Calendar
Fracking Initiatives Benefit. Friday, July 25.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber, scientist, author, and mother, will discuss strategies for building the movement to stop fracking and protect our communities and climate
This event is a special fundraiser for the dedicated residents of 3 California counties who have collected signatures to put fracking ban measures on their county ballots in November. The oil industry has already shown it will fight these measures. We must show the Bay Area’s strong support for local communities standing up for their rights to clean air, water, energy and a safer climate for our children.
Tickets are $20 but donations beyond the ticket price are encouraged to help fight the power of Big Oil.
Buy tickets now (page on 350BayArea website)
Download flyer (PDF)
To appreciate the power and clarity of Ms. Steingraber’s voice, you could no better than reading the 2012 Huffington Post article summarizing her statement to the Democratic Conference of the New York Senate, in which she addresses both the dangers of fracking and the corruptibility of the legislative process. (New York state subsequently passed a 5-year moratorium on fracking. Challenges to local bans on fracking are now being heard by the state Court of Appeals.)
Visit Ms. Steingraber’s website at http://steingraber.com/
Meet at the fountain in Latham Square, in the intersection where Telegraph and Broadway converge across from the Rotunda Building (Oakland City Center/12th St. BART), Oakland.
With Gifford Hartman of the Flying Picket Historical Society. This walk will revisit the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday” that began spontaneously with rank-and-file solidarity with the striking, mostly women, retail clerks at Kahn’s and Hastings department stores whose picket line was being broken by scabs escorted by police.
Within 24 hours, it involved over 100,000 workers and shut down nearly all commerce in the East Bay for 54 hours. In 1946 there were six general strikes across the U.S.; that year set the all-time record year for strikes and work stoppages. The Oakland “Work Holiday” was the last general strike to ever occur in the U.S.. until the November 2nd, 2011 General Strike called by Occupy Oakland, albeit only a one-day event. This walk and history talk will attempt to keep alive the memory of this tradition of community-wide working class solidarity.
See also:
http://www.flyingpicket.org/node/15
http://www.laborfest.net/2014/2014schedule.htm
Join Us for a Birthday Party
for the Berkeley Post Office
It’s the 239th Birthday of the United States Post Office and the One Hundredth Birthday of the Berkeley Post Office! Please join us! These festivities will be one of many events throughout the country commemorating National Postal Heritage Day.
Celebration will include Music, Birthday Cake and a Group Photo!
Be sure to be there!
Brought to you by Save the Berkeley Post Office.
March for Palestine….Chelsea Manning Plaza aka Justin Herman Plaza, Market @Embarcadero in SF.
6,000 people this past Sunday; 20,000 this coming Saturday.
ANSWER COALITION.
On July 16th, Israeli Defense Forces deliberately targeted a group of children playing soccer on a Gaza beach, killing four from the same family and maiming the others—another war crime committed against the Palestinian people.
WE DEMAND THAT
Stop US Aid to the Apartheid State of Israel!
Free all Palestinian political prisoners!
End the collective punishment of Palestinians!
End colonial occupation of Palestine!
Stop the massacre in Gaza! End the blockade of Gaza!
Community Forum on the Albany Bulb: 1:00 PM
Music: 1:30 PM
Performance: 2:00 PM
The San Francisco Mime Troupe creates and produces socially relevant theater of the highest professional quality and performs it before the broadest possible audience.
We do plays that make sense out of the headlines by identifying the forces that shape our lives and dramatizing the operation of these giant forces in small, close-up stories that make our audiences feel the impact of political events on personal life.
To make this work accessible the Mime Troupe performs its shows in local parks at a price everyone can afford: FREE.
October 2014 Nationwide Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation
Just in the past few weeks we have witnessed:
**1000’s of children being driven across the border by US devastation of their homelands and then finding themselves caught between Homeland Security rounds-ups and flag-waving racists
**The District Attorney in Santa Rosa California refusing to charge the cop who murdered 13-year old Andy Lopez
**2 videos that went viral showing cops brutally and unjustly beating Black women
All these and more outrages only serve to underscore more than ever the need for powerful outpourings of resistance in October as envisioned in the Call for a Month of Ressistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation (www.stopmassinceration.net) that was adopted at the meeting convened in New York in April 2014.
Let’s all come together, individuals and organizations and make real plans so this October, so our determination to end all this reverberates across the country and around the world!
October 2014 needs to be a full month of many diverse forms of resistance.
Already, prominent and respected voices are signing the Stop Mass Incarceration Network’s Call for the Month of Resistance.� Join� Ayelet Waldman, novelist, lawyer ; Alice Walker, author; Peter Coyote, actor, author, director; Cornel West,� author, educator, voice of conscience;� Carl Dix,� Revolutionary Communist Party; Noam Chomsky,� Professor (ret.), MIT*; Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson; Michelle Alexander, and 100’s of others who have pledged to be part of the Month of Resistance
Stop Mass Incarceration Network, San Francisco Bay Area 1.pdf
A professor of literature and Black Studies, GAThomas recently traveled to Palestine in May 2014 as part of contingent of college and university professors working out of North America in support of Palestinian solidarity, liberation and freedom from occupation, apartheid and colonization. Replete with photographic images, this talk is a first-hand report-back from the Occupied West Bank facing more and more bombings, repression and kidnappings everyday with the support of what Malcolm X dubbed “dollarism.”
Wheelchair accessible. Refreshments provided.
WPA Berkeley Walk
With Harvey Smith
This walk will explore the “New Deal nexus” in Berkeley that includes Berkeley High School, the Community Theater, Civic Center Park, Post Office art, the old UC Press Building (now being repurposed as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), and the old Farm Credit Building. The tour will also include the incredible mosaic mural on the UC Berkeley campus and photographs of the California Folk Music Project, Western Museum Laboratory, WPA prints at the Berkeley Public Library, and WPA projects on the UC Berkeley campus.
STOP URBAN SHIELD IN OAKLAND!
September 4-8, 2014, in Oakland, California, Urban Shield — a trade show and training exercise for SWAT teams and police agencies — will bring local, national and international law enforcement agencies together with defense industry contractors to provide training and introduce new weapons to police and security companies. Take a stand against the militarization of our community.
Decrease violence in our communities by ending the militarization of the police.
From schools, the border, prisons, to the streets, our communities have become sites of repression and violence at the hands of law enforcement. Ever increasing militarization of our communities has created a culture of surveillance and repression targeting poor communities of color. Community-led solutions addressing poverty and the violence of policing are the best ways to ensure genuine safety, health, and wellbeing for people most vulnerable to state violence.
- We demand the City of Oakland defund all activities related to Urban Shield
- We demand that all city agencies withdraw their participation in Urban Shield.
Our communities refuse to be testing grounds for tactics of global repression.
Local police departments collaborate with federal agencies to share information and tactics through vehicles such as fusion centers to surveil and control targeted communities. These same agencies are also exchanging policing and repression tactics with international security officers including but not limited to the Apartheid State of Israel. The import and export of technology and tactics includes purchasing weapons, training local police forces, and sharing strategies through activities such as Urban Shield. Our neighborhoods have become laboratories in which to test international and domestic warfare.
- We demand an end to all City collaborations with the Apartheid State of Israel.
- We call on the City of Oakland to issue a report on all collaborations between the Oakland Police Department and international law enforcement agencies.
- We call on the City of Oakland to reject all US wars and occupations here or abroad.
Community Self-determination
Our communities know what is required to address the social, economic and political problems we face. Bay Area residents should have decision-making power over how and where resources are allocated in order to build stronger and sustainable communities.
- We demand that Bay Area residents have decision-making power in the process to determine priorities for public safety and emergency preparedness.
- We demand that the City of Oakland invest in community-based programs proven to decrease violence and harm instead of in the increased militarization of its police force and emergency services.
We call on our communities to continue fighting back and resisting state violence and repression.
In the face of growing efforts to police our communities, we must forge alliances to challenge systems of repression and build power in our communities. Understanding prisons, borders, surveillance and policing as tools of global repression is critical to building and maintaining powerful movements for liberation. Gentrification in our streets is colonialism elsewhere. The War on Terror we are living through today is a new formulation of the War on Drugs, and the violence inflicted on our communities necessitates a unified stance against all forms of repression from the US to Brazil, to the Philippines and Palestine.
- We ask our allies and partners to adopt these principles and take a stand against the policing and repression of our communities.
Join Critical Resistance members, allies, friends and other anti-prison activists for an abolitionist liberation BBQ! We will eat, drink, play, dance, share stories from these past exciting months, and affirm our ongoing fight to end the caging of our communities!
Families welcome – we’ll have plenty of activities for kids 🙂
Let’s celebrate our work, build our connections, and raise money so we can increase our capacity to fight prison industrial complex! Bring your friends, your comrades, and your wallet!
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogueon all sides of these critically important issues!
OccupyForum presents
Jiwon Chung and friends:
Theatre of the Oppressed
Internal Oppression
�
As we’ve previously experienced, Theater of the Oppressed is a collection of games, techniques and exercises for using theater as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. It uses the dynamized human body and the charged theatrical space as a laboratory for exploring power, transforming oppression, and finding solutions to the fundamental problems of conflict, inequality, injustice and human suffering. Last time we focused on oppression by external power; this time we’ll explore how internal oppression controls us.
Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed has spread across the Americas and more than 70 countries worldwide. Theatre of the Oppressed is taught in classrooms and in the streets, bringing together students, scholars, administrators, policy makers, and community activists in the pursuit of social justice and human rights. Its use is particularly timely today given the worldwide attention to the rights of the indigenous peoples represented by the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.
Jiwon Chung is a professional actor, director, and a key theorist of Theater of the Oppressed. He is the Artistic Director of Kairos Theater Ensemble, Adjunct professor at Starr King School at the Graduate Theological Union, and past President of the national organization for Theater of the Oppressed. Author of numerous books, articles, and performances, he is considered a pioneer in the integration of somatics, theater of the oppressed, and socially engaged art. The focus of his work is in the application of theater as a tool for social and political change, using Theater of the Oppressed to challenge, resist, and transform systemic oppression and structural violence and to redress large scale historical atrocity and injustice. His approach to performance and social change is informed by his background as veteran, martial artist, and 3 decades of Vipassana meditation.
Announcements will follow.
The Postal Service has put the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
The Postal Service has started to outsource Post Office services to Staples, replacing union jobs with low-paying, low benefit work.
And we’re fighting against both!
Come help us plan our next steps.
We’ve began the “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management! Here’s the front of the postcard. The campaign has been adopted by Postal Unions, the San Francisco Labor Council and has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, and has gone national!
All four Postal Unions have joined together to support maintaining full service, public Post Offices in every community, with expansion to include postal banking, and to oppose subcontracting and privatization of services. The California Federation of Teachers passed a resolution in support of opposition to Staples. Just recently the American Federation of Teachers, AFCSME and UNITE HERE did too. We are trying to get the Alameda Labor Council to pass a similar resolution.
Check out our correspondence with the President of the American Postal Workers Union, Mark Dimondstein. The APWU has been leading the charge against Staples.
For the last three+ weeks the sidewalk in front of Staples has been ‘occupied’ 24/7 by an intrepid band of San Francisco occupiers with solidarity and support from BPOD members, and they plan to continue there, distributing literature and convincing people not to shop at Staples, indefinitely. Recently tents went up! Go by and say ‘Hi!’ and help them out.
And we need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale! The Advisory Commission on Historical Preservation came out with its report, recommending that sales of Historic Post offices be halted until the USPS conforms with historical preservation law. Here is our response. Also the Office of Inspector General’s report on the sale of Historic Post Offices came out recently – anything could happen now since Congress’ “request” that no historic Post Offices be sold until it had come out has been honored and no further Congressional request or mandate has come down. Come help us plan our response.
We have joined with other activists in Berkeley to put a ballot initiative on the ballot to rezone the Berkeley Post Office and other areas in the Historic District to prevent privatization, and also to insure a better Downtown Berkeley. We succeeded in getting the necessary signatures; it will be voted on in November, but Tom Bates and the City Council have nefarious plans to undermine our coalition.
Encouraging articles are still coming out about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked. The National Conference of Mayors recently endorsed Postal Banking. Pew Research just held a day-long seminar on Postal Banking.
We are planning our next event, ‘Jam the Sale.’ Spread the work and come help us out!
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
RALPH NADER
WILL SPEAK ON THE STEPS OF THE BERKELEY POST OFFICE.
ABOUT THE POST OFFICE, PRIVATIZATION OF OUR PUBLIC GOODS AND SERVICES & THE FIGHT TO DISMANTLE THE CORPORATE STATE
TUESDAY, JULY 29th
MUSIC FROM 2:00 PM
TALK AT 2:30 PM
2000 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
“Postmaster General Donahoe has demonstrated that he lacks the political courage to stand up to Congress and tell them that they caused this mess and they need to fix it. Instead, time after time, he has chosen to take the easy road and dismantle the USPS piece by piece – whether it is by cutting post office hours, closing post offices, cutting service and delivery standards, increasing postage rates, or now ending Saturday delivery.”
– Ralph Nader, February 6th, 2013.
“Named by The Atlantic as one of the hundred most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century, Ralph Nader has helped us drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, and work in safer environments for nearly five decades.”
There are two big competing plans for raising Oakland’s minimum wage. One plan from the Chamber of Commerce is slow and full of exceptions. The other, a ballot initiative from union and community coalition “Lift Up Oakland” is for a $12.25 minimum for everybody. Oakland workers need Lift Up Oakland’s proposal because we can’t wait years for a raise and can’t leave anyone behind making poverty wages.
Let’s stop the Chamber of Commerce’s countermeasure.
6:00 PM City Hall Tuesday July 29th. Tell all your friends.
Oakland needs a raise NOW!
We can’t survive on 8.25!
No more poverty wages and gentrification!
Wages delayed are wages denied!
City Council: Don’t raise your wage while you keep ours low!
Some background on the Oakland minimum wage:
Why Oakland needs a raise: Oakland is gentrifying at an astonishing pace. According to the East Bay Express purchase prices for Oakland homes jumped by 64% from 2012 to 2013. Workers need money to pay for food and rent. Workers need a decent wage for a decent life. If the lowest paid worker in Oakland makes $9 it drags the wages of other workers down. Workers can’t pay rent and groceries with money from raises that come years later.
What raise?: Let’s be real, 12.25 an hour is barely enough to survive in the Bay Area. If you adjusted the 1960’s minimum wage based on worker productivity today’s wage would be over 20 dollars. Seattle and San Francisco are on track to get 15 an hour in the next few years. One Oakland mayoral candidate, Dan Siegel is for an immediate 15 an hour minimum wage. It is utterly outrageous that some on City Council are considering slowing down the 12.25 raise. If this weren’t bad enough, the same council member planning to delay our raise is planning to raise her own on the same day.
The Good: There is chance to win a 12.25 per hour minimum wage on the Ballot for Oakland in November. 33,000 people signed a petition put forward by the “Lift Up Oakland” coalition to raise the minimum wage to 12.25 next year. This would be a 3.25 raise over next year’s 9 dollar California minimum wage. It includes 5-10 paid sick days for all workers.
The Bad: The Oakland Chamber of Commerce and their allies on the city council are now scheming to pass a confusing countermeasure. Because Lift Up Oakland’s proposal is wildly popular they crafted a measure that on paper sets a higher dollar amount but takes 3-5 years to come into effect. The measure includes many exceptions.
(1) Taking into account paid sick time, by time it comes into effect the plan by the Chamber of Commerce measure’s wage will have a wage that is the same or worse than Lift Up Oakland’s wage.
(2) Because of the delays and exemptions the chamber’s measure will cost (by a low estimate) 300 Million dollars in lost wages for workers over 5 years compared to Lift Up Oakland’s measure.
(3) The Chamber of Commerce’s measure does not include tipped workers who would remain at 9$, nor does it include homecare workers, or those in youth training programs.
What their side is doing: There are two council members who have come out publicly for the Chamber of Commerce’s Countermeasure. Pat Kernighan and Lynette McElhaney. These politicians are planning to pass the measure outright as an ordinance. They are trying to get other council members to back the chamber of commerce’s measure. They are hoping that by passing the worse measure they will be able to confuse voters into not voting for Lift Up Oakland’s measure.
What can we do: We have to mobilize to stop them from taking that 300 million from our pockets through a deceitful countermeasure. The chamber of commerce, anti-worker council members and the gentrifying developers have one vision for Oakland. We have a different vision and we can win our vision if we fight for it. Spread the word, call and email, invite your friends and neighbors, let’s tell them that Oakland needs a raise NOW!
It has been nearly 50 years and many subsequent crusades since consumer advocate Ralph Nader first captured the spotlight with the publication of “Unsafe at Any Speed.” One might think that the title of his latest book, “Unstoppable,” would indicate a memoir. Not so. Subtitled “The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State” (Nation Books, $25.99, 240 pages), the new book is an argument that the time is ripe for people on opposite sides of the political spectrum to wrest control over their futures away from big business.
Nader, 80, will talk about the book at two midweek appearances, beginning with Wednesday’s conversation with Harry Kreisler, UC Berkeley’s former executive director of the Institute of International Studies. The event is sponsored by KPFA Radio.
Occupy National Gathering 2014 (Natgat2014) will be held July 31 – Aug. 3 in Sacramento, CA. Please stay tuned as we add information about our gathering. Get involved helping us organize and plan on attending! Together We Rise!
Occupy California (organizers) Facebook
Help plan NatGat 2014
email lists http://interoccupy.net/
Volunteer to help online, on the ground, or to offer activities. http://interoccupy.net/
Attend NGWG Weekly Planning Calls Wednesdays @ 4 PM PT/7PM ET http://interoccupy.net/
Facebook Planning Group https://www.facebook.com/
fb event page for#NatGat2014 https://www.facebook.com/
fb Community page https://www.facebook.com/
twitter https://twitter.com/
Help Plan NatGat 2014 | NatGat2014 interoccupy.net
There is only one dog running for Mayor of Oakland. Here’s your chance to debate Einstein’s platform with the candidate his canine self.
Einstein will be keeping First Friday safe from Jean Quan and eagerly greeting his would-be constituents.
He’ll be somewhere near the Alan Blueford Center for Justice and the Strike Debt Bay Area table.
Follow @EinsteinForMayor on Twitter and check out his Facewoof page. Here’s an excerpt:
Einstein strongly opposes the Urban Shield weapons show in Oakland AND the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative (!!!). Plank 6 of Einstein’s platform: “6. Stronger weapon-control laws shall apply to everyone within the City’s limits, including law enforcement officers.” The strategy of preventing crime with overwhelming force and intimidation is not well-conceived at all. Crime is not an issue for the same reason that smoke alarms don’t cause fires. A very simplistic argument is often made in the media when crime is related to the economy: crime goes up when the economy goes down. But you don’t hear anyone say that the economy goes down because crime goes up. This is just one way in which crime serves as an alarm telling us that a shortage of opportunities and of security – along with the curtailment of civil rights – puts stress on populations, and crime is the RESULT! Let’s focus on reducing the CAUSES of crime – of which brutal repression and the invasion of privacy are two! BAD Urban Shield! BAD!
Strike Debt Bay Area will have a table at First Friday. Come hang out, pick up a DROM (Debt Resisters’ Operations Manueal, get your Public Bank of Oakland t-shirt and/or talk about the politics of debt.
Look for us between 24th and 25th on Telegraph.
