Calendar
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee will be holding a hearing on immigration detainers (S-Comm).
Keep our Families Together, End ICE Holds in Alameda County!
Join us at the
Alameda County Public Protection Committee Hearing on “ICE Detainers”
Please join us on January 10th at the Alameda County Public Protection committee hearing on “ICE Detainers”. Community members with advocates and organizers will offer testimony on the devastating impacts of detention & deportation and urge Alameda County to adopt a new policy that ends the enforcement of ICE holds!
Increased federal immigration enforcement has resulted in a record number of deportations nationally and results in the separation of families, including here in Alameda County. In 2011, there was an unprecedented number of deportations, 400,000, more than any year before! California has had over 82,531 deportations as a result of S-Comm, more than any other state. In Alameda County approximately 2000 immigrants have been deported and many more individuals have been turned over to federal authorities by the County, facing deportation.
For the past two and a half years we have been pushing for an end to S-Comm and this is the first hearing in Alameda County where the Board of Supervisors will hear directly from our communities about the devastating impacts of local police collaboration with ICE.
We want this hearing to be filled with everyone in the community who opposes the separation of families and believes that enforcing immigration is not the job of local police.
Saturday 12 January 2013
San Antonio Park
3:00pm;
1701 East 19th Street, Oakland, CA1701 East 19th Street, Oakland, CA
Come out & celebrate MLK’s b-day by helping us stop the ignorance & STOP THE VIOLENCE!!! Too many are dying in our community and it’s gonna take a village to get us out of this.
Refreshments will be provided.
from facebook event
Join the Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition and allies on Tuesday 1/15 to tell City Council that we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30. Make sure to fill out speaker cards online beforehand or at City Hall (http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/CityClerk/s/SpeakerCard/SpeakerCard/OAK032373).
If you can’t attend in solidarity with the JAB Coalition, here’s a petition for you to sign, voicing your discontent with the cities plans:
http://www.change.org/petitions/oaklanders-against-william-bratton-and-racial-profiling
As some of you may have heard, OPD has a new strategy to reduce crime in Oakland. This plan is to ask City Council for an additional $250,000 to hire Bill Bratton as a consultant for one year. They have happily announced that they are bringing in the man responsible for NYC’s dramatic drop in crime and the man who helped the LAPD work through their own federal difficulties after the Ramparts case.
Here’s what they’re not telling you about Bratton’s multi-pronged approach to crime reduction:
1) Bratton takes credit for implementing NY’s broken window policy. On the surface, the policy sounds great – if you repair minor damage then you don’t send the message that an area is worthless and thus raise civic pride and prevent crime. But Oakland has already instituted a new policy along these lines that exposes a key flaw. It is not the city that pays for this damage but home owners and business owners. Businesses and homes that fail to remove graffiti promptly can be fined. So it is the homeowner who is punished for the police’s ineptitude at preventing vandalism in the first place. Moreover, one can no longer simply leave the graffiti up and appreciate the art because the city sees it as counter-economic to have graffiti anywhere. Ultimately, broken windows forces civilians to take on police roles they already pay others to do regardless of whether they personally believe in the laws or not.
2) Bratton believes in a zero tolerance policy for all crime. This means harsher punishment and more policing of minor infractions (including public protest, public disturbance, vagrancy, public intoxication, smoking marijuana, etc). This sort of strategy takes a way a cop’s (meager) rationality and forces them to further criminalize the public. For those police who already have no problem seeing Oakland residents as criminals, zero tolerance encourages them to punish as harshly as they can to deter crime.
3) In a recent interview, Bratton talked up the importance of stop and frisk and compared it to chemotherapy (http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120322/manhattan/former-nypd-chief-bill-bratton-compares-stop-and-frisks-chemotherapy). That’s right. Bratton thinks the people being stopped are like a cancer, and the rest of the city (the innocent ones) simply need to endure the poison (in this case the unlawful stops and searches) in order to make the city healthy again. There is no doubt that bringing a de jure Stop and Frisk policy (to replace the already existent de facto policy) will only encourage police racism and police violence. Moreover, with recent comments by Fruitvale’s new City Councilmember Noel Gallo in which he proclaimed his own desire for a “search and frisk” policy, there is no doubt that the Council will be moving in this direction.
4) Bratton has also been vocal in his disgust with cities that have tolerated Occupy camps. In regard to NYC, he reportedly almost ran for mayor because he was so angry at how tepidly Bloomberg had responded to the Zuccotti Park Camp. Bratton despises the tents for the same reason as the broken windows and encourages harsh response to populist movements to preserve the status quo.
So what’s really going on here? The last two consultants, Frazier (who they chose) and Warshaw (who was forced on them by Judge Henderson), both wrote scathing reports of OPD that Deanna Santana tried to cover up and edit. So now they found someone to say exactly what she wants to hear. They’re not out of control, they’re too controlled. They’re not too violent, they’re not violent enough. Also, with the new Federal Compliance Director coming in with a clear mandate to stop Stop and Frisk as it already exists off the books in Oakland and to work against racial profiling, the Police and City Officials want to make it harder to change their backwards, racist policies. Oakland has become the epicenter of anti-brutality campaigns, so those who want the brutality to continue are bringing in their big guns. They know that in the wake of Oakland’s crime and murder spike, that the people of Oakland will be much easier to bully into whatever program they recommend.
We say no.
No to zero tolerance!
No to “broken windows” policies!
No to Stop and Frisk!
No to racial profiling!
No to Bill Bratton!!
Come out and tell the Public Safety Committee that we want none of this and that we will be heard. Get a speaker card, bring a banner, get rowdy. Remind City Council whose city this is.
Join the JAB Coalition and allies on Tuesday 1/15 to tell City Council that we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30. Make sure to fill out speaker cards online beforehand or at City Hall.
As some of you may have heard, OPD has a new strategy to reduce crime in Oakland. This plan is to ask City Council for an additional $250,000 to hire Bill Bratton as a consultant for one year.
Here’s what they’re not telling you about Bratton’s multi-pronged approach to crime reduction…
Stop the Injunctions Coalition writeup.
City Council Public Safety Committee Meeting Agenda (The 2nd item listed, labelled as Item #4).
The benefit will feature “Fighting For Our Lives,” a short documentary about the history of resistance to medical neglect at CCWF & VSPW plus presentations by prison survivors, information about the protest and sign-making. We’re so grateful for the community support!
More info at the Occupy 4 Prisoners website.
On Tuesday, January 22nd, join the JAB Coalition and allies and come on back out to City Hall as the full City Council weighs what to do now that the Public Safety Committee has recommended moving forward on the Wasserman/Bratton consultancy proposal. In addition, the 22nd will be the 2 year anniversary of the murder of Raheim Brown by OUSD police officers Barhim Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa. Please join us to come together for a rally to honor the lives of all of Oakland’s sons and daughters murdered by the police. The City Council meeting will begin at 5:30 and the rally will start at 5:00.
Although Wasserman vehemently denied that he or the City Council were in any way trying to bring Stop and Frisk or gang injunctions or youth curfews or zero tolerance policing to Oakland, it is impossible to deny that the choice of a contract with Bill Bratton suggests the opposite. Bratton was on air the night before the Public Safety Committee meeting proudly proclaiming yet again his support of Stop and Frisk and his belief that any city that doesn’t have a Stop and Frisk policy is “doomed to failure.” Wasserman also kept repeating the importance of community involvement and bringing the community together (and even seemed to take credit for the hundreds who came out to protest the Bratton contract), but neither in his time consulting with the OPD nor when he and the city announced a month ago that the Bratton hiring was a done deal (it wasn’t) did he ever bring the community in. How are we as a community supposed to believe what Wasserman says when he’s been so clearly dishonest this far?
Much more at the Facebook event page
We brought our solutions to city hall. The council heard the public loud and clear: NO MORE MONEY FOR OPD; invest the money in our schools, in our shuttered libraries, in youth centers and job programs. Unsurprisingly they have decided to hand more money in a broken and visibly racist police force. So in light of the recent and expected arrogance on the part of city council, we converge in the streets to voice our rage and to make it perfectly clear we will not allow ourselves to be further criminalized.
Most of us know that speaking to city council is a futile exercise, but one of the greatest parts about city council meetings is that we hear each other. We had so many beautiful and brilliant voices last night, but we don’t need their forum to speak to each other. Come to the plaza to rally and discuss how we can stop the violence of poverty in Oakland without them.
When we talk about stopping the violence, we are talking about eliminating the desperation that life under capitalism causes, and we are talking about ending the violence of the police occupation we live under.
Please join us for a discussion/GA at 5 pm to strategize as to what our course of action and response to this decision should be for this evening and into the coming years. Let’s remind them that we are ungovernable. Bring your ideas and your noisemakers.
The Healthcare Movie
Potluck at 6pm
An entertaining 65 minute documentary explaining how Canada got their beloved healthcare system. The Healthcare Movie is full of lessons that we can use in our campaign for single payer healthcare.
A discussion will follow the film.
Dear Friends,Please join us as we gather to remember Aaron Swartz. Speakers will include Danny O’Brien, Lisa Rein, Peter Eckersley, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Cindy Cohn, Brewster Kahle, Tim O’Reilly, Elliot Peters, Alex Stamos, and Carl Malamud; there will be an opportunity for brief remembrances.
RSVP.
A Foreclosure Defense Group Orientation and Training
Foreclosures, evictions, gentrification, massive displacement… These are facets not of a “crisis” but of a targeted, ceaseless attack, an attack of one class and its institutions upon another with communities of color taking the brunt of the assault.
The Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group forwards an anti-capitalist perspective built on community organizing, self defense and our experience and successes.
This Friday, January 25th, we offer an orientation on the local political terrain, on the forces at play in this current attack and an introduction to our vision, our work and how we get down.
We especially encourage to attend those many folks that have put in work around our recent fights and those who are interested in becoming more involved in these immediate and tangible struggles.
Presenters include
Darwin Bond-Graham, noted sociologist and journalist who has published extensively on the political economy of Oakland. (You might have seen him in the streets around Occupy Oakland as well!)
Anthony Panarese, longtime local community organizer and notorious pain in the ass of the local establishment, now a staffer with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.
Core organizers with the Foreclosure Defense Group
Hope to see you there!
For any questions you can email us at foreclosure@occupyoakland.org or call the OOFDG hotline 510.207.0182
JOIN THE PARTY FOR DEFENSE OF WORKING CLASS RADICALS GG AND ORION’S HOME AGAINST THE ROTTEN INTERNATIONAL RULING CLASS CAPITALIST BANKS AND COURTS.
ACOUSTIC MUSIC 1PM TO 4PM
4PM TO 7PM ORION/S JOY OF JAZZ WITH GUEST JAZZ MUSICIANS
POT LUCK GALS BRING FOOD
GUYS BRING DRINKS OR VICE VERSA.
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” – Emma Goldman (supposedly)
On Jan 28, 2012 Occupy Oakland activists planned “Oakland Rise Up! Move-in Day”, an action intended to result in the takeover of a large building to be converted into a community center. The Oakland Police Department responded to a jubilant show of community support and enthusiasm for community service by firing “less lethal” weapons and deploying explosives on a crowd which very clearly included children.
… (complete writeup on Facebook page)
Nearly a year later, state repression of Occupy Oakland continues, our personal and activist relationships are severely tattered and torn, and noone can fix this but us.
Stay-Away orders remain on the books and continue to separate our community, keeping many of our most valued members away from events like #O25.
Let’s meet up at 19th and Telegraph, throw the greatest fucking dance party that Occupy Oakland has ever seen, hold a speakout for stayaways, and if we feel comfortable with our numbers, embark on a peaceful and cathartic march past our old battlegrounds.
Let’s heal our community and get back to doing what we all came together to do in the first place – draw attention to economic and social injustice, corporate control of politics, and the mother fucking banks.
Long live the movement, and Fuck The Police!
======
ATTENTION! People arrested on J28!
A class action law suit against OPD and mutual aid police departments is being filed! We need your stories, videos, twitter feeds, and anything else that can help piece together what happened on that day and the following days spent in Santa Rita and Glen Dyer. Particularly of interest: accounts of police brutality, felony charges, and situations where personal/medical needs were not met. Also, we are trying to track down all journalists (those with valid press pass) who were detained and/arrested at the Y.
Please contact ASAP Yolanda Huang at 510-392-2140, j28.legal@gmail.com
Strike Debt is an arm of Occupy Wall Street, born from the need to foster “resistance to all forms of debt imposed on us by the banks.” One of its projects is the debt-buying-and-abolishing Rolling Jubilee, and another is the Debt Resistor’s Operations Manual, a publication best described as “half survivor guide, half exposé of the lending industry.”
The benefit will feature a wide variety of local performers, including the Bay Area’s famously opinionated punk rock and spoken word legend, Jello Biafra, comics Sean Keane and Kevin O’Shea, and more! 7:30pm
Strike Debt Bay Area Web Page.
Strike Debt advertises the Bay Area fundraiser! You can watch a livestream of the fundraiser by going to that site on Monday evening at 7:30 PM. You can also donate via a WePay account to Bay Area Strike Debt from that page.
100% of every online donation will go to funding the projects of Strike Debt Bay Area.
Also:
Strike Debt Bay Area FaceBook.
STRIKE DEBT BAY AREA ANNOUNCES OAKLAND’S FIRST DEBTORS’ ASSEMBLY!! FEB 2ND. CLICK FOR DETAILS.
On Saturday, February 2nd, Strike Debt Bay Area will host Oakland’s first Debtors’ Assembly.
As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt for the basic things we need to live, including housing, education, and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government. All of us are outraged that big banks don’t have to pay their debts, but we do.
Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid—of becoming homeless, of going hungry, of being crippled or killed by treatable illness, or of being trapped in poverty-level jobs. Those facing foreclosure, medical debt, student debt, or credit card debt feel alone, hounded by debt collectors, and forced into unrewarding work to keep up with payments.
Strike Debt is building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. At the Debtors’ Assembly we will come together as a community and begin to rethink debt, not as an issue of individual shame, but as a political platform for collective resistance and action. Come to the Assembly to learn about tools for escaping the closing walls of debt, to share resources and skills, and to magnify our assembled energy. As we share our experiences we can begin to take back from the financiers what they have taken from us: our freedom and our future.
Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
ORGANIZATION INFO: Strike Debt Bay Area is the local chapter of Strike Debt, an international movement of groups working to build popular resistance to all forms of unjust debt. Strike Debt has organized the Rolling Jubilee, the Debt Resistors Operations Manual, and local debtors’ assemblies. Strike Debt supports the creation of just and sustainable economies, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence. We owe the financial institutions nothing. It is to our friends, families and community that we owe everything.
Some of our friends and comrades are still facing heavy shit from the Columbus Day Cop-riot. Their next court day is coming up and they could use some support.
“Come pack the courtroom on February 8th to support the ACAC 19!
Solidarity is our weapon against the state! Our love for our comrades is stronger than their cages and their court.
On Friday February 8th, 2013 members of the Anti-Capitalist Anti-Colonial (ACAC) 19 will be appearing in San Francisco Superior Court at 850 Bryant Street for a pretrial motions hearing. We call on you, supporters, friends, and comrades to pack the courtroom. Support comes in many forms: banners and signs on the court steps, people in the courtroom and spreading the word about the trial. Let us show the District Attorney that our comrades are not alone in their relentless struggle against colonialism, capitalism and the state.”
The Brooms Collective has been meeting Saturday mornings at 9 AM or 10 AM for a year now at a tiny park at 32nd and San Pablo in Oakland. To commemorate this auspicious anniversary folks will be meeting there at 11 AM Saturday, February 9th to sweep away late-capitalist decay and maybe have a little fress at noon, as well. Bring a little food to share, there will be paper plates and utensils and maybe some gelatinous Ed-chow if we are unlucky.
