Please join us for our regular biweekly meeting of the Sunflower Alliance. We’ll discuss ongoing campaigns and plans for the future. Newcomers and old friends welcome — we need your participation and your voice.

Mobilization to Submit Reports to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

It comes as no surprise that the Trump administration seems to have failed to submit its report to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) by the deadline November 20, 2017. The Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute (MCLI) continues to reach out to the community to ensure that all forms of racism by the federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. are included in a shadow report to be submitted by MCLI and allies working in communities experiencing racism at the hands of the government.

With the election of Donald Trump racism in the U.S. has been amplified. The struggle of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, the “Muslim Ban”, the repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the police violence against and mass incarceration of African Americans, harassment and criminalization of immigrant communities, and exploitation of immigrant labor are just some of the forms of racism that the MCLI would like to address in the upcoming report.

MCLI is holding this event to explain the process of holding the U.S. accountable for racism, to include the lived experiences of community members who have experienced racism at the hands of the government as well as social justice organizations working in communities of color, and to seek assistance compiling the report.

MCLI wants our shadow report to be as expansive and comprehensive as possible. The only way we can do this is with community input and assistance. Please come to this event to find out how your experiences can be included and how you can help MCLI compile this report.

There will be a presentation by organizers working with MCLI followed by a Q and A.

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

The People’s Community Medics teach basic emergency first aid skills free of charge “BECAUSE NO ONE SHOULD DIE WAITING FOR AN AMBULANCE.”

Currently, Sharena Diamond Thomas is the only first aid trainer at the People’s Community Medics and she has asked us, The Community Democracy Project (Oakland)* to help her find other folks in Oakland willing to help her do this incredibly important and life-saving work. We’re honored to help her out and invite YOU to come join us.

Feel free to bring food (and booze! because we’re also celebrating Shawn and Tia‘s birthdays!)

*The Community Democracy Project is an all-volunteer campaign working to turn the power structure right side up by putting the people of Oakland in charge of the city budget.

We document current events, make films together, steward an editing suite and share a film equipment library. We also host film screenings, often with local directors, and put on an annual short film festival for independent Bay Area filmmakers. Our goal is to make the digital filmmaking accessible – no overpriced college degree or certificate program required!

We are also a good group to reach out to if you’d like to screen a film at the Omni. We can be reached at [ liberatedlens@lists.riseup.net ].

We usually meet in the basement, unless otherwise noted.

Come and hear co-authors, Mumia Abu-Jamal (who will call in during the event) and Stephen Vittoria, plus readers Pam Africa, Tyson Amir, Cat Brooks, Ayanna Davis, Aya de Leon, Emory Douglas, Derethia DuVal, Anita Johnson, devorah major, and others, recite passages from Dreaming of Empire.

This is the first in Mumia Abu-Jamal’s most ambitious work to date, a trilogy written as he struggles for life.
5-20 donation at the door, no one turned away for lack of funds

Socialist solidarity rally TONIGHT!
6pm, Bancroft and Telegraph
Wear green if you have it!

We are joining @norcalsocialism, @LaVozLITci, and @AFSCMELocal3299 pic.twitter.com/OtP9gG0cDW

— East Bay DSA (@DSAEastBay) May 7, 2018

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

In alliance with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) we organized the October 23, 2010 labor and community rally for Justice for Oscar Grant. On that day the ILWU shut down the Bay Area ports in solidarity. Our mission is to educate, organize and mobilize people against police and state repression. Sisters and brothers! The Oscar Grant Committee invites you to join us in this vital struggle.

We meet on the 1^st Monday of each month
You can join our discussion list by sending a blank (doesn’t even need a subject) email to

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

EBC will host a mail night at our office to respond to the increasing amount of correspondence we’ve been receiving from people in prisons and jails across the country. We are getting lots of questions about prior ballot initiatives including Prop 47 and 57, advocacy support, requests for pen pals and EBC’s work at large. We will also be sending information to people inside about how they can get involved with our priority bills.

Please RSVP to Eric@ellabakercenter.org

Habeas Data chronicles the evolution of surveillance law in America over the last 50 years and argues that current law is insufficient for modern technology.

May 8 – Oakland – Laurel Books – 7pm (Launch Party!)

Hello we are here to Save the Internet!

Join us every Tuesday in the Omni Commons mezzanine to help build a community-owned and -operated wireless mesh network in the East Bay!

Every Tuesday night, we meet to discuss on-going projects, technical bugs, community and media outreach, finances and budgeting, and upcoming events, such as node mounts, office hours, and workshops.  Newcomers are encouraged to come on the last Tuesdays of the month for general orientation, but are welcome at any meeting.

A wireless mesh network is a network where each computer acts as a relay to other computers, such that a network can stretch to cover entire cities.

Our goal is to create a wireless mesh network that is owned and operated by the community.

Want to help create an alternate means of digital communication that isn’t governed by for-profit internet service providers? Join us for the mesh hacknight! We need people of all backgrounds to help with everything from community involvement and grant writing to mounting antennas on buildings and developing software!

Learn more at https://peoplesopen.net and http://sudomesh.org/

YOU ARE INVITED TO A COMMUNITY CELEBRATION!

Join the E12th Coalition and friends to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the People’s Council (AKA Oakland City Council Take-over) and the spirit of the Public Land for Public Good campaign.

Three years ago this week, community members who’d had enough of Oakland City Council’s continuous failure to listen to neighborhood needs for affordable housing, took over the City Council chambers to prevent the sale of the E12th St public parcel to a luxury tower developer. What followed was a year of community organizing and participatory design that resulted in a beautiful plan for a 100% affordable project that truly reflected the values and needs of the neighborhood. The City ultimately failed to adopt The People’s Proposal, but the spirit of our fight for Public Land for Public Good is still alive and much needed today.

When we can’t count on City Hall, we know we can count on one another to serve the needs of those most vulnerable among us and show a model of land use and housing affordability that the City should prioritize.

We return to The People’s Parcel on E12th St to lift up some amazing community land projects taking place in Oakland today.

Share a meal with neighbors.
Participate in collective art making.
Hear community solutions on supporting houseless folks, building land trusts and public land policy for the people.

Please bring food or beverages to share, if you can. Most importantly, COME and celebrate community resistance and resilience with us!

This September in San Francisco, the Global Climate Action Summit will bring together leaders from state, tribal, and local governments, business, and citizens from around the world, to demonstrate how the tide has turned in the race against climate change, showcase climate action taking place around the world, and inspire deeper commitments from each other and from national governments in support of the Paris Agreement.

2018 is a turning point: countries and all of us must step up the commitments that were made in Paris and do more. The momentum we generate this year must lead to a climate turning point by 2020 in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change. It must be the beginning of a new phase of action and ambition on climate change.

In 1963 the waters began rising behind Glen Canyon Dam and 170 miles of the Colorado River slowly disappeared as the riverbed and surrounding canyons filled with water. Those who supported and those who opposed the dam considered it a longterm transformation; environmentalists mourned Glen Canyon as dead and gone forever. But it’s coming back, in a victory that is also the pervasive disaster of climate change.

“Lake Powell and the wreckage of where it used to be and will never be again was the right place to think about the madness of the past and the terror of the future, even amidst the epiphanies of beautiful light and majestic space,” writes Rebecca Solnit in Drowned River:  The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado (Radius Books), her collaboration with photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe.

350.org executive director May Boeve talks about the near future of climate activism, including September’s Climate Summit.

NY Times bestselling author, Richard Rothstein, will discuss his recent book, The Color of Law, and the role of the state in creating and maintaining segregation, to the detriment of African Americans and society as a whole. This panel will situate the author’s work in West Oakland, a community that was created/disadvantaged by redlining, “urban redevelopment,” nearby industrial zoning, and other government actions. The panel will pull together activists, electeds, and community members, to reflect on how we got here and the role of government and private actors in remedying it.

Gentrification comes up constantly in the Bay Area, but few of us feel equipped to take action against it. Is it inevitable? What can we do now to prevent displacement?

Berkeley City Councilmember Cheryl Davila is hosting a SURJ workshop which will put gentrification and displacement in a historical context so we understand the racialized political and economic drivers. You’ll hear about past and current struggles led by communities of color to preserve their homes and communities.

Facilitators from SURJ – Oakland/Bay Area will present analysis based on the work of Causa Justa :: Just Cause. SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice), Bay Area chapter, is part of a national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice through community organizing, mobilizing, and education. However, all are welcome at this workshop regardless of identity.

We are asking for $5-$20 donation, sliding scale, which will go to support CJJC’s work challenging gentrification and fighting displacement. However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Building Accessibility: Neyborly can accommodate mobility devices.

Scents: ask everyone to please arrive at meetings fragrance free to support access for folks who experience multiple chemical sensitivities and allergies. This means using only body products and laundry detergent that say “fragrance free” or “unscented” on the label and do not have scented ingredients.

More info on Causa Justa: http://www.cjjc.org/

SPREAD THE WORD, INVITE YOUR FRIENDS!

Come join Local Clean Energy Alliance and Rosana Francescato and Matt Renner from the Clean Coalition, who will explain what a microgrid is, the basics of how it works, and how Community Microgrids provide economic, environmental and resilience benefits to communities.

We will hear about the Clean Coalition’s plans for microgrids in fire-devastated parts of the North Bay, and in other areas, to create islands of power sustainability as part of the rebuilding process.

For a 90-second video on Community Microgrids, follow this link.

Tickets are free, but space is limited.  Get tickets at Eventbrite.