Calendar

Co-Sponsored by the Landless People’s Alliance and the United Front Against Displacement

Residents living in over 15 RVs in West Oakland, many of whom have lived and worked in the surrounding community for decades, saw their vehicles impounded in mass by the police on October 23rd. Join us in demanding the return of these vehicles and the property inside them. Residents have been living on the street there ever since losing the vehicles, and several have been without their identification papers that remain in the impounded vehicles. We are also demanding the provision of restroom facilities for the residents of West Oakland in the vicinity of Raimondi Park, several of whom have been camped out there ever since the towings happened.

Several protests have been held at City Hall over this incident. Michael Hunt, a representative of the mayor, told -suffering residents that the vehicles should never have been towed. The hold-up in getting the vehicles released is the need for forms from the Oakland Police Department, which is currently under scrutiny because of aggressive towing practices. The vehicles were towed at ODP’s request by Auto Plus Towing, a company covered in a recent expose on corrupt towing practices in Oakland “The East Bay’s Tow Hustle. “ https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-east-bays-tow-hustle/Content?oid=22699510

Given minutes to leave their RVs and vans, residents tried to grab what they could before the vehicles were towed. Like refugees fleeing for safety, the RV owners were forced to throw possessions out of their doors and windows onto piles on the sidewalk. Many did not have time to secure key material.

You can find a video made on the day of the tow here : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qBIz8vory3g

The Village in Oakland #feedthepeople

The city of Oakland posted eviction notices to #HousingAndDignityVillage an hour ago. Please come visit us between now and then so you can see Oakland’s only clean and sober homeless encampment for women and families. Oakland only homeless encampment that provides services and resources to the housed and unhoused in our surrounding neighborhood.

We are not criminals. We are not illegal. We are Human beings asserting our right to exist, our right to Housing, our right to sanctuary.

We are not damaging this neighborhood or endangering it’s most vulnerable. We are doing something the city doesn’t do: providing services and taking care of the most vulnerable who have been in brookfield for generations.

Be very clear there is only one reason the city is shutting us down: cuz we are activists, ousd teachers, homeless advocates, outspoken workers who are homeless. We are getting shut down to shut us up.

All they could do is criminalize us and try to shut us up.

They forget we multiply and get louder.

Please come this Wednesday 8:30 a.m. December 5th to witness the city of Oakland engage in cruel and unusual punishment by removing families with children’s, ousd teacher, workers, artists and people with disabilities who formed a Sanctuary for ourselves throw us onto the streets

Today 12/10, we’re meeting at @CalOrganize Oakland office (@ 2501 International) at 6 pm for an open strategy meeting about Shady Schaaf’s eviction regime+more. Come w a friend ready to make your voice heard!

*An earlier tweet calling this an action was misinformed. Sorry!!*

— The Village, Oakland (@VillageOakland) December 10, 2018

Interfaith Prayer & Ceremony

• We will gather on the sidewalk near the entrance to the building.
• 630 Sansome St. is about a 10 minute walk from Embarcadero or from Montgomery BART Stations.
• We will be welcoming Alexey Kharis recently freed from ICE detention thanks to your help, letters and support!

Also speaking will be members of the Cambodian community to share about the URGENCY of stopping deportations of Cambodian community members with an ICE deportation flight scheduled for this Monday!

Come stand with us outside the ICE building in downtown San Francisco to show solidarity and support to the many people who are required to go there for their ICE check-ins or who are held there in a transitional cell or attending their immigration court hearings.

Come and join us as we offer multi-faith prayers for reunification of families everywhere, for the redemption of human dignity of all, and for the termination of ICE and their inhumane prisons and tactics.

We will be taking up an offering of gift cards and Clipper cards for newly arrived immigrants if you would like to contribute. Suggestionis gift cards from Smart & Final, Foodmax, Target, CVS and Safeway.

Macron Out NOW! And Trump Should Be Next:
US Working People Support The Struggle of the French People
To Throw Out Macron

Hundreds of thousands of French workers, students and farmers have been shutting down roads and protesting against massive tax increases on the working class and capitalist austerity with privatization and outsourcing of jobs. The “Yellow Jackets” movement is a spontaneous popular anti-capitalist protest that was organized through social media but is now getting increased from trade unionists and some unions.

The reactionary Macron government has met these protests with rubber bullets and grenades that have seriously injured the protesters. Macron has now ordered armored vehicles in the streets to shut down this protest. The French union leadership has refused to mobilize their members to support these protests despite the fact that their members face massive attacks including their working conditions and benefits. While the government is cutting social benefits and raising taxes on the working class they are increasing funding for the military and police to repress the people of France.

The capitalist class in France like the capitalist class in the US 1s seeking to solve their problems by making the poor and working class pay by allowing the corporations and billionaires to profiteer on the growing economic crisis.

American workers also face similar attacks on our jobs, housing costs, and health and education rights. The Republicans with the support of the Democrats have pushed privatization and deregulation and also more militarization of the police and the world.

While workers have trouble surviving, Trump with the support of the Democrats is spending more than $750 billion on wars around the world. Macron who is now calling for a new army is pushing the same agenda globally as the major capitalist powers move toward economic and trade war with each other.

The US working people need to follow the lead of the French people and begin organizing with mass action to defend our healthcare, housing, education, and jobs. The trade union leadership in the US like the union leadership in France is terrified of mobilizing against these attacks. In fact, they are blaming the Russians for this crisis instead of the capitalist system, which they support. In fact, they are also supporting the growing trade war against China and many other countries. Our enemies are not the people of the rest of the world but the billionaires and corporate criminals who run the US and the world.

Bring Your Yellow Jackets, Instruments, and Voices Rally

Prisoners started arriving at Guantanamo on Friday, Jan. 11 2002. This Friday, on the 17th Anniversary of Guantanamo Prison, DRAD will join Codepink and allies at a rally and press conference at UC Law School to call for closing Gitmo and prosecution of John Yoo for torture.

Join us to speak out against the injustice! 

Meet up in front of the law school, rain or shine.

Gitmo now holds 40 men, including 5 who have long been cleared for release, and it continues to be a moral stain on our nation as well as enormously expensive. “Maintaining the prison at Guantnamo has cost the American taxpayer $4.8 billion since it opened in 2002, and an average of $454 million every year for the last five years.” ACLU, 2017

Did you know that UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky called for prosecuting John Yoo? That’s right.  A 2014 Nation article said “Chemerinsky’s argument is that Yoo has committed a criminal act – conspiracy to torture – and that at he should be put on trial for it.”

At that time Chemerinsky was Dean of UC Irvine Law School.

This Friday at 12:30 we’re going to deliver a letter of concern to Dean Chemerinsky making him aware of the community’s opposition to John Yoo’s complicity in torture and asking him to take action to protect UC Berkeley law students from Yoo’s toxic theories and criminal actions.

Please Join Us!

It’s past time to shut Gitmo and for Yoo to be held accountable for his illegal actions.

The Japanese Abe government continues to restart nuclear plants throughout the country. At the same time they have accumulated over 1 million tons of radioactive water at the Fukushima plant which they want to release into the Pacifica ocean. It contains tritium which the government is saying is safe in “small amounts”.
The government has also covered up the statistics of thyroid cancer in children in order to continue the cover-up of the dangers of Fukushima. 3.11 Fund for Children With Thyroid Cancer has said that children who have cancer are not being counted by Fukushima Medical University which is controlled by TEPCO and other supporters of nuclear power. There is a growing increase of thyroid cancer and other diseases from the radioactive contamination. The government continues to demand that children and familiar return to Fukushima or lose the housing benefits outside Fukushima.
The danger of another major earthquake that threatens another Fukushima and also would release millions of tons of radioactive water into the ocean.
At the same time the government is pushing ahead to build a new military base in Henoko that will have US nuclear weapons despite mass opposition from the people of Okinawa. The same Abe government is pushing ahead to remove Article 9 that forbids expansion of Japan’s military role around the world.
Stopping another Fukushima and more militarization are part and parcel of the same struggle.

Come speak out to defend the people of Fukushima, Japan and the world.

For more event information:
http://nonukesaction.wordpress.com

7 YEARS LATER, WHY HASN’T JAPAN LEARNED FROM FUKUSHIMA?
Cancer rates in children are sky high, radioactive rubbish is piling up and radiation levels are rising. Yet the government bails out the plant’s operator – even as it announces a profit and plans to resume seaside operations
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2136176/7-years-later-why-hasnt-japan-learned-fukushima

Japan undecided on what to do with 1 million tonnes of radioactive water at Fukushima plant
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-02/fukushimas-radioactive-water-still-a-dilemma-for-japanese-gov/9504072
By North Asia correspondent Jake Sturmer in Tokyo
Updated 1 Mar 2018, 11:11pm

Fukushima 4-year-old missing in Japan thyroid-cancer records
https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20170330/news/303309794

Last week, over 150 heavily armed police officers came with guns and chainsaws to cut down our trees and trash our homes. Six people – community members and students – were violently awoken and handcuffed at 5 am, on charges of “illegal camping” – because they had put up tents and tarps as shelter from the rain. All of their belongings were seized or trashed.

We reject the UC’s claim that this is about sick trees. This is about razing one of Berkeley’s few public spaces to turn it into privatized, luxury dorms. Some trees were supposedly removed because they were “too close to other trees”. Others were completely removed over health issues that are normally solved by removing a branch. The only thing “wrong” with those trees was that they stood in the way of the construction equipment the UC intends to bring in.

They came in the dark of night, during break, when they knew most students would be away from Berkeley, to make it look like students didn’t care. Join us in the park at 11:30 for a rally, and then march to campus, to show the UC that the park belongs to the People, not militarized cops and not private corporations!

As DPW continually confiscates property at the behest of the city govt, the BOS appears poised to enact SB-1045, a dangerous bill meant to conserve homeless folks with a prior history of 5150 holds in mental institutions without their consent. The city puts these efforts into attacking the poor while the Bayview is still without even a full service shelter after decades of broken promises. The people of SF demand housing and appropriate services.
Join the Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance in exposing these actions of the city of SF, Oakland and Berkeley. Let’s come together and fight back!

This Rally will create an opportunity for folks to speak on their experiences being harrassed by the Department of Public Works, The police and their local city Government. The scheduled speakers will include Gwendolyn Westbrook (CEO of the United Council of Human services), representatives of the United Front Against Displacement, Berkeley Friends on Wheels, Neither Here nor There.

However, this event is open to all to participate!

Join us 5pm Friday Jan. 25 at 24th & Mission to say NO to the U.S.-orchestrated coup in Venezuela #HandsOffVenezuela
Event page: https://t.co/KOWQOM5kmZ@answercoalition @MLNow @SFGate @Indybay @elteco @CubaVenezCte pic.twitter.com/KMo3aVV0MS

— ANSWER Coalition-SF (@sfANSWER) January 24, 2019

Kamala Harris for President has chosen Oakland for her initial Campaign Launch Rally on January 27, 12:00pm.

What are you going to do, Oakland, when Kamala Harris sets up shop in our town to push her phony “progressive prosecutor” schtick? Her campaign slogan at this point is “Kamala Harris for the People,” but we know she is anything but a candidate for the people, all of the people, those who lost their homes to predatory banks, for instance. She claims to be “tough, principled, fearless,” but we know none of that is true. She’s certainly not tough on the wealthy and powerful. She’s just another ambitious corpocrat trying to pretend she’s further to the left than she’s ever actually been.

She’s pitching herself as “a lifelong public safety and civil rights leader” and it’s time we stand up to say, “hell no.” Jailing people of color does not equal public safety and prosecutors violating defendants’ rights is not civil rights. Among the early staff members she has chosen include her sister Maya Harris, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. We don’t need any more establishment democrats, and definitely not in prosecutor’s clothing.

Her main campaign headquarters will be in Baltimore, but her West Coast operations will be run out of Oakland. Let’s literally run her out of Oakland by not letting her peddle her lies here unchallenged. She doesn’t get to claim her record has been “taking on the Wall Street Banks for middle-class homeowners” without being mocked in public.

This is not a listing for an organized protest at the campaign kick-off rally, but a call for concerned citizens and organizations to make plans to resist her campaign, starting at the very first event. Bare minimum, show up on January 27 with signs and literature to let Kamala stans know how unacceptable this cop is as a presidential candidate. Let her followers on social media know the truth when she spews lies.

When you see photographs of Harris laughing, remember she’s laughing at you, especially if you fall for her liberal claptrap.

Learn more:

A thread on Kamala Harris’s terrible record on criminal justice
https://twitter.com/Copmala/status/1085688776381419520

Kamala Harris: can a ‘top cop’ win over progressives in 2020?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/19/kamala-harris-2020-election-top-cop-prosecutor

Say NO to the CPUC! The California Public Utilities Commission has scheduled a surprise emergency hearing to allow PG&E to pursue debtor-in-possession financing.

Please come to the CPUC Auditorium at 505 Van Ness to speak against giving PG&E a $6 billion bailout and allowing it to duck its debts from last year’s Camp Fire.

The first item is to determine an emergency situation under which the normal 10-day agenda notice can be waived according to Gov’t Code 11125.5(b). The second and third items grant exemptions from PUC Code sections to allow PG&E to do this.

Videocast is at http://www.adminmonitor.com/ca/cpuc/

The Oakland School Board has just scheduled a special meeting (less than 72 hours notice) for 6pm on Monday with only one item on the agenda, a final vote in the closure of ROOTS Middle School. The school board can not be allowed to displace our students and families from their neighborhood school. We are asking everyone to help, even if you don’t live in Oakland.

1. Please email the Oakland School Board and ask them to keep ROOTS open and demand that any “redesign” of the school can not displace any of the current students.
Aimee.eng [at] ousd.org
Jody.london [at] ousd.org
Jumoke.hintonhodge [at] ousd.org
Gary.yee [at] ousd.org
Shanthi.gonzales [at] ousd.org
Roseann.torres [at] ousd.org
James.harris [at] ousd.org

2. Please sign and share the community petition. We want people outside of Oakland to also sign. There are already over 2700 signatures and we want to show maximum support when it’s submitted to the school board on Monday.
https://www.change.org/p/keeppublicschoolsopen-gmail-com-keep-our-neighborhood-public-schools-open-f805c663-e4b0-49d6-8837-bc1863c4a0ee?recruiter=926411481&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

3. Attend Monday’s 6pm school board meeting at La Escuelita 1050 2nd Ave. The ROOTS closure is the only item on the agenda. You can also submit an Ecomment on the school board website: https://ousd.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx

4. We need legal help and advice. If the school board votes to close ROOTS we will be filing an injunction and we’ll need some help and guidance.

Please help us save ROOTS and send a message to the school board that we will not accept the continued closure and displacement of our neighborhood public schools. Thanks.

#NoCutsNoClosures
#EraseTheBoard
#FailureByDesign
#WeChoose

Here’s the link to the presentation: https://ousd.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=6991988&GUID=580873AF-48BE-4507-BF01-6E0C7CDBEF1D

And the resolution: https://ousd.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=6991989&GUID=EF8774C2-43AA-418C-B2C7-3AAE5B440C7A

The petition: https://www.change.org/p/keeppublicschoolsopen-gmail-com-keep-our-neighborhood-public-schools-open-f805c663-e4b0-49d6-8837-bc1863c4a0ee?recruiter=926411481&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

On January 22nd, supporters of People’s Park marched down Telegraph Avenue to Sproul Plaza to protest the University’s overwhelming police response to the protest defending the trees. This peaceful protest was interrupted by a reckless driver who pushed up on the protesters and struck a sleeping homeless man as he fled the scene. Police have refused to release the identity of the driver or respond to this blatant attack on the poor people of Berkeley.