Calendar
CANCELLED
In March of 2018, Berkeley became the 2nd municipality in California to pass a sweeping surveillance transparency ordinance. In October of 2019, Berkeley has become the first city to serially violate this new law – over and over and over again. Join Oakland Privacy, SEIU, and others at a press conference and rally to lay out the long series of failures and demand an end to them. Between biometric time clocks for employees, Homeland Security spying on protests, advanced analytics in parks, and mission creep on license plate readers, the City has shown reckless disregard for transparency and consent and it needs to stop.
Hosted by Oakland Privacy
America’s leading scholar of high strangeness, Erik Davis celebrates release of High Weirdness, a study of the new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the 1970s counterculture writings of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality. But how did their writings reflect and shape the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America? Davis and R.U. Sirius discuss these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences.
–BAY CURRENTS FREE TALK
Bringing sustainable energy, low carbon emissions, and green jobs to low-income people is the passion of Zach Franklin of Bay Area nonprofits Grid Alternatives and Rising Sun Center for Opportunity. Join us for stories of struggle and success that illuminate why these efforts matter — for workers, volunteers, and all of us affected by global warming.
Free Bay Currents talks on Bay Area natural history and environmental issues, with emphasis on positive solutions, are at St. Alban’s Parish Hall, 1501 Washington (at Curtis, one block north of Solano), Albany.
Refreshments 7 PM, talks 7:30 PM.
Howie Hawkins, candidate for the Green Party Nomination for President, will speak on
“What an Ecosocialist Green New Deal Would Look Like.”
Luis Gongora Pat, a Mayan indigenous man, was murdered by San Francisco police officers on April 7, 2016 on Shotwell near 19th Street in the Mission. His murder came in the wake of other homicides by police of Black and Brown communities members. His family pursued every legal avenue available, including a civil case which was settled in January 2019. Three and a half years later, the story of this brutal murder is at risk of being buried because the primary family eyewitnesses never got their day in court. But their story must be told.
Two primary eyewitnesses–Christine Pepin and S. Smith Patrick–will present their foregone testimony in an open setting, getting the facts onto a public record even if they couldn’t provide it in court. Adante Pointer, the family civil rights lawyers, will attend to support the narrative with facts on the record. In connection with the San Francisco Public Library One City One Book program .
Rebels around the world have taken to the streets to demand climate action. Today and tomorrow, the Bay Area will join the global rebellion.
Join us in calling for Net-Zero Carbon Emissions in California by 2025. This is the message we’re bringing into the streets as part of the Global Climate Rebellion.
This week’s events:
Join us this evening as we kick off Wednesday’s actions with guerrilla projections from the San Francisco Projection Department. We’ll be singing songs of rebellion and projecting our message onto the SF State Building. Meet by the State Building at McAllister & Van Ness in San Francisco. We hope to see you there!
October Rebellion
We’ll be on the streets with art, music, theatre, and direct action on October 16th to call on our state government to enact Extinction Rebellion’s Demand #2: Zero Carbon Emissions by 2025. Actions will be taking place around midday. We hope you’ll join us!
Die-In for Life
Wednesday, October 16 | UN Plaza, Civic Center in San Francisco
We’ll be on the streets around Civic Center, San Francisco on October 16th for Die-In for Life, to call on our state government to enact Extinction Rebellion’s Demand #2: Zero Carbon Emissions by 2025. We start at 7:00am with swarming; groups of rebels will block the streets for a few minutes at a time to spread the message about climate action. Watch our video to see how it’s done! Join the Red Rebels, a Playful Parade of Animals and other activists! We’ll start swarming at 7:00am, with on-site training at Civic Center and new groups heading out on the hour. t
At noon, we will stage a die-in at UN Plaza and then march to the State Building to die-in once more; arrive no later than 11:30 to participate. While these are not arrestable actions, numbers are everything. Please show up if you can – find the Climate Anxiety tent by the Library at Larkin, and see below for information about upcoming trainings! Got questions about participating? Email us.
The Wednesday action will be launched the evening before with a gathering and projections by the San Francisco Projection Project at McAllister & Van Ness Avenue, SF at 8:00pm on October 15. (See previous projection here.) All rebels are invited to gather to learn songs of the rebellion and pose for a group photo.
We hope you’ll join us!
Paul Butler, Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center, will discuss what would replace prisons, how people who cause harm could be dealt with in the absence of incarceration, and why abolition would make everyone safer and our society more just.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Read more about this lecture at https://gradlectures.berkeley.edu/lecture/prison-abolition-mule
The Bancroft hotel is wheelchair accessible.
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Paul Butler is the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a legal analyst on MSNBC. He frequently consults on issues of race and criminal justice. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News. Butler lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at colleges, law schools, and community organizations throughout the United States.
Professor Butler is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He holds an honorary Doctor of Law Degree from City University of New York. Butler served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where his specialty was public corruption. His prosecutions included a United States Senator, three FBI agents, and several law enforcement officials. He currently serves on the District of Columbia Code Revision Commission as an appointee of the D.C. City Council. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2003.
Butler’s most recent book Chokehold: Policing Black Men, published in July 2017, was named one of the 50 best non-fiction books of 2017 by The Washington Post. The New York Times described Chokehold as the best book on criminal justice reform since The New Jim Crow. It was a finalist for the 2018 NAACP Image Award for best non-fiction.
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ABOUT THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL LECTURES
In 1944, the Jefferson Memorial Fund was established by the will of Elizabeth Bonestell in her name and the name of her husband, Cutler L. Bonestell, for the study and promotion of a loyal and enlightened adherence by young people to the basic principles of American democracy as embodied
in the Constitution. The fund supports an annual series of lectures on topics concerned with Jefferson or his times, with the development of the American governmental system, or with civil liberties and the Jeffersonian tradition.
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This lecture is also part of UC Berkeley’s commemorative events spotlighting African American history after the passage of the 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act.
Learn more at https://400years.berkeley.edu.
Gather to discuss ways to support the Where Do We Go? encampment in Berkeley at I-80 & University and thereabouts. It seems like we might be able to offer more material support to the campers and political support for their demands if we coordinate a bit more closely. Just come if you can. Bring folks who you think can help us. This is not really about large, comprehensive political strategy. We are trying to focus in on this particular situation.
Hope to see you there. Bring people who are immediately impacted or who are interested in directly helping this situation.
Some things to consider at this meeting:
* Dealing with sanitation needs of trash and bathrooms etc.
* Help during raids (emergency response network)
* Material support (tents, winter gear)
* Pressing the demands (Art, civil disobediance, legal support, press coverage and messaging)
* Setting up for a longer struggle (sponsorship? GoFundme?)
* Next steps
When Trump first announced his “Muslim Ban” in January 2017, J.J. Mulligan Sepúlveda was one of the lawyers who protested. His new book No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney on the Front Lines of the Immigration War pulls back the curtain on the ingrained inhumanity found in the immigration reform currently coming to fruition in the United States. Readers are taken into the often-times merciless courts of New York City and San Francisco, the frightening detention centers on the U.S./Mexico border, and the overburdened offices of legal defense organizations. In conversation with Steven Mayers. FREE, $5 suggested donation
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay and nationwide.
We fight against “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” spy drones, facial recognition, police body camera secrecy, anti-transparency laws and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones, to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government, and attempts to hide what government officials, employees and agencies are doing.
We draft and push for privacy legislation for City Councils, at the County level, and in Sacramento. We advocate in op-eds and in the streets. We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and believe no one is illegal.
Oakland Privacy originally came together in 2013 to fight against the Domain Awareness Center, Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OP was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network. We helped fight and helped win the fight against Urban Shield.
Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance (we got the strongest surveillance regulation ordinance in the country passed in Oakland!), supporting and opposing state legislation as appropriate, battling mass surveillance in the form of facial recognition and other analytics, and pushing back against ICE.
On September 12th, 2019 we were presented with a Barlow Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for our work.
If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:
Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/ Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy
Check out our sister site DeportICE.
“WATCHING YOU WATCHING US”
Oakland Privacy works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. Oakland Privacy drove the passage of surveillance regulation and transparency ordinances in Oakland and Berkeley and is kicking off new processes in various municipalities around the Bay. To help slow down the encroaching police and surveillance state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.
Venezuela: Embassy Protection Collective to Speak at BFUU in Berkeley
Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese from Baltimore and David Paul from San Francisco will be touring Northern California to speak about the latest on Venezuela and what local activists can do to oppose the US blockade against the South American country. After 37 days of struggle protecting the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC, Kevin Zeese, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Dr. Adrienne Pine, and David Paul were arrested by federal agents and are currently fighting the charges against them. The fight to protect the embassy reinvigorated the struggle for justice in the United States. Join us to hear from three of the Embassy Protection Collective in person.
The Anti Police-Terror Project meets the third Wednesday of every month.
August’s agenda will include an update on developments at Santa Rita jail and an active shooter response training.
In September we’re giving updates on our Police Commission campaign and about a local campaign to audit Sheriff Ahern; showing a short film about Dujuan Armstrong, who died in police custody at Santa Rita Jail earlier this year; and giving a quick update about our newly formed Sacramento chapter. Let us know if you can join us!
Join us to find out how you can get involved.
This space is wheelchair accessible. Please contact us for any additional accessibility questions or concerns.
RESCHEDULED FROM 10/9 to 106 BECAUSE OF POWER OUTAGE
DIFFERENT LOCATION!
SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TIME.
From your inbox to the ballot box, how do we keep misinformation from destroying democracy? A recent bipartisan Senate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election confirmed that Russian agents used social media and other means to help the Trump campaign. Fake events, rampant misinformation, and other techniques were designed to sow discord and pit neighbor against neighbor. One group singled out in the report is African Americans, who were targets of the Russian agents. The Senate report recommends sweeping changes. Hear from Renee DiResta and Matt Mitchell on what’s required from Washington, DC, Silicon Valley and us to safeguard elections in 2020 and beyond.
Renée DiResta
Renée DiResta is a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.
Renée regularly writes and speaks about the role that tech platforms and curatorial algorithms play in the proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories. She is an Ideas contributor at Wired. Her tech industry writing, analysis, talks, and data visualizations have been featured or covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Politico, TechCrunch, Wired, Slate, Forbes, Buzzfeed, The Economist, Journal of Commerce, and more. She is a 2019 Truman National Security Project security fellow and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.
Renée is the author of The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand, published by O’Reilly Media.
Matt Mitchell
Matt Mitchell is the Director of Digital Safety and Privacy at Tactical Tech. He is a hacker, security researcher, operational security trainer, developer and data journalist who founded and leads CryptoHarlem, impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the predominantly African American community in upper Manhattan. Matt trains activists and journalists (as an independent trainer for Global Journalist Security) in digital security. His personal work focuses on marginalized, aggressively monitored, over-policed populations in the United States.
- As part of the Talks Program at The Glass Room, a panel discussion is being held about what the facial recognition ‘ban’ in SF really means for its citizens. We are bringing together activists from EFF, ACLU, Oakland Privacy and others to discuss the topic.
- Some background info about The Glass Room and its talks program:
- The Glass Room will be open from October 16th til November 3rd, daily from 12pm-8pm, at 838 Market Street in downtown San Francisco.
- The exhibits presented in the Glass Room provoke questions about who is actually building our technologies, their impact on the enviroment, their potential biases, and the impacts they are having on everything from dating to democracy. The exhibition takes the form of a pop-up tech store where nothing is actually for sale. Instead, visitors will find over 50 exhibits – ranging from readymades to animations to technical tools and unique, commissioned art works by artists such as Adam Harvey, James Bridle, Mediengruppe Bitnik, Mimi Onuoha, Tega Brain, and lots more.
Oct 17 7:00 pm in Piedmont; Nov. 3 12:30 pm in Oakland at The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th Street, Oakland
Throughout American history, there has been an undeniable divide between urban and rural America. People from certain regions are viewed as “the other,” and blamed for America’s social ills. Since the 2016 presidential election, that cultural divide has only expanded and deepened. With their documentary Hillbilly, co-directors Ashley York and Sally Rubin – both natives of Appalachia- have made a complex film about complex people. Hillbilly is an entertaining, informative, and sobering look at Appalachia: its diversity, the consequences of stereotyping its people, and an examination of why so many there voted for Donald Trump.
Hillbilly goes on a personal and political journey into the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, exploring the role of media representation in the creation of the iconic American “hillbilly,” and examining the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of this infamous stereotype.
Hillbilly is a timely and urgent exploration of how we see and think about poverty and rural identity in contemporary America, offering a call for dialogue.
“I’m happy to see somebody trying to cover us as we really are and not what some people think we are. It’s wonderful the attention you’ve paid to so many areas that are so important to all of us. I’m proud to have been mentioned in the film a time or two.”
–Dolly Parton
Los Angeles Film Festival Jury Prize for Best Documentary.
6:30 pm reception
7:00 – 8:30 screening of film
8:30 – 9:00 facilitated community discussion
Come by our open Delegates Meetings! We’ll give space to brief announcements, updates from working groups, proposals up for consensus, and discussion around important issues. The schedule is created weekly at the following url: https://pad.riseup.net/p/omninom
This meeting usually happens in the Ballroom, but the the location may change depending on the access needs of people attending and other events taking place in the building.
Terry Tempest Williams introducing Erosion
In conversation with Vijaya Nagarajan
Plenty of easy parking in church lot and on streets
Book sales and signing following event
Get tickets!
Don’t miss this opportunity to have your perspective transformed and your assumptions eroded.
We hope to see you there!
Join the effort to Close 850 Bryant and Build a Better San Francisco! Come to the hearing on Friday October 18th at 10:30am to hold our government accountable.
— Coffee and Comradery: Join us at 9:30am directly across from City Hall (Polk Side) in the Civic Center plaza to share in coffee, tea, and breakfast. Learn about the campaign and connect with other members of the coalition.
— Supervisors’ Hearing: Enter City Hall at 10:30am to make our presence seen and heard at the hearing. Please plan to share public comment. We will have talking points available.
In July we mobilized to demand swift action for the closure of the jail at 850 Bryant, and the Board of Supervisors heard our call, with Supervisors Matt Haney , Norman Yee, Hillary Ronen, Sandra Lee Fewer, Shamann Walton, Vallie Brown moving forward a public hearing on the issue. On October 18th the Sheriff and City Administrator are being called to this hearing to report on the City’s ability to Close the Jail at 850 Bryant. We believe that they will come with threats that in order to close the jail the City will have to resort to either building a new jail, over-crowding in the San Bruno jail, or transferring imprisoned people to Santa Rita in Alameda County. This is unacceptable! We refuse to be held hostage to these threats when the City has known of the seismic threat to the building since 1996. What’s more, in January of 2016 the City initiated a process to close the jail by reducing the jailed population size, yet the numbers of people caged at 850 Bryant have only increased since then!
Across the City, in government and community we agree that the jail at 850 Bryant must close. The difference is that we know San Francisco can do better for our communities!
• We demand that the jail close immediately. We cannot wait until the next earthquake hits.
• We demand no new jails, no transfers to other counties, no increased electronic monitoring.
• We can safely close the jail by July 2020. Decriminalize houselessness and quality of life charges and reduce the number of people held pre-trial.
• We can build lasting solutions. Invest in housing, mental health care, and voluntary substance use treatment.
The campaign is moving forward and building momentum with the newest supporters of closing 850 Bryant including the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, the SF Human Services Network of 110 SF service providers, the GLIDE foundation, and AFT 2121 City College Faculty Union! With a Board of Supervisors that has taken bold action to close the youth jail and create comprehensive mental health solutions we believe we can also shut down 850!