Why: To demand that San Francisco’s most upwardly-mobile politician serve the City’s residents with the greatest needs, rather than the fewest.

Scott Wiener Roast

Weiner Roast 3. Scott is not on your side. Oct. 23rd, you can let him know how you feel. This type of protest will get his attention. Wear themed costumes, Les Miserables, weiner, peasant uprising with pitchforks and torches. Bring jokes.  Bring hotdogs, the fixings, and we may need additional grills. Small hibachi style or camping bbq.  An unknown number will be there and we want more than enough food. Homeless are coming, and the food won’t be wasted. Clothing optional. Spread the word.

We all know the shananigans Stupidvisor Scott Wiener pulls every day. His hatred of poor people especially the homeless is beyond belief. Well, for the third time we are going to go visit him to shout loudly:

• SF is not for sale
• End Homelessness Now
• Affordable Housing for All

Many of us have survived the shelter system and choose not to repeat that experience. Instead we camp on the sidewalks and other out of the way places. This conduct while necessary is prohibited from 7:00 AM until 11:00 PM by the SF Police Code. There are exceptions: most important is the one which deals with rallies, demonstrations, meetings and similar events.

Homeless Action Team is a self-advocacy network of homeless, unemployed and employed workers. We are an affinity group of First They Came for the Homeless our decision making process is autonomous.  We our Homeless not Helpless. We are demanding a Hand Up, Not a Handout. We promote self-reliance individually and collectively. We defend and serve our community under the terms of Mutual Aid and Voluntary Cooperation.

Our Demands:

1. Stop criminalizing homelessness  it only makes the problem worse.  Harassing homeless people for sitting or lying on sidewalks, depriving them of sleep, driving them out of parks that are their best available sanctuary makes it impossible for them to heal the damage done to their lives.
2. Allow homeless folks to take care of themselves.  With proper rest and even a minimal sense of security, homeless people will have a better chance of organizing their lives and of becoming self-sufficient.  As San Francisco provides shelter beds for less than 20% of its homeless population, urban camping areas must exist within the City limits as an alternative.
3. Create housing that the homeless can afford.  Salt Lake City has demonstrated that this is cheaper than hounding homeless folks like criminals and wasting money on emergency services that obviously don’t solve the problem of homelessness.

They left me in the room for 5 hours with my hands tied behind my back and legs tied to each other. When I refused to confess, they slapped me and tightened my hand ties even more.” – 15-year-old prisoner

Children and families in Silwan face constant violence—both physical and psychological. Illegal and armed settlers are taking over Palestinian homes and land. These settlers often harass and viciously attack Palestinians on the street. Meanwhile bulldozers carry out “administrative demolitions” which leave many homeless and threaten thousands more. And hundreds of people each year—including children as young as six and many, many teenagers—are arrested, beaten, and tortured by Israeli police.

Event includes:

Room Number 4 photo exhibit about violations of Palestinian children’s rights, accompanied by written testimonies from the children themselves

Presentation by Sahar Abbasi Baidon – direct from Palestine! Sahar is Deputy Director of Madaa Silwan Creative Center where she works with children who have been arrested, runs the women’s program and more. She is also a mother of four.

Scratchboard drawing used to create the wedding mural just painted at Shoruq Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp – plus photos of Palestinian students creating tiles for the mural

Videos and photos of community murals painted in Silwan by US-based Art Forces & Madaa Silwan Creative Center –in response to Israel’s violent evictions and confiscation of land, house by house

Donation requested at the door, no one turned away. Benefit for the Madaa Silwan Creative Center, to raise funds for a staff psychologist to support the children and their families after the trauma of arrests, home demolitions and violence.

This event is a collaboration between Middle East Children’s Alliance & Art Forces

Cosponsored by Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Friends of Sabeel- North America, Jewish Voice for Peace/Bay Area, and more!

For info: www.mecaforpeace.org, 510-548-0542.

The KPFA Multi-Media team is holding a training/education event to help build our network for multi-media: live streaming, and use of social media to help build the KPFA streaming channel and also to help labor and community organizations build their own live streaming channels.

Help us expand KPFA and other news sources through interactive communication and get your events on the KPFA streaming channel. Get to know producers, streamers, and activists fighting for working people and immigrant rights, housing rights, against racist violence and environmental rights. The struggle against cuts in public services and privatization of education are issues that all working people need to see. We will also have presentations on how multi-media and streaming is being used to break the information blockade. Training and conference will be bi-lingual and streamed on KPFA web.

Bring your mobile devices for the  workshop because every device is a little different.
Pre-Registration Requested: Contact KPFAStream@gmail.com to register.

It’s Orion’s Birthday and their 5th Anniversary.  to open gate call gg 916 718 2105

Bring Acoustic Instruments and/or your voice.

ps Orion Sez ” We expect lotsa yaking singin , playing,and havin a good time gals bring drinks guys bring food or vice a versa LBGT    vice a versa too.NO barbeque

you may play gg/s uke and/or piano and my acoustic guitar.My Drum set will not be available .Orion/s Joy of Sextet Jazz and latin Jazz will not be playing at the Party since  they will be playing Sunday oct 25 5 to 7pm at Caffe Treiste 2400 san pablo Berk.

thanks for making the World amore peaceful and joyful Palace Orion 510 719 6429

Do you ever miss the delightful aroma of decomposing compost? Do you ever wonder what happened to that fragile vegetable start that you planted? Or that kindred spirit you met pulling bind weed?

Then come to reconnect, schmooze, eat and drink with old and new faces, past and current volunteers at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm Volunteer Appreciation Party!!!

This is our small token of appreciation to thank you for all your hard work in helping to grow and sustain this ground-breaking, amazing, and fruitful farm and community space!

Travel with members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the NLG through Oakland, visiting key sites of struggle for the Black Panther Party and other Black radical movements in the historic Town. From the site of Huey P. Newton’s trial and Bobby Hutton’s murder to the location of major demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the killing of Oscar Grant, you’ll see the history of Black radical movements in Oakland from the 1960s to the present. The tour is wheelchair and stroller accessible.

Meet: Lobby of Oakland Marriott City Center to walk to Alameda County Courthouse.

Part of #Law4thePeople2015 http://www.nlg.org/2015-law-people-convention

Right now there are more predatory payday lenders in the US than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. And new ones keep popping up! In fact, payday lenders are often owned by the same banks that won’t provide accounts or loans to poor customers. Most progressives are so opposed to predatory lending that they want to shut payday lending down altogether … without providing an alternative for people who are cash-strapped and in need. Strike Debt Bay Area, an offshoot of Occupy Oakland, has found an answer in our hometown of Oakland.

Community Check Cashing (CCC) is a non-profit, providing the same services that for-profit payday lenders do — at a third to a half of what they charge.  CCC estimates that it has saved its customer base over $1,200,000 in the six years it has been open.

As activists, we’ve been exploring ways CCC can be strengthened and its model can be expanded — with the ultimate goal of taking out the for-profit payday lenders. We call this project Human Interest Lending. We’ll provide some history of the banks and the social contract, and talk about where we want to go. We’ll also update attendees on some of Strike Debt Bay Area’s other projects, including ending Student Debt and saving the Berkeley Post Office.

Debbie Notkin is on the board of the James Tiptree  J. Literary Award, and blogs at Body Impolitic www.laurietobyedison.com/body-impolitic-blog). She is an active member of Strike Debt Bay Area. She is contracts manager for a large nonfiction publishing company.

JP Massar is an activist with Strike Debt Bay Area, the Oakland Privacy Working Group, the Oakland Livable Wage Assembly and Occupy Oakland, a writer on the national progressive blog Daily Kos, the former policy chair for the Siegel for Oakland Mayoral campaign, and occasionally he can be seen marching against police violence or testifying against police militarization at the Berkeley and Oakland City Council.

Time will be allotted for discussion and announcements.

There is a good chance that the only reason this is even appearing on a committee meeting agenda is because the sum is more than $100,000 otherwise the citizens would not have known of this. One might wonder if this purchase came out of the recent Urban Shield vendor weapons display. The Oakland Police Dept will say the shotguns they already have are old and overused – which is a tired argument. Municipal police departments are not supposed to be firing weapons aside from on the firing range and these weapons – if maintained – will last for a very long time.

From the resolution … “WHEREAS, funds are available in the General Purpose Fund (1010), District Command Administration Organization (108010), Supplies Technical and Scientific Account (52913), Undetermined Project (0000000), Community Oriented Policing Services Program (COPS) …” COPS?! Is that what residents considered community-oriented policing? Or would they consider proper rubber-soled walking shoes to be community-oriented policing?

This is about priorities and stockpiling weapons for the upcoming repression. When combined with the OPD request of $279,000 for 8 “paddy wagons” to be heard later in the day, OPD will be consuming over $400,000. Funds that this supposed cash-strapped city could easily direct elsewhere.

Either appear in person or contact the four council members who warm the chairs on this committee to say NO to these purchases: DKalb [at] oaklandnet.com; AGuillen [at] oaklandnet.com; LMcelhaney [at] oaklandnet.com; ACampbell-Washington [at] oaklandnet.com

Item 23 on the Berkeley City Council Agenda. (2nd on the Action agenda)

Do you want a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) on you to be lodged in the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) because you chalked a political message on the sidewalk, or put a poster or two on a building’s wall? In BPD’s General Order N-17, for NCRIC, VANDALISM is defined as a criminal activity with a potential terrorism nexus, to be reported.

Do you want a SAR sent on you to NCRIC because you took a picture of a bridge, building or of the cops in action?PHOTOGRAPHY, in such cases, is a potential criminal or non-criminal activity to be reported if done “in a manner that would arouse suspicion in a reasonable person”. Could the “manner” be wearing a hoodie or scarf and/or being tan?

The Police Review Commission (PRC) has recommended supposed changes to BPD’s General Order N-17, on SARs to NCRIC. Actually they are not changes, but rather spell out Federal Regulations and California Constitution privacy requirements already to in G.O. N-17.

Spelling out these regs in no way changes the Definition of Criminal Activities and Potential Criminal and Non-Criminal Activities to be sent as SARs to NCRIC.

How can we expect the City Council to control on whom and what SARs are sent to NCRIC when this is decided by BPD’s two or three FBI Terrorism Liaison Officers who cannot discuss their actions with a BPD supervisor without the permission of the U.S. Department of Justice, their FBI supervisor at the FBI’s Bay Area Joint Terrorism Task Force that runs NCRIC?✳️

Please attend this Tuesday’s, 10/27/15, City Council and tell them to NOT APPROVE NCRIC in its entirety! PRC’s “changes” make no difference.

— Berkeleyans Organizing for Liberty Defense

November 4, 2015, marks the one-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 47, The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. Thousands of people have been released from prison and jail. More than 150,000 have already applied to erase old felonies from their records, unlocking opportunities for jobs, education, and more. An estimated one million Californians are eligible for relief under this new law and only have two more years to apply.

But we can’t rest now. There is a growing threat that the savings from releasing people from prison might be directed back into further incarceration and programs led by law enforcement, not services that are owned by the community. The Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) has scheduled its first of seven regional meetings on the implementation of Proposition 47 right here in Oakland. It’s part of a statewide tour to gather public input on our funding priorities, and we must tell them we want care, not cages.

Will you join us for a rally and concert, and accelerate momentum for change into the future as we march over to the hearing and demand the savings be spent in the community not in jails?

4-6 pm: Concert and Rally at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater
6-8 pm: Mobilization to Public Hearing on Prop 47 at Alameda County Administration Building (1221 Oak Street, Oakland).

Sponsors: Bay Area Black Worker Center, BOCA, Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Causa Justa – Just Cause, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), East Bay Community Law Center, East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Oakland Community Organizations, Oakland Rising, People United for a Better Life in Oakland (PUEBLO), Urban Peace Movement.

We hope you will join us tomorrow evening to learn about the Berkeley Fair Elections Act, a proposal that would create a small donor public financing system in our city.
In Berkeley, we need a system where candidates can successfully run for office even if they don’t have connections to wealth. The Berkeley Fair Elections Act, which is being put to a city council vote on November 10, would allow candidates to do exactly just that!

Learn what you can do to help make sure this proposal makes it to the ballot for a vote.

In order to give Berkeley voters the opportunity to create a more equitable political system, we need you, your neighbors and your colleagues to spread the word.

Join California Common Cause at our public forum tomorrow! Hear first-hand from supporters of the measure, ask questions about how the system would work, and see how you can get involved.

Together, we can amplify the voice of Berkeley voters.

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT

there will be no tickets available at the door.

Coates is recently famous for his cover story in The Atlantic, “Between the World and Me” – now a book, hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States.” This KPFA benefit will be hosted by Greg Williams.

Long-time McDonald’s shift lead and fast food union organizer Sandra Roman, who has worked at the McDonald’s at 4514 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland for over 2 years, was fired yesterday, Oct. 27th. In response, fast food workers, union organizers community supporters and clergy staged a 3 hour protest to demand that Ms. Roman be reinstated immediately. Despite heavy police presence, the demonstrators forced McDonald’s to close its doors for the rest of the night.

EBOC will be holding an action tomorrow to keep the pressure on, we are winning and are pushing forward further charges. The manager admittedly fired Sandra for demanding her legal sick days on the same day The City of Oakland sent a retaliation notification to the company. WE WILL MEET AT THE STORE TOMORROW AT 11AM and will keep the pressure on throughout the day. Please come out when you can tomorrow and let your networks know. We continue to win fights like these with support from the community and Sandra’s coworkers are fully behind her.

Ms. Roman is a mother of 4 children, and struggles every day to provide a decent quality of life for her family. Without legally-guaranteed paid sick days, she would have to make the difficult choice between missing a days pay or caring for her diabetic son. She has gone on strike 7 times in the past to demand a pay raise to $15/hour and the right to form a union, and is a well-known fast food organizer.

See you out there!

Please join with us, the family of Yuvette Henderson, thier legal team and supporters as we show solidarity and make public legal steps to bring justice in the case of Yuvette Henderson who was killed by Emerville Police on the Oakland/Emeryville border in February of this year.

Media Alert: Fed Lawsuit to be filed on behalf of #YuvetteHenderson. Press conf 10/29 at noon, #Oakland Federal Bldg https://t.co/JiL94E9zlP

— APTP First Response (@aptpresponse) October 28, 2015