Calendar
The Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair is an annual event that brings together people interested and engaged in radical work to connect, learn, and discuss through books and information tables, workshops, panel discussions, skillshares, films, and more! We seek to create an inclusive space to introduce new folks to anarchism, foster a productive dialogue between various political traditions as well as anarchists from different milieus, and create an opportunity to dissect our movements’ strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and tactics.
Join us, rain or shine, as we show up for Kayla Moore!
Kayla Moore, a Black trans woman with a mental health diagnosis, was killed by Berkeley police in 2013. Four years later, her family and community are still working to hold the City of Berkeley and Berkeley police accountable with a civil suit. Demands also include that police not be first responders to mental health emergencies and an end the BPD’s violent attacks, criminalization, and profiling of people who are Black, Brown, disabled and/or trans.
This “Human Billboard” will lift up Kayla’s story and the Justice for Kayla Moore Coalition’s call to come out for court support October 23rd. We will also make visible our support for the Movement for Black Lives and communities targeted by Trump. These gatherings, held throughout the East Bay and nationally, are a simple yet effective way of channeling anger and sadness over injustice into collective action and solidarity.
For those of us who are white, it’s a way to express a unified voice in opposition to the white nationalist, transphobic, sexist politics that Trump and his followers represent, and to commit to ending white silence and visibly supporting racial justice.
For all of us, it’s a concrete way to put our heart and soul into action. It’s being in community with each other, to share with like-minded people a belief that a loving, humane, compassionate world is possible, and to take a small step towards making that happen.
If you’ve been wanting to get more involved, this event is a great way to take action, meet people and gain further connections in the community we’re building. Bring flowers for an altar. Bring friends, family and neighbors. Bring a sign – here are some ideas for messaging:
- Justice for Kayla Moore!
- #SayHerName: Kayla Moore
- Will you show up for racial justice?
- Will you show up against police terror?
- Black Lives Matter!
- Black Trans Lives Matter!
- Solidarity with Black and POC Trans Women!
- End Displacement of Black and Brown communities!
- Solidarity with Queer and Trans People of Color!
Follow the Justice for Kayla Moore coalition website and Facebook page for more information on Kayla’s story and court support in October.
At this legal clinic, people will have the opportunity to reduce or clear their felony convictions and get a free copy of their RAP sheets. Attendees will learn how we can help to remove barriers to vital programs and services. Spanish interpreters will be present and there will be free food! We are seeking volunteers to support the legal clinic. if you are available, contact: tash@ellabakercenter.org.
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.
- Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
- Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums and workshops
- money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
- 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
- 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.
The Left is coming together in the wake of the chaotic Trump administration. Bernie Sanders brought a mass movement together through his campaign, and we’ve seen some of the largest protests in US history, just in 2017 so far. Although the Democratic Party establishment has made some overtures to this movement through the “better deal” program, they refuse to take concrete steps to prove any motion towards the Left, like rejecting corporate money or embracing single-payer healthcare.
So how do we take the movement forward? Socialists and the Left can lead the way. The Republicans may control the federal government, but we can establish footholds in cities or even states, all over the country, and build progressive strongholds. Trump is trying to attack the working class and lower our living standards so he can enrich his billionaire friends.
However, we can Trump-proof the Bay Area by building local, working-class power, and winning concrete gains. We can start by taxing the rich, building affordable housing, ending homelessness, establishing REAL sanctuary cities, winning single-payer universal healthcare, and stopping police brutality. We can win all this and more by electing independents and socialists to local office who reject corporate money – and through unified action based on a movement of the working-class and oppressed people.
Socialist Alternative Bay Area and the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America are hosting this event to bring the left together and Trump-proof the Bay Area.
Featuring
- Kshama Sawant: The socialist Seattle city councilmember and member of Socialist Alternative
- Gayle McLaughlin: Former Green party mayor of Richmond and current independent and corporate-free candidate for the Lieutenant Governor’s race
- Jeremy Gong: Member of the DSA National Political Committee and the East Bay DSA
FEED THE HOOD If you’ve been wondering how you can help people who are currently living on the streets, here’s a community event worth adding to your schedule — Feed the Hood. Community group East Oakland Collective (EOC) and nonprofit Struggle 2 Bubble Foundation are joining forces to host this event, where participants will assemble and distribute bagged lunches and hygiene bags to people living in homeless encampments throughout Oakland. The group is asking those who’d like to participate to either donate food items (e.g. loaves of bread, lunch meat, juice boxes, cases of water) or personal care products (e.g. socks, feminine hygiene products, travel-size bottles of lotion or mouth wash), or make a monetary donation so that food and supplies can be purchased. RSVP at http://bit.ly/feedthehood2. Feed the Hood takes place at 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 17 at San Antonio Park, 1701 E. 19th St. (at 17th Ave.), Oakland.
The East Bay-San Francisco Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom is honored to have Maxine Hong Kingston, celebrated author and professor of creative writing at UC Berkeley, in the last of our Peace Talks series. She will reflect on her life, her writing and creativity; on immigration, war, peace, and activism in conversation with Kate Raphael, author and producer of KPFA’s Women’s Magazine. The event is free, all are welcome, wheelchair accessible, refreshments.
Kingston’s first book, a memoir entitled The Woman Warrior, was published in 1976 and won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, making her a literary celebrity at age thirty-six. Her second book, China Men, earned the National Book Award. Both books are still widely taught in literature and other classes. Kingston has earned additional awards, including the PEN West Award for Fiction for Tripmaster Monkey, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the National Humanities Medal, which was conferred by President Clinton. Her most recent books are The Fifth Book of Peace and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. Kingston is currently Senior Lecturer Emerita for Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. In July 2014, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama.
The Peace Talks Speaker Series is a presentation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, East Bay and San Francisco branches.
The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 3 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 3:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months, once Daylight Savings Time springs forward we tend to assemble at 4 PM).
On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 2 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.
OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over five years! 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
In July Governor Jerry Brown and representatives of the oil industry crafted a bill to renew California’s greenhouse gas cap and trade program. The governor then rammed the bill through the legislature in less than two weeks. In this forum, oil industry experts and activists in the climate and environmental justice movement will explain what cap and trade has (not) accomplished, what the new law will do, and how it passed so quickly. And we’ll talk about future strategies for stopping the fossil fuel industry from poisoning communities, increasing climate catastrophe, and corrupting our politics.
Speakers:
Roger Lin, Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment
Danny Cullenward, Stanford School of Earth, Energy, Environmental Sciences
Amy Vanderwarker, California Environmental Justice Alliance
RL Miller, California Democratic Party Environmental Caucus
Janet Stromberg, 350 Bay Area
Representatives from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the California Nurses Association
More information at http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/the-cap-and-trade-scam-sept-17/
Because of the COVID pandemic we will be meeting virtually via Zoom on the first Monday of the month.
Meeting ID: 828 0976 4186
The Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality & State Repression (OGC) is a
grassroots democratic organization that was formed as a conscious united front for justice against police brutality. The OGC is involved in the struggle for police accountability and is committed to stopping police brutality.
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 1st 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
OccupyForum presents
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR):
Immigration, discrimination, travel issues, challenging Islamophobia, ICE, and our role in putting a stop to the immigration bans.
The San Francisco Bay Area chapter is the oldest CAIR chapter in the country. Back in 1994, a group of dedicated volunteers in the Bay Area saw a need for a unique kind of Muslim organization – an organization that would work to uphold civil rights of Americaan Muslims, foster a better understanding of the Islamic faith and its followers, and help find avenues for Muslims to integrate more fully into the broader society.
Nearly 20 years later, the chapter has grown tremendously, deepening its base in the Bay Area Muslim community, serving the area’s nearly 250,000 Muslims residing in the nine Bay Area counties. CAIR-SFBA has, moreover, become a household name among local Muslims, and a reliable resource and partner for media, public officials and policymakers, advocacy groups, and the interfaith and progressive communities. Our Mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
Civil rights advocacy remains at the center of CAIR’s work. CAIR has served more than 25,000 victims of discrimination since its founding. Our California offices receive a total of approximately 800 inquiries a year and work to resolve them through mediation, negotiation, public pressure or, if necessary, through legal action. Our services are provided free of charge to the community.
Through various programs, CAIR facilitates opportunities to engage with government bodies, to influence public policy by meeting with elected officials, and to advocate for legislation that aims to preserve civil liberties and promote social justice. CAIR seeks to educate American Muslims about their rights so that they may fully engage in all aspects of civic life. CAIR also works with allied organizations representing other communities in order to build coalitions that foster justice and mutual understanding.
Come to OccupyForum to learn about CAIR’s work, and ways you can support the Muslim Community during this time of extreme duress.
Time will be allotted for discussion and announcements
(All procedes tonight donated to CAIR)
– http://ca.cair.com/sfba/ – http://ca.cair.com/sfba/what-we-do/challenge-islamophobia/
Longtime UC Berkeley sociology professor Arlie Russell Hochschild has centered her work on understanding how those in the majority culture discuss and perceive minority groups. She spent five years in the area around Lake Charles, La., studying the mindset of Tea Party members and exploring the contrast between the population’s disdain for government and their apparent need of its resources. Her findings were chronicled in 2016’s Strangers in Their Own Land, which was a National Book Award finalist.
On Monday, Hochschild — in conversation with actor Benjamin Russell — will discuss how theater can allow individuals to overcome an “empathy wall” and grasp the “deep story” and experiences of the other. Part of Arts + Design Mondays, which is presented and sponsored by Berkeley Arts + Design and hosted at BAMPFA, the event will consider how these stories can lead to cooperative partnerships.
Critical Oakland city council vote: what you can do
Oakland city council is planning to vote this Tuesday, September 19th, 2017, on authorizing the Oakland public bank feasibility study. Here are two ways you can help ensure we get the five votes on Tuesday:
First, call and urge your councilmember to authorize the public bank feasibility study. You can speak with a staffer or leave a voicemail. Here’s a suggested script:
Hi, my name is ________ and I am a constituent of councilmember _______. I wanted to let my councilmember know that I strongly support the public bank feasibility study. Please vote yes on the public bank feasibility study authorization on September 19th.
Councilmember phone numbers:
District 1: Dan Kalb (510) 238-7001
District 2: Abel Guillén (510) 238-7002
District 3: Lynette Gibson McElhaney (510) 238-7245
District 4: Annie Campbell Washington (510) 238-7004
District 5: Noel Gallo 510-238-7005
District 6: Desley Brooks 510-238-7006
District 7: Larry Reid 510-238-7007
Councilmember at-large: Rebecca Kaplan 510-238-7008
To find out which district you live in, go here and type in your address.
Second, attend the council meeting.
Date: Tuesday, September 19th, 2017
Time: 5:30pm
Location: 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza
Room: City Council Chamber, third floor
The Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland will be out in full force at the council meeting. Please find us in our bright green shirts; we’ll have signs for you to hold up. We will also have t-shirts available for sale.
Learn more about public banking:
upcoming panel discussion at city hall
Want to learn more about public banking and how it can speed the development of local renewable energy and bring jobs to Alameda County? Come to a free panel discussion!
Date: Monday, September 25th, 2017
Time: 7-9pm
Location: 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza
Room: City Council Chamber, third floor
Pennie Opal Plant of Idle No More will open the evening with an invocation.
The panel will include:
� Wolfram Morales, Chief Economist for Spaarkasse, the association of local public banks in Germany
� Nicolas Chaset, CEO of East Bay Communitty Energy, Alameda County’s soon-to-launch Community Choice energy program
� Greg Rosen, founder and principal of Higgh Noon Advisors, currently working on a local community-shared solar project
� Jessica Tovar, an organizer with East Baay Clean Power Alliance.
The SFPD will be holding a community meeting regarding Tasers. Meet at city cafe in the student union building.
Once again SFPD is trying to further arm their officers with more tools to use against the people. The Police Commission will be holding two community meetings before it will come to a vote(the date of the vote has not been determined).
It is vital that we turn out our people to these community meetings and make our voices heard, NO TASERS IN SF!!! We have beaten this before by turning out as many folks as possible!!!
RSVP and more info
Join Climate Workers for a special Labor Screening of “The North Pole,” a new comedic web series from Movement Generation, followed by a conversation with the show’s Executive Producer Josh Healey and a panel of union workers/organizers on labor’s role in combating climate change and defending our homes – from our neighborhoods to our planet.
“The North Pole is a political comedy web series about three best friends born and raised in North Oakland, CA, who struggle to stay rooted as their neighborhood becomes a hostile environment. Across seven outrageous episodes, Nina, Marcus, and Benny fight, dream, and plot hilarious schemes to save the place they call home. Facing both gentrification and global warming, they combat evil landlords, crazy geoengineering plots, and ultimately each other. Cameos by W. Kamau Bell, Mistah Fab, Boots Riley, and Ericka Huggins.”
A Presentation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
The Alternative Right, commonly known as the Alt-Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization.
A Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) expert on hate and extremism will share information on an orchestrated campaign by white nationalists to make college campuses their battleground. The battle is not over free speech or political conservatism. Come learn about what they’re pushing, why they’re obsessed with UC Berkeley and how we can effectively resist.
Speaker Bio
Ryan Lenz is the Senior Investigative Writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project and editor of its Hatewatch blog. Before joining the SPLC in 2010, Lenz was a regional reporter for the Associated Press and an Iraq war correspondent for the wire service from 2005 to 2008. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
The SPLC is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. SPLC is headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama and have of offices in Atlanta, Miami, Tallahassee, Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans.
https://www.splcenter.org/
http://
http://www.cnn.com/2017/
Come show your solidarity with the Black community of St. Louis. The cops are out of control, arresting over 80 people and taking the people’s chant “whose streets, our streets” to claim the streets are theirs.#AnthonyLamarSmith #JasonStockley #StLouis
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, against Urban Shield, and to advocate for privacy and surveillance regulation ordinances to be passed by our State Legislature and around the Bay Area, including the Alameda and San Francisco County Boards of Supervisors, the BART Board of Directors, and by the Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Albany and Davis 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.
Oakland Privacy (nee Oakland Privacy Working Group) originally came together in 2013 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). Oakland and Fremont have followed suit. In conjunction with other groups we fight against Urban Shield and other killer-cop trainings.
We have presented our work at RightsCon in San Francisco and at Left Forum and HOPE in New York City.
If you would like to attend our meeting and would like a quick introduction to what we’re doing before we dive right into the thick of our agenda, send email to contact@oaklandprivacy.org and one of us will arange to meet you before the meeting.
Stop by and learn how you can help guard our right not to be spied on by the government. Look on the whiteboard inside near the entrance to the OMNI for our exact location within the OMNI.
If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to:
oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe AT lists.riseup.net
or send a request to contact@oaklandprivacy.org
For more information on the DAC check out
Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.
– Strategize on addressing proposed changes to the BART police use of force policy.
– Find out ways you can use your talents and resources to support APTP and get involved with the work, including how to join various committees such as the Black Leadership Committee, First Responders, Action, Policy, Media, and Security committees.
– Find out more about the #DefundOPD campaign.
The Anti Police-Terror Project is a project of the ONYX ORGANIZING COMMITTEE that in coalition with other organizations, like Idriss Stelley Foundation, Community READY Corps and Workers World Party – Bay Area, is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.
We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.
For the July meeting:
There will be report backs on some of our recent actions including the Defund OPD campaign around the city budget process, including our shutdown of the Council budget meeting. You’ll also hear about our action to protest the promotion of rapist OPD Cops at their “secret” promotions ceremony.
We’d also love to have you get involved with APTP on a regular basis, by joining one of our committees. We will have committee breakouts as part of Wednesday’s meeting, so you can learn about what the different committees do. We know you all have lots of ideas and talent, so please contribute to further APTP’s on-going work.
Some of the committees include:
– Black Leadership
– First Responders
– Action
– Comms/Media
– Policy
– Security
– Fundraising
See you all on Wednesday!