Calendar
SAN FRANCISCO TENANTS’ GROUPS TO HOLD “MARCH ON GREED” IN PROTEST OF LOCAL LANDLORD AND “SERIAL EVICTOR”
San Francisco – Next Wednesday, February 26, a coalition of tenants’ rights activists and and local economic justice groups, led by the rising direct action group Eviction Free San Francisco, will hold a march in protest of a local landlord Kaushik Dattani, who has been receiving increased notoriety as a “serial evictor” due to him recently being added to the “dirty dozen” by the Anti Eviction Mapping Project, for being one of the worst Ellis- Act evictors in San Francisco. The event, titled “A March on Greed: Housing is a Human Right”, aims to make Mr. Dattani an example of real estate speculation that has been directly affecting the displacement of the City’s lower and middle income renters.
The meet-up for this event is to happen at 11:30am on Wednesday, at the 24th Street BART station. From there, the group plans to walk to Mr. Dattani’s office at 3232 22nd Street. The event is anticipated to last no longer than an hour, and is expected to have a similar crowd size as past protests led by the group, which has shown to be 50 to over 100 participants.
Rally & March.
We Aer All Trayvon Martin. The whole Damn System is Guilty.
Youth Are Not Suspects, They Are Human Beings.
The murder of Trayvon Martin was, and still is, a towering outrage. Remember: when the verdict came down many thousands rejected the call for “calm reflection” from Obama and others and took to the streets in outrage.
Many more asked: Why does this happen? And, what can we do about it? There is a challenge before us: What kind of world are we going to live in? On February 26, 2014 we must answer that challenge with a day of outrage and remembrance for Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Andy Lopez, Renisha MeBride and all the thousands of others like them.
These are modern day lynchings. They sent a message that Black and Latino youth have a bulls-eye on their backs that cops and any ordinary racist can use as target practice.
In response we must deliver our own message: we will not stand by in silence as our youth are brutalized, locked up, murdered and more. On Feb 26th, in Oakland and EVERYWHERE across the country we must say NO MORE! to the criminalization of whole generations of Black and Latino youth.
Come speak out on a “privacy policy” that allows the City of Oakland to violate our 1st and 4th amendment rights with impunity.
Staff is taking a new and aggressive approach to public engagement around this draft framework. Distribution of this framework will happen via EngageOakland, a survey monkey, and broad dissemination via the Neighborhood Service Coordinators. This framework is being disseminated for a thirty day public comment period. During that time period there will be two public meetings scheduled for Wednesday, February 26th in City Council Chambers, and Thursday, March 13th at the Dimond Branch Library located at 3565 Fruitvale Avenue. Both meetings will occur between 6 to 8pm.
“During Phase 2, City/Port staff will develop a Privacy and Data Retention Policy that governs the collection, retention, storage, and dissemination of information processed by the DAC ensuring the protection of privacy rights by individuals, and will return said policy to the Council for approval no later than March 2014.”
Oakland Police were video taping anti-surveillance activists at City Council meeting tonight. #DAC #OAKMTG via @guelo pic.twitter.com/RlTynCD40N
— Domain Awareness (@domainawareness) February 19, 2014
The Sunflower Alliance is pleased to host a series of forums in northern Contra Costa County on the dangers of the fossil fuel industry’s turn to extreme energy in recent years. CoCoCo and Benicia are home to five refineries, specializing in the dirtiest and heaviest crude oils, and the industry has proposed five major projects to expand refineries and bring in crude oil by train.
In Pittsburg, Martinez, and Richmond, we will have panel discussions with experts and community activists, featuring a special guest from Lac-Mégantic, Canada, which suffered a devastating oil train explosion last July that killed 47 people. They’ll educate us on Big Oil’s plans and the local, regional, and global effects.
Learn about the consequences for your community, and learn how communities are organizing to fight back and protect our health and safety!
The forums will be held on the following dates:
Pittsburg: Monday, February 24th, 2014, from 7pm to 9pm at First Baptist at 204 Odessa Ave. Facebook event here.
Martinez: Wednesday, February 26th, 2014, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at the Veterans Memorial Building at 930 Ward St. Facebook event here.
Richmond: Saturday, March 1st, 2014, from 12pm to 2pm at the Bobby Bowens Progressive Center at1021 MacDonald Ave. Facebook event here.
Speakers
Each forum will have a slightly different set of panelists, tailored for the concerns of that area. However, every panel will feature:
- Marilaine Savard: spokesperson for a citizens’ group in the region of Lac-Mégantic, Québec.
- Antonia Juhasz: oil industry analyst, journalist, and author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must do to Stop It and Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Look at the descriptions in the Facebook events for each location (see above) to find out more about each panel’s members.
We look forward to seeing you at one of the panel discussions!
- Come to this event to find out what’s going on in Venezuela. For another source that is not from the “elite” point-of-view, see http://venezuelanalysis.com/
NOTE: We are meeting at 8:30 tonight so we can attend the first public meeting on the DAC “privacy” policy.
http://oaklandwiki.org/Public_Meeting_on_DAC_Privacy_Policy
Join Oakland Privacy Working Group to organize against the Domain Awareness Center (DAC), Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub.
We aim to have 2 monthly meetings, every 2nd and 4th Wednesday at 6:30 at the SUDOROOM. Stop by and learn how you can help guard Oakland’s right not to be spied on by the government & if you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy Working Group email listserv, send an email to: oaklandprivacyworkinggroup-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
The entrance to the sudoroom is on 22nd Street, ring the buzzer and come up the stairs or take the elevator.
For more information on the DAC check out the DAC FAQ, the Oakland Wiki Domain Awareness Page and the Oakland Privacy WordPress.
A Kentucky-based company called Bowie Resource Partners wants to turn Oakland’s Jack London Square into a hub for shipping dirty coal to Asia.
CREDO activists have helped fight off similar proposals in Oregon and Washington over the past few years, but the coal industry is desperate to ship its dirty product overseas, so it is now targeting California for coal exports.
The Port of Oakland’s Board of Commissioners will be discussing the proposal at its meeting on Thursday � and it wants to hear whatt local residents think. Can you be there to urge the Board of Commissioners to reject the disastrous proposal to export dirty coal through the Port of Oakland
We’d recommend arriving at 3 p.m. to sign up to speak.
Allowing coal to be exported through the Port of Oakland would pollute our air and water with dangerous coal dust and undermine our efforts to fight climate change. It’s a bad deal for Oakland and the Port’s Board of Commissioners needs to reject it without delay.
The Board of Commissioners’ own staff report detailed several problems with the proposal, including increased greenhouse gas emissions, coal dust pollution, conflicts with the port’s policies and the likelihood of community opposition.
It is outrageous that the Port of Oakland is even considering proposals to export dirty coal. With a big turnout at Thursday’s public meeting we can make it clear to the Port’s Board of Commissioners that the Bay Area won’t stand for a dirty coal export terminal at Jack London Square.
Across the country, people who are Fed Up with the Federal Reserve are gathering for Fed Up Fridays. This month, the focus is on labor. The Federal Reserve has a mandate to maintain maximum employment. So where are the jobs?
It is clear that the Federal Reserve serves the interests of the banks first and foremost, ahead of all other mandates. That is not surprising, since the Federal Reserve is 100% owned by Wall Street banks. Until we change the system to issue debt free sovereign money that will serve the people instead of the banks, financiers will continue to get richer and life for ordinary people will continue to deteriorate.
To illuminate this issue, the Code Pink Light Brigade will spell FED UP [heart] LABOR and WHERE ARE THE JOBS?
Join Fed Up this Friday and show your support for monetary policy that helps the 99% instead of Wall Street banks. Let’s kick off monthly Fed Up Fridays!
Twitter: #FedUp @FedUpSanFran @FedUpNewYork
https://www.facebook.com/
https://www.facebook.com/
A panel of alumni from the Zapatista Little School who traveled to Mexico as part of a delegation from Oakland will be talking about their experiences with the Zapatistas.
The Little School is a recent initiative by the Zapatistas to invite thousands of participants from around the world to come to the Zapatista territories, stay in the homes of Zapatista families, work alongside the Zapatistas, and study the Zapatista approach to autonomy.
We stayed in communities across the breadth of the Zapatista territory, from the mountains to the jungle, and will be discussing the different circumstances we encountered in different places, as well as the lessons we learned from our time in the Little School.
We will also be discussing some of our experiences with other autonomous projects that we visited in Mexico, outside the Little School and Chiapas. There will be a slideshow with some pictures from our journey, as well as time for a Q&A with members of the panel.
All are welcome, there will be snacks and tea!
Ballot Initiative to Lift Up Oakland!
Join community members, workers, small business owners, students, and faith leaders who are uniting to lift up our City with a voter ballot initiative to raise the the minimum wage and provide workers with paid sick days.
Raise the Minimum Wage to $12.25!
It’s time we make Oakland the kind of city that families can
afford to put food on the table, keep a roof over our heads,
and keep the lights on! Let’s ensure that workers can meet
our basic needs.
Provide Workers with Paid Sick Days!
No one should have to choose between a paycheck and our health! Let’s ensure that everyone can take care of ourselves and our children when we are sick.
JAB is currently focused on the demand that California Attorney General Kamala Harris do her job & prosecute ALL killer cops. Everyone is welcome, we will meet at The Alan Blueford Center for Justice at 2434 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, please check here for late changes.
Our latest action was a civil disobedience “standin” at Oakland’s State Building that resulted in eight people being arrested, but the good news is that all the charges are being dropped.
Upcoming events we will be discussing include
- – April 8 – Families United March on State Capital
- – April 25 – Civil trial begins in support of Ernest Duenez, Jr. in Sacramento
- – May 8 – Civil trial begins in support of Alan Blueford
- – May 31 – statewide mobilization in support of Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa
The Sunflower Alliance is pleased to host a series of forums in northern Contra Costa County on the dangers of the fossil fuel industry’s turn to extreme energy in recent years. CoCoCo and Benicia are home to five refineries, specializing in the dirtiest and heaviest crude oils, and the industry has proposed five major projects to expand refineries and bring in crude oil by train.
In Pittsburg, Martinez, and Richmond, we will have panel discussions with experts and community activists, featuring a special guest from Lac-Mégantic, Canada, which suffered a devastating oil train explosion last July that killed 47 people. They’ll educate us on Big Oil’s plans and the local, regional, and global effects.
Learn about the consequences for your community, and learn how communities are organizing to fight back and protect our health and safety!
The forums will be held on the following dates:
Pittsburg: Monday, February 24th, 2014, from 7pm to 9pm at First Baptist at 204 Odessa Ave. Facebook event here.
Martinez: Wednesday, February 26th, 2014, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at the Veterans Memorial Building at 930 Ward St. Facebook event here.
Richmond: Saturday, March 1st, 2014, from 12pm to 2pm at the Bobby Bowens Progressive Center at 1021 MacDonald Ave. Facebook event here.
Speakers
Each forum will have a slightly different set of panelists, tailored for the concerns of that area. However, every panel will feature:
- Marilaine Savard: spokesperson for a citizens’ group in the region of Lac-Mégantic, Québec.
- Antonia Juhasz: oil industry analyst, journalist, and author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must do to Stop It and Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Look at the descriptions in the Facebook events for each location (see above) to find out more about each panel’s members.
We look forward to seeing you at one of the panel discussions!
“First they came for the homeless…”
Occupy / Sit-in against Sit/Lie law in front of Macy’s
This is the second action of this campaign
Don’t stand for Sit/Lie!!
After the March Against Corruption this Saturday,
join us in front of Macy’s SF Store on Union Square
This film compiles footage and photographs collected and filmed by Lee over a nine year period including interviews with Betty Friedan, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (the Washington, D.C. delegate to Congress), Aileen Hernandez (the only woman to serve on the first Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), Kathie Sarachild (a leader in the consciousness-raising movement and Redstockings member), Frances M. Beal (cofounder of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and more.
This free event will take place in the 3rd Floor Community Meeting Room.
International Days in Solidarity with the Haitian People
10 years since the 2004 Coup … 210 years since Haiti’s Revolution
* Stand with the People of Haiti – Eyewitness reports, drums, film, food, music
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’etat, engineered by the US, France and Canada, which has left a brutal legacy of pain and destruction. This is an occasion that cries out to be seized upon by all who oppose the coup and support the popular movement.
In Oakland, we in the Haiti Action Committee are marking the coup, and the 10 years of repressive coup regimes that have followed it, with a celebration of the 210th year of the heroic 1804 Haitian Revolution. The event is happening on March 1st at Humanist Hall. (Mark your calendar!) Other cities are organizing their own events, as part of the 2014 International Days in Solidarity with the Haitian People.
We also encourage you to forward this to friends in other cities or countries. Ask them to consider organizing a Haiti support activity where they are — if possible as part of the International Days from February 23 thru March 8th. It could be a demonstration, vigil, march, public meeting, festival, film showing, rally, candle-light gathering, teach-in, musical or artistic event – to commemorate the Haitian Revolution and protest the continuation of the 2004 coup. Have them contact us. We can supply films or materials if needed.
The actions of US-imposed President Martelly and his ally Jean-Claude Duvalier clearly demonstrate what the 2004 coup was all about. The Haitian people are outraged by the step-by-step return of Duvalierism and its embrace by the fraudulently elected Martelly government — which threatens to bring back the hated military … which organizes sweeps of market women and midnight raids on the camps of earthquake survivors … which continues its repressive vendetta against members of the majority Lavalas movement, including a threatened indictment of long-time Lavalas leader and former Senator, Myrlande Liberis-Pavert on trumped-up charges.
We support the Haitian people’s demand that Haiti’s sovereignty be respected and that the 2004 coup must be reversed. That would mean:
· Free and fair elections in which all parties can run candidates.
· Putting an end to the repression and the U.S./U.N. military occupation.
· Rebuilding Haiti the way the Haitian 99% want it built – Paying a living wage in the factories instead of sweatshop wages … Restoring farming self-sufficiency so Haiti can feed itself again … Real Haitian control of mineral resources and aid funds … Schools, housing and health care for the people.
Be an organizer. Spread the word widely. Thinking globally, acting locally! This follows on earlier International Days in Solidarity with Haiti, with observances in many cities on four continents on September 30, 2005, February 7, 2007 and February 29, 2008.
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.
The City Council is on a path to pass some sort of Zoning Overlay which may protect the Post Office against various commercial uses, or be totally ineffective. We need to stay on top of it.
The American Postal Workers Union is planning more actions against Staples; we need to support them. We have some ideas of our own too! One will be presented at this meeting.
Encouraging articles have come out recently about using Post Offices as banking facilities for the unbanked and we need to be on the leading edge of that. And Barbara Lee has introduced even stronger language into legislation to stop the sale of Historic Post Offices.
THINGS ARE HAPPENING!
AND CHECK OUT OUR SPIFFY NEW WEBSITE.
Honor the Earth
Native American author/activist will show a new short film of the Lakota and Anishinaabe peoples’ horse rides along routes of proposed pipelines that would cross North American prairies to carry Canadian crude oil/tar sands.
Lyana Monterrey
Pittsburg Ethics Council/Pittsburg Defense Council
Co-founder of local community coalitions will talk about the proposed WesPac project in Pittsburg, CA, a massive crude oil storage and transfer facility to feed ultra-dirty oil to Bay Areas five refineries and export across the Pacific.
Victor Menotti
International Forum on Globalization
IFG Executive Director will share visualized data from the recent report, Billionaires Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline, plus interactive mapping of the Kochs influence network, known the Kochtopus.
Please come early to help set up and stay after to break down chairs as OccupyForum supports this event!
See you there! (Don’t show up at Global Exchange, we will all be in Berkeley!)
Winona LaDuke
Honor the Earth
Native American author/activist will show a new short film of the Lakota
and Anishinaabe peoples’ horse rides along routes of proposed pipelines
that would cross North American prairies to carry
Canadian crude oil/tar sands.
Lyana Monterrey
Pittsburg Ethics Council/Pittsburg Defense Council
Co-founder of local community coalitions will talk about the proposed
WesPac project in Pittsburg, CA, a massive crude oil storage and transfer
facility to feed ultra-dirty oil to Bay Area’s five refineries and export
across the Pacific.
Victor Menotti
International Forum on Globalization
IFG Executive Director will share visualized data from the recent
report, “Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb: The Koch Brothers and the Keystone XL Pipeline,”
plus interactive mapping of the Kochs’ influence network, known the “Kochtopus”.
After a strong community presence from the Lighthouse Mosque, and local technology
activists, the City of Oakland put the breaks on the approval of the”Domain Awareness
Center” (DAC) an $11 Million dollar Department of Homeland center that would
set an unprecedented standard for spying on a city wide level.
Two weeks ago a local Yemini-American leader, Mokhtar Alkhansali, really moved the council
with his speech stating:
“You don’t see that many Muslims here today, even though this
is one of the greatest civil rights issues of our generation. What happens today will be
echoed throughout the legacy of this city and throughout the country. I don’t want
drones to be in my neighborhood here or in my neighborhood back in Yemen. I don’t
want people to be able to record my conversations with my wife, we have
curtains in our living room for a reason. We have the right to privacy, it is sacred, and if
you vote tonight to take away that basic right you will take away our freedoms, our
liberty and our essential existence as dignified humans. So I urge you today on
behalf of my family, my community, and the human community as a whole to get away
from these practices. We urge you to vote against this because our community, we
want to be here, we want to be present and voice our concerns but we can’t when we
know that voicing our concerns will lead to our mass incarceration and the targeting of
our community.”
Full Video: http://tinyurl.com/laaenxu
Stop the DAC at City Council after this press conference.