Calendar
On Saturday, May 18th, Strike Debt Bay Area will host the Bay Area’s Second Debtors’ Assembly. (The first one was held in February. The beautiful posters for both created by SDBA organizer Sandy Sanders are shown below.)
As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt for the basic things we need to live, including housing, education, and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government. All of us are outraged that big banks don’t have to pay their debts, but we do.
Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid—of becoming homeless, of going hungry, of being crippled or killed by treatable illness, or of being trapped in poverty-level jobs. Those facing foreclosure, medical debt, student debt, or credit card debt feel alone, hounded by debt collectors, and forced into unrewarding work to keep up with payments.
Strike Debt is building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. At the Debtors’ Assembly we will come together as a community and begin to rethink debt, not as an issue of individual shame, but as a political platform for collective resistance and action. Come to the Assembly to learn about tools for escaping the closing walls of debt, to share resources and skills, and to magnify our assembled energy. As we share our experiences we can begin to take back from the financiers what they have taken from us: our freedom and our future.
Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
ORGANIZATION INFO: Strike Debt Bay Area is the local chapter of Strike Debt, an international movement of groups working to build popular resistance to all forms of unjust debt. Strike Debt has organized the Rolling Jubilee, the Debt Resistors Operations Manual, and local debtors’ assemblies. Strike Debt supports the creation of just and sustainable economies, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence. We owe the financial institutions nothing. It is to our friends, families and community that we owe everything.
Poster from First Debtors’ Assembly:
Come to the very first session of The Politics of Debt reading group on Monday, May 20th at 6:30!
Darwin Bond-Graham will help kick off the discussion and present on public debt as it relates to our personal lives and public institutions. Together we will help shed light on the variety of ways that the debt economy subjects individuals and communities to moral and financial burden. After the initial talk we will break into a general group discussion and lay out the vision for the class.
We are less than a month away from PFC Bradley Manning’s court martial which begins on June 3rd, more than 3 years after his initial arrest and incarceration. We will be doing a mass mailing to bring in as much support as we can right before his trial begins. Help us in our office stuff letters and eat pizza to save Bradley!
BRADLEY MANNING, a 25-year-old, openly gay, US Army intelligence analyst is facing life in prison and has been held in pre-trial confinement for over 3 years. He endured torture and solitary confinement for the first 10 months of his incarceration. He is accused of sharing with Wikileaks: the “Collateral Murder” video of the killing of civilians and journalists by a US helicopter in Iraq, the Guantanamo Files, the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, & revealing US diplomatic cables. In short, he’s been charged with blowing the whistle on war crimes & telling us the truth.
A Film by Darryl Cherney and Mary Laz Thomson.
Free Outdoors Event/Action.
Please gather at Union Square to hear some speakers and share our bag lunch exchange! Kids performance art! Political music!
We will march to Justin Herman Plaza where we will have more speakers including well known activists in the anit GMO movement.
Come Occupy the Farm Saturday night, and let’s camp out under the stars and stay through to Sunday! There will be free food, workshops, music, kids activities, celebration, and farming, of course!
Bike the Math to Chevron’s shareholders at their Annual General Meeting in San Ramon. Let’s tell Chevron to stop fueling climate chaos and become a renewable energy company!
Light to medium 6 mile ride to Chevron Headquarters in San Ramon along Iron Horse Trail, arriving at approximately 9am
RSVP at 350BayArea.org or join Facebook Event page
Tasers, spit hoods, pepper spray, hog-tie and “the Wrap” : Is this what Berkeley means by the term “Mental Health Services” ? Numerous incidents in Berkeley show that the “compassionate care” we thought was beging given by mental health care professionals has deteriorated into the systematic use of brute force against those in crisis.
SPEAKERS VIDEO CLIPS WORKSHOP
Join us for a public examination of Berkeley’s Emergency Mental Health Services and whether Police should even be involved as responders.
Stockton Courthouse 222 Weber St. @ 2pm
BUS FROM Oscar Grant Plaza TO STOCKTON AT 12:00 NOON (get there early)
To keep the land arable, the earth able to breathe, and the people of San Francisco able to grow and eat local, nutrient-rich, organic food in the city, people will walk to a potential development site on June 1st to plant food, build a village, and hold space together.
We can out-grow the old power structures!
There will be a dialogue and discussion about the loss of urban gardens to development in San Francisco at the Free Farm at 1 pm (thefreefarm.org) This will be followed by a gathering of folks who will take direct action in Jefferson Square Park directly across Gough Street from the Free Farm. We will get ready to move, plant, and hold space at 2pm. Follow us on twitter @LiberateLand or #liberatetheland if you are late!
Strike Debt Bay Area, loosely affiliated with Strike Debt (check out their latest video) and Occupy, is dedicated to educating people about and organizing resistance to debt, and finding alternatives to our current system of debt slavery.
Join us! You Are Not a Loan! Or Alone.
All are welcome! Come see how you can plug in to the debt resistance movement.
We will first meet all together and then divide up into working groups:
Study & Research (people interested in tackling specific research questions, reading books together, etc.). Currently there are a number of reading groups active.
Direct Action (people interested in organizing against Post Office closings, Wells Fargo and other debt possessing targets)
Debtors’ Union (tactical work for collective organizing against private and public debt)
Alternative Institutions (Alternative currencies, public banking, communal living, and more!)
Then we will come back together for general discussion.
Our web page.
Our Facebook page.
Follow StrikeDebt (NYC) on twitter.
Latest StrikeDebt Analysis: Death By For-Profit Health Care.
A Conversation: Take Our Economy Back From Wall Street
Matt Taibbi, Ellen Brown, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Gar Aperovitz.
This is actually a three day conference. More information here.
How often do you get a chance to join with other creative minds discussing how best to redesign the banking systems of nations, in ways that would create new prosperity for millions and help to rebuild local economies?
Join pioneering policy makers, civic leaders, banking entrepreneurs, innovators and ordinary citizens interested in learning about one of the most critical undertakings of our time: creating a truly prosperous, democratic and sustainable new economy.
On Sunday night, June 2nd from 7 – 9:30pm, Matt Taibbi will speak on “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squds, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.” He will join Ellen Brown, Author of Web of Debt and her book (newly available on 6/2/13) The Buck Starts Here, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of Iceland’s Parliament, in a discussion of how we can move from a two-tiered justice system (one favoring the financial elites and one for the rest of us) to a more just and democratic system where we can reclaim our economic sovereignty from Wall Street banks and the US Congress.
OAKLAND (UN)FAIR CARNIVAL AND MARCH
We are graduate students, undergrads, faculty, workers, lecturers, and others concerned about DEFENDING QUALITY AND ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC EDUCATION and BUILDING SAFE AND SUPPORTIVE WORKPLACES at the UC.
Thursday June 6
(un)Fair Carnival and Musical March::
12pm: Start at Oscar Grant Plaza. We’ll be stopping by the hotel where high-level administrators are attending a conference with panels on how to suppress protests and public events like ours.
People’s Public Forum::
If you want to join us just for the People’s Public Forum:
1pm: Converge at Snow Park before we head to the Kaiser Center (300 Lakeside Dr.) at 1:30 for a People’s Public Forum. We are hopeful that the administration will let us speak inside the Oakland Room #1015 as per their original plan, but we are prepared to hold a press conference with speakers outside of the building if they refuse. Come one, come all.
Join us for a solidarity rally to support the protests in Turkey, which initially began at Gezi Parki. The demonstrations at Gezi Parki were directed to halt the destruction of Taksim’s last green area. For the past week, a cross section of the population has been demonstrating throughout Turkey against police brutality and increasingly anti-democratic government practices. At least two protestors have been killed as a result of police brutality. We need your support!
The Interfaith Tent for Justice and our allies ask you to join us this First Friday (and subsequent First Fridays) in downtown Oakland to bear witness as we read the names of those killed by police in our communities.
We will stand in respectful silence from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM at 7th and Broadway (outside OPD) as the names are read.
We stand for an end to all community violence.
Come to #GeziGardens on Sat. 6/8 for a BBQ, meeting, bands, workshops, speakers, gardening, and FUN! Starts at noon, goes all day!
Join us as we share prayer and peaceful protest through the City of Manteca from the point where Ernest was murdered in the 200 block of Flores Ave to the Manteca PD – We will then be having a bbq and event after at location to be announced – bring yourself, we will have signs but you can share your own loved ones poster if you want – so come on out and Join us and remind them WE WILL NEVER FORGET AND WE WANT JUSTICE!!
Justice For Ernest Duenez Facebook page