in Part 1, we’ll talk about some fairer ways to provide economic security for all in Part 2. What do alternatives to corporate capitalism look like?
Part 1: How Corporations Move Money from the Many to the Few
Sunday, April 29, 11:00am to 12:45pm
Do you wonder what role racism plays in wealth inequality? Do you wish you understood exactly how Wall Street exploits Main Street? The answers are not terribly complicated, but they are shocking. We’ll learn about stock manipulation, financialization, strip-mining, redlining and more.
Part 2: How We Can Build a More Just Economy for All
Sunday, May 6, 11:00am to 12:45pm
Using our shared understanding of the problem, we will examine past and existing movements for change: what they are, how they work, and how they can grow. We’ll talk about better ways to make sure all have access to the basic necessities. Then we’ll discuss how we can keep the wealth we create in our communities instead of paying it into the bank accounts of global elites. In sum, what might a fair, sustainable, and joyful economic system look like?
We’d love you to RSVP to strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com so we know how many people to expect.
This workshop is free.
We’d love you to come to both parts if you can.
Wealth & Income Inequality: A Two-Part Workshop by Strike Debt Bay Area
Everywhere we look, everything from the headlines to our paychecks to the tents under the freeway remind us that rich people are getting richer and poor people are getting poorer. But it can be hard to understand exactly how and why that is happening. If we can’t understand it, we can’t change it. And change it we must!
After a look at the causes of runaway inequality in Part 1, we’ll talk about some fairer ways to provide economic security for all in Part 2. What do alternatives to corporate capitalism look like?
Part 1: How Corporations Move Money from the Many to the Few
Sunday, April 29, 11:00am to 12:45pm
Do you wonder what role racism plays in wealth inequality? Do you wish you understood exactly how Wall Street exploits Main Street? The answers are not terribly complicated, but they are shocking. We’ll learn about stock manipulation, financialization, strip-mining, redlining and more.
Part 2: How We Can Build a More Just Economy for All
Sunday, May 6, 11:00am to 12:45pm
Using our shared understanding of the problem, we will examine past and existing movements for change: what they are, how they work, and how they can grow. We’ll talk about better ways to make sure all have access to the basic necessities. Then we’ll discuss how we can keep the wealth we create in our communities instead of paying it into the bank accounts of global elites. In sum, what might a fair, sustainable, and joyful economic system look like?
We’d love you to RSVP to strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com so we know how many people to expect.
This workshop is free.
We’d love you to come to both parts if you can.
This is one of the biggest events of the year at People’s Park, with a great lineup of music, dance and speakers. Come and participate!
12:30 Michael Diehl greeting
12:35 Yukon Hannibal
1:00 Felix
1:15 Katy Stuck
1:25 Jim Burrill
1:50 Hali Hammer & Friends
2:15 Michael Delacore
2:25 Max Ventura
2:45 Speakers
3:00 Burnt (punk reggae funk)
3:50 Soul
4:05 Ruby’s In Town
4:50 Trump
5:05 Skank Bank
5:50 Closing remarks
East Bay Food Not Bombs will provide free vegetarian / vegan food and drinks for the anniversary! Free food is nice! Thank you Food Not Bombs!
Join our monthly meeting for members and newcomers interested in opposing the Trump agenda! For more information, visit indivisibleeb.org
Indivisible East Bay is a chapter of the Indivisible movement. We are a grassroots organization focused on stopping the Trump administration’s policies by:
- Lobbying our group’s Members of Congress (MoCs) with office visits, calls, emails, and rallies.
- Lobbying our MoCs on topics of laws, policies, and nominations.
- Collaborating with other Indivisible groups and sharing resources for meetings and events.
League of Women Voters of Piedmont Speaker Series
Catherine Crump is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at U.C. Berkeley Law School. She will speak about surveillance, public safety, privacy and civil rights. A former staff attorney for the ACLU, Professor Crump has focused her career on free speech, privacy and the impact of modern technology on the law.
This event is open to the public and is co-sponsored by the City of Piedmont and City Councilmember, Jen Cavenaugh.
You are invited to
A conversation with Terry Kupers:
Why we need to be concerned about mass incarceration and supermax solitary confinement
The prison population is seven times what it was in the 1970s, and meanwhile the proportion of prisoners with serious illness has grown. Tens of millions of people have served time and experienced resultant compromised lives.
Solitary confinement is pervasive in the prison world and causes great human damage. Let’s get beyond the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” sensibility and talk frankly about how mass incarceration, solitary confinement and the criminalization of mental illness damage our social fabric.
Speaker
Ashby Village member Terry A. Kupers, M.D., M.S.P., is Professor Emeritus at The Wright Institute and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He provides expert testimony in class action litigation regarding the psychological effects of prison conditions including isolated confinement in supermaximum security units, the quality of correctional mental health care, and the effects of sexual abuse in correctional settings. His recently published book is Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It. He is also the author of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It, and co-editor of Prison Masculinities. Terry Kupers is a contributing editor of Correctional Mental Health Report. He received the 2005 Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
The location is accessible.
Space is limited!
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
and presence that characterized people in the U.S. during the next decade
With Steve Martinot
Preceding the Occupy Oakland General Assembly
The 1960s were an exciting time to live through for those who could see what was happening, because they were a time when, all over the world, people were coming together, organizing themselves, and living their lives according to principles – principles of opposition, of democracy, of cooperation, of justice, and of liberation from the colonialisms of former centuries, both in the colonies and in the colonialist countries. 1968 marked a node in this historical development, in which huge events materialized and concretized movements as upsurges that focused on contesting corporate colonialist and militarist power.
We could list the Vietnamese Tet offensive that deconstructed US strategies there, the strike in France that was the largest strike in history, rebellions in black communities across the US in response to the assassination of MLK, the formation of Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and other RUMs throughout the auto industry along with the first massive strike in Lordstown, the student upsurges in the US that seized Columbia Univ., SFSU, NYU, and others to stop the military’s braintrusts and make education relevant, the civil rights movement in Ireland, the Cultural Revolution in China that was at its populist high-point before being organized into a vast sectarian campaign, Prague Spring, the massive uprising in Mexico City during the Olympics (with solidarity from John Carlos and Tommy Smith), and the beginning of that new form of international anti-colonialist solidarity epitomized by groups of USians working in Cuba and later organized as the Venceremos Brigades.
All these events had profound influence on the thinking of the world’s people, leading almost to an inability of the power elites of the corporate world to govern in the old way. Socialist and socializing ideologies became general ways of thinking, the difference between party politics and people’s politics thrust parties aside, and movements teaching people how to establish political and cultural autonomy as a source of real political strength and not of division took hold for the next ten years.
Steve Martinot has been a union and community organizer, lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at SFSU, and written extensively on the structure of racism and white supremacy in the US, as well as on corporate economics and culture.
Dinner: 6:30 PM
Movie: 7:30 PM
Film Night: Dispatches from Resistant Mexico – Producer/Director Caitlin Manning will present her film from communities and peoples in resistance in Mexico. Sponsored by Liberated Lens and co-sponsored by the Chiapas Support Committee