After much posturing, the City FINALLY approved our petition to gather signatures for the recall of Libby Schaaf. Join us for a brief training and refreshments before we hit the streets to talk to the people and build momentum for our campaign. We will break bread as a community in Oscar Grant Plaza at the end of the afternoon.

Displacement in the name of Development
Rampant Police Corruption, Rape & Brutality
Inciting Police Violence Against Black Women, Children & Elders
Attempting to Turn Oakland Into A SunDown Town
Loss of Youth Jobs
Cultural Appropriation
Heightened Inter-Communal Violence
Pandering to Big Busines at the Expense of the People

It is time to say #BYELIBBY

www.byelibby.com

Facebook event

Intentional Community in Exile (ICE) presents “Intentional Community in Exile (ICE)”

Including a treatise on ‘warming up exile without melting’ using voices, bodies.

Discussion: 2pm in the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive Koret Reading Room

Action: 3:30pm

ICE (Intentional Community in Exile) is a fresh new mutual aid society, built to sustain radical, creative and political practices within a hostile economic system. ICE breaks with the assumption that the objective of this life is a house with a nuclear/biological family, through accumulation of personal property, or individual recognition. ICE is being made by a small group of precarious transient anti-capitalist women trying to survive together while being literally and metaphorically evicted.

Please join us on September 18, for a discussion and a performance of life practices as well as frameworks for material and immaterial mutual support. This project is about finding ways to exit economic precarity by building human relationships instead of accumulating capital– to make exile ‘warm.’

The entire time I have lived in “x” I have been precarious and indebted. I have only survived, and thrived, because of the networks of solidarity and mutual aid I have participated in. Now, as the city, “x” gentrifies beyond the imagination, I’m being forced to leave. I don’t want to let those networks die. If people like me are going to survive in this world, we need to imagine and create better non-monetary common resources.

BAMPFA event page: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/event/heavy-breathing-4-ice-feminist-economics-department

Presented in collaboration with Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Heavy Breathing is a monthly series of experimental movement seminars designed by artists that combine physical activity with group discussion on ideas related to their creative practice. Critical discourse often feels heady, abstract, and divorced from the body. How do conversations change when we are moving our bodies and out of breath? What new modes of thinking become possible?

Dear Friends,

There are still plenty of seats left for the SECOND in the film series and discussion group called “Fascism on Film”.

The film this time is “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” (1970), a BBC production based on the play by Bertolt Brecht.  It features an outstanding performance by Nicol Williamson in the title role. The story parallels the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, portraying Hitler as a petty gangster in Chicago who by hook and by crook takes over the vegetable market, a.k.a. the “Cauliflower Trust”.  An informal discussion will follow the film.

The screening begins at 4:00 on Sunday, September 18th, at our house, 1171 Colusa Avenue in North Berkeley.  There is no admission charge; snacks and drinks will be provided.  For more information and/or to reserve seats for this event, please contact me at DaniellsDin@gmail.com or 510-277-6669.

Peace,

TD Daniell

510-277-6669

Cauliflower wants to be free!

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 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.  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 four 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

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (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

Every week, the Community Democracy Project holds a space for community leaders, volunteers, and members to discuss current events, important issues impacting our communities, or to share a skillset.

On September 18, 2016, we’re proud to host the People’s Community Medics! They will conduct a training on how to provide first-aide to victims of gun shot wounds.

Read more about them below:

The People’s Community Medics (PCM) was founded in 2011 by Sharena Thomas and Lesley Phillips when members of the Oscar Grant Committee we learned that BART police refused to call an ambulance for 20 minutes for fatally wounded Oscar Grant, despite the passionate pleas for medical help from his friends who were detained at the Fruitvale station by police. That experience as well as our knowledge that 911 calls often do not result in an ambulance arriving in a timely manner to Black neighborhoods largely inspired us to teach our people basic emergency first aid so that we can help one another until an ambulance arrives.

The People’s Community Medics is a collective of volunteers that shares its knowledge of basic emergency first aid for free with community members and residents.

Oftentimes residents of Black, Brown and poor communities need to know how to treat medical emergencies until an ambulance arrives. Calling 911 does not guarantee that an ambulance will arrive promptly in low-income and communities of color; because of this inequality, we have lost numerous loved ones unnecessarily.

We do not need to depend solely upon the state to assist us when a medical emergency is in progress; it is an act of self-determination when we help one another in our communities. We are creating a people centered alternative by educating ourselves and resisting the emergency health system’s neglect of the people.

We reached out to a fellow activist who is a healthcare worker and together we developed a training curriculum and learned how to treat seizures and bleeding traumas like gunshot wounds and stabbings. The PCM launched in March 2012; since then we have been giving free trainings on treating seizures, bleeding traumas and gunshot wounds to 100s of folks in Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, Berkeley, Seattle and Oxnard, California.

The People’s Community Medics’ trainings immediately resonate with people. We hope that one day every child will be taught basic first aid in school. We have been invited to present our training at various events and for different organizations. A few days before May Day 2012, a young man from Occupy Oakland came to the aid of a shooting victim and he utilized the first aid training he had learned from the PCM; the ambulance did not arrive for 47 minutes; unfortunately the woman succumbed to her injuries.

At our trainings, we hand out free first aid packets that have gloves, gauze, an instruction sheet in English, Spanish and Chinese, Emergen C (for diabetics) and a “know your rights” pocket card from Berkeley CopWatch. At some of our trainings we have served free, hot cooked food and given grocery bags of food free to the people. We have also had open mic speak-outs at some of our trainings.

You can reach us at 510-239-7720 or PeoplesCommunityMedics@gmail.com and at www.PeoplesCommunityMedics.org.
DONATE: rally.org/f/fipNEDARNFw

Liberated Lens Collective is a community media project based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We believe that story telling belongs to everyone. We do not depend on mainstream media or an expensive film school: we empower ourselves to make our own images!

We learn by doing. We teach eachother. We work horizontally, and operate by consensus. We make films in a spirit of collaboration, inclusivity and solidarity, maintain a film equipment library for creative projects, organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops, and host film screenings. In May 2015 we organized the Films 2 The People Short Film Festival.

To be updated about what we do, join our announce mailing list: Liberated_Lens.announce@lists.riseup.net

To get involved, come to our meetings! We’re open and happy to welcome you, no matter your experience level. Sometimes, the meetings turn into creative workshops!

OccupyForum presents…

The History of Socialism in America:
from Robert Owens’ utopian experiment
of 1825 to Bernie’s political revolution of 2016

By Eugene Ruyle, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology,  Cal State, Long Beach Institute for the Critical Study  of Society in Oakland

As a democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders began a political revolution to transform a political system run by the billionaire class into one that represents working and middle class Americans and creates more opportunity for everyone. This workshop will take a closer look at Bernie’s socialism by placing it within the global context of two centuries of working class struggle against capitalist rule. This will allow a better understanding of how Bernie has adapted socialism to the United States in the Twenty-First Century, and how to improve our struggles for a better world for all humanity. Now that Bernie is no longer a candidate, it’s up to us to continue the struggle.

Gene Ruyle is author of “Rethinking Marxist Anthropology,” and other essays. He is active with the Oscar Grant Committee, Veterans for Peace, and the Peace and Freedom Party.

Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!  Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue  on all sides of these critically important issues!

Q&A and Announcements will follow. Donations to OccupyForum to cover our costs are encouraged; no one turned away!

Friday’s powerful action was the beginning of a major organizing push that can end Urban Shield in Alameda County once and for all. Bring your people to get involved in the next steps to defund and end Urban Shield. We believe that we can defund and end Alameda County’s hosting of Urban Shield, but we need your support to win this fight.

Sign the petition online – https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/stand-up-against-police-militarization-say-no-to-urban-shield

Sign up for our email list at stopurbanshieldnow@gmail.com, and visit stopurbanshield.org to stay involved.

Please join us for two consecutive lectures by Cassie Thornton of the Feminist Economics Department and Alessandra Saviotti of the Asociación de Arte Útil.
Sponsored by the Birdhouse Collective and WICAN

Cassie Thornton, working under the Feminist Economics Department (FED), presents the three recent projects in Chicago, Halifax and New York. These projects involve (respectively) (a) encouraging children to use crowbars to destroy walls made out of debt-wracked adults’ imagination, (b) mobilizing citizens in a pub to use yoga to demand the economically depressed Nova Scotia be declared a postwork province, and (c) placing cursed watercolors in financial institutions.

Alessandra Saviotti is an independent curator who focuses on collaborative practices according to the motto ‘cooperation is better than competition’. She presents three projects realised in cooperation with artists, curators, cooks, architects and asylum seekers which try to implement the idea of Arte Útil. Arte Útil (roughly translated into English as ‘useful art’ or, more accurately, art as a tool or device) is an ongoing body of work that draws on artistic thinking to imagine, create and implement tactics that can change how we act in society.

We can’t let Berkeley forget Kayla. City government continues to fail to prioritize people over policing. But, what we really need is accountability, not a motion to dismiss. What we really need is community care, not killer cops!

NEXT TUESDAY, we’ll come together in community to keep Kayla’s memory alive in the streets of Berkeley.

Down Syndrome and deafness in 1950 consigned Judith Scott to a state institution for 35 nightmare years before her twin sister obtained her release. Once discarded by society, she responded to opportunities at Creative Growth Art Center by becoming a world-famous fiber artist. “Entwined”, a book by her sister Joyce, explores the twins’ closeness and the profound impact of Judith’s extraordinary life and remarkable creativity. Copies will be available for sale. Also on this program, Betsy Bayha’s film, “Outsider”, is an intimate portrait of a compelling, eccentric and talented individual who prevailed in the face of daunting odds.

Sponsored by the BFUU SJC.

This screening is co-presented by World Trust and features a post-film discussion with filmmaker Shakti Butler.

Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible allows white people to find their own voice, and to reflect on their own experience and understanding. They hear from role models — other white people who have already committed themselves to racial justice. This has been a missing piece in social justice and cultural competency work. And, when viewing this film, people of color have an opportunity to focus on their own issues of internalized racism, should they chose to do so.

Who stole the American Dream?  (And How Can We Get it Back?)

This documentary explores the worldwide economic collapse of 2008, tracing its originals to a 1971 secret memo entitles ‘Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.’

Free snacks and popcorn!

Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, The Center for Ethnographic Research presents:

Steve Viscelli, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Co-sponsored by the Center for Labor Research and Education

Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. Deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets–once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history–into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.

This talk will explain how this massive degradation in the quality of work occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it.  It is based on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months spent training and working as a long-haul trucker.

Biography

Steve Viscelli (Ph.D. in Sociology, 2010, Indiana University; M.A. in Anthropology, 2002, Syracuse University; B.A. in Philosophy, 1996, Colgate University) is an economic and political sociologist.  He is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Steve’s research focuses on work, labor market economics and economic regulation. He has a recent book with the University of California Press entitled The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream. Steve is also a Senior Fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and a Fox Family Pavilion Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.  In addition to his academic research, Steve works with a range of public and private stakeholders to make the trucking industry safer, more efficient, and a better place to work.

Light refreshments will be served.

**Books will be available for sale and signing. Cash and credit cards accepted.

This event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.

For accessibility requests, including wheelchair access, please call or email one day prior to the event.

Open as many homes as possible…
Hold them as long as possible…

Our weekly PARTY to get this hackerspace together, to provide a venue for those things that otherwise cannot be worked out through day-to-day practice.

Potluck! – bring your own tasty dish!

Sudo room, located in the southwast corner of the ground floor, is a creative community and hackerspace. We offer tools and project space for a wide range of activities: electronics, sewing/crafting, 3D and 2D manufacturing, coding, and good old-fashioned co-learning!

Hours: The space is open whenever a member is present. Come visit! Best times to drop in are evenings between 7 and 9pm. See the calendar for recurring meetups and upcoming events: https://sudoroom.org/calendar

Oakland – As part of the national renters’ day of action, on September 22, there will be a rally in support of renters’ rights in Oakland and many other cities across the nation. Organizers have planned a day of action for renters in 46 cities on September 22, including some days near September 22 to fight back, and demand a freeze on all unjust evictions and rent increases.

On September 22, according to Causa Justa/Just Cause, in Oakland there will be a rally & banner drop in Oakland at 14th & Broadway at 12:00 PM to amplify #RenterPower and to lift up our fights against evictions, rising cost of rents and displacement. Members include Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, East Bay Housing Organizations, Committee to Protect Oakland Renters-Measure JJ, East Bay Organizing Committee/Fight for $15, SEIU Local 1021, and Housing Rights Committee San Francisco.

In Alameda renters will have a day of action on September 20 — 10:00AM, at 470 Central Ave, one day before the 60-day deadline of no-cause evictions will take effect being conducted by Matt Sridhar and Sridhar Equities.

The renters’ day of action will take place a week after Richmond Mayor Tom Butt, and Councilmembers Nathaniel Bates and Vinay Pimplé blocked a proposed 45-day urgency moratorium on rent increases and no-cause evictions, that was proposed by Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin, and supported by Councilmembers Jael Myrick and Jovanka Beckles.

Attacking renter protections being proposed in a ballot measure in Richmond, the California Apartment Associations’ (CAA) campaign againstMeasure L (renter protection ballot initiative) includes a TV commercial.

More TV commercials are to be aired that are paid for by the CAA, realtors, and wealthy landlords attacking the reasonable renter protections being proposed that voters can vote on in November in the Bay Area. Ballot measures that voters can vote on to help stabilize families, communities, schools and jobs, in the cities of Richmond, Alameda, Burlingame, San Mateo, and Mountain View.

Additionally, the September 22 renters’ day of action is occurring around three weeks after an anti-rent control petition supported by the CAA hit the streets in an effort to block much needed reasonable renters’ protections in Santa Rosa from taking effect.

The “September 22 National Renters’ Day of Action” has been organized by Homes For All, and renters and their advocates across the nation in 46 cities will hit the streets to demand renter protections including rent control, and just cause eviction protections.

List Of Demands

As organizers of the National Renters’ Day of Action, Homes For All is demanding a freeze on all unjust evictions and rent increases. The establishment of a national livable rent standard to restrict rents to 30% of a family income and a livable wage for all workers. The right of all tenants to organize and bargain collectively with landlords without fear of discrimination, retaliation or eviction. The transfer of vacant, foreclosed and underused land to community control through community land trusts and cooperatives to meet the needs of communities of color and working class communities that have historically been targeted ­­from disinvestment to redlining ­­­to the foreclosure crisis and the current eviction epidemic.

“We need bold, transformative and strong solutions to this crisis. Until we get them, we’re going to take to the streets and fight for our homes and our communities,” says Alma Blackwell, an organizer with Causa Justa/Just Cause, in Oakland CA and a renter.

Renter protections will be on the ballot in 6 cities during November in the Bay Area. No matter how hard the landlords and the California Apartment Association are trying to stop the renters movement, tenant advocates across the Bay Area are urging renters to vote on strong renter protections during the upcoming November elections in the cities of Richmond, Oakland, Alameda, Burlingame, San Mateo, and Mountain View. The activists are urging people to vote “no” against any weak proposals placed on the ballot by the City Council in Alameda, and Mountain View.

We anticipate that Sheriff will be making some major moves to push forward the jail expansion soon, so we are ramping up our opposition and could use all the support we can get. Here are some ways you can help:

Come to our next organizing meeting.

Like our Facebook page to stay in the loop and amplify our social media presence.

On September 9th, the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising, thousands of prisoners took action in more than 40 facilities across the country as part of a national strike to demand their rights as workers and humans.
The fight against legal caging and murder is not new, and continues. Two death penalty propositions on the November 2016 California ballot are stirring debates about capital punishment. It’s undeniable that capital punishment targets the poor, is racist, kills innocent people, is cruel and unusual, and doesn’t deter crime.

The ISO has been fighting against the death penalty for over 20 years. Come hear more about the lessons and arguments from past struggles while putting a human face on the ongoing fight to save the more than 725 men and 20 women on California’s death row.

For more information about Kevin Cooper’s case and the Campaign To End the Death Penalty, please check out SaveKevinCooper.org.