Meeting at a new location – all are welcome! Help us further the continuing effort to establish a public bank!

We have been working on building support for the bank from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. You can help! Let your supervisor know that you’re their constituent, and you support creating a public bank for the East Bay. To find out which of the five districts you’re in, check out this district map or enter your address in this finder.

Here are the telephone numbers:

• District 1: (510) 272-6691    Scott Haggerty
• District 2: (510) 272-6692    Richard Valle
• District 3: (510) 272-6693    Wilma Chan
• District 4: (510) 272-6694    Nate Miley
• District 5: (510) 272-6695    Keith Carson

If you live in District 1 Dublin, Fremont, Sunol, Livermoree, and the County’s southeast we’d love for you tto join us in a yet-to-be-scheduled meeting with Supervisor Scott Haggerty. Please shoot us an email at contact@friendsofpublicbankofoakland.org.

Reaching out in Alameda County

Beyond the Board, we’re starting to reach out to potential allies throughout Alameda County. Please help scale up our outreach to encompass this huge area! We recommend two great resources to aid you in your efforts.

This fact-packed explainer from the Next System Project makes a great introduction to public banking.

And this short video from the Public Banking Institute, Banks and Superpowers, is another fine resource. It shows how banks actually create money from nothing when they make a loan. In deciding whom to lend to�builders of fossil-fuel pipelines or for-profit prisons, say�private banks wield tremenddous power to determine our future. In contrast, public banks use the money-creation superpower to lend for the public good, bringing us the world we want to see.

Los Angeles

Our comrades at Public Bank LA are working hard to pass Measure B, which would clear the way for LA to establish its own public bank. They’ve produced this excellent video explaining public banking from an Angelino point of view. And here’s an interview with Phoenix Goodman, co-founder of Public Bank LA.

The Yes on B campaign needs our financial support�you can donate <here.

Please share the videos and the donation page with everyone you know in LA!

Doughnut Economics discussion group

Our friends at Strike Debt Bay Area are starting a new group to talk about Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21^st century economist, a book by the British economist Kate Raworth. The first meeting is at 4:00 on Saturday, November 10. Come to Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland. For more information, email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com.

What are the origins of the racial wealth gap and how can we leverage wealth to undermine, rather than support, the structures of white supremacy? SURJ’s Fundraising Committee will provide historical context, map the limitations of existing institutional financial support for racial justice, and engage participants to rethink their own access to wealth, networks, and other resources in an effort to develop a “reparations mindset.”

All proceeds go to support one or more of our partner organizations led by people of color.

Laney College’s Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee is hosting a teach-in. Data suggests that at least 14 percent of students at Peralta community colleges are homeless. The number of those who worry about housing stability each month is even higher. The teach-in will discuss: What’s the role of our government in meeting the basic needs of the people, such as housing?  Does voting make a difference?

The Teach-In is co-sponsored by the Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee, the Women’s Economic Agenda Project, Associated Students of Laney College (ASLC), and the Umoja-UBAKA Student Success Community at Laney.

The Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee at Laney is made up of faculty, students and community members.  The group holds teach-ins each semester on social and political issues affecting the Oakland community, including Peralta students, faculty and staff.

Required Readings

Additional details and readings will be added shortly.

Hello we are here to Save the Internet!

Join us every Tuesday in the Omni Commons mezzanine to help build a community-owned and -operated wireless mesh network in the East Bay!

Every Tuesday night, we meet to discuss on-going projects, technical bugs, community and media outreach, finances and budgeting, and upcoming events, such as node mounts, office hours, and workshops.  Newcomers are encouraged to come on the last Tuesdays of the month for general orientation, but are welcome at any meeting.

A wireless mesh network is a network where each computer acts as a relay to other computers, such that a network can stretch to cover entire cities.

Our goal is to create a wireless mesh network that is owned and operated by the community.

Want to help create an alternate means of digital communication that isn’t governed by for-profit internet service providers? Join us for the mesh hacknight! We need people of all backgrounds to help with everything from community involvement and grant writing to mounting antennas on buildings and developing software!

Learn more at https://peoplesopen.net and http://sudomesh.org/

Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission Agenda:

4. 5:15pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – discussion with staff and take action to adopt sequence of impact analysis and use policy writing for existing Fire Department equipment

5. 5:20pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – Unapproved Use of UAV by OPD during exigent circumstances – presentation of staff report and take possible action

6. 5:30pm: Review and discuss Federal Task Force MOU with Drug Enforcement Agency – take possible action

7. 5:50pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – Cell Site Simulator Impact Analysis and draft Use Policy – review and take possible action.

OPAC meetings

Agenda packet for this meeting

Cindy Sheehan and gg Winter have a slide presentation and report from their recent trip to Cuba, including a celebration with four of the released Cuban 5 where Cindy was honored for her work in helping get them released. It was an amazing musical and dancing program put on for her and our group. Nice pictures of the occasion, and many others of the trip will be shown. Please attend and enjoy.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Social Justice Committee.

For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
bfuusjev-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net

For weekly notices of BFUU services etc. go to:
http://www.bfuu.org/signup.html

Come by our open Delegates Meetings every First and Third Thursday of the month at 7pm! 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

CSLS Book Event with Issa Kohler-Hausmann on Fri., Nov. 2 from 2-3:30p (reception to follow) pic.twitter.com/Pxz8D2x8R9

— CSLS at UC Berkeley (@CSLSatBerkeley) October 5, 2018

Bay Area Landless Peoples Alliance:

Regional meeting of landless activists of the San Francisco Bay Area

Donations for the 13 people directly impacted by the encampment fire @ e12th & 23rd can be dropped at Omni Commons on Saturday and Sunday, 11/3 and 4, from 10 am-3 pm.

Contact T (512) 663-8871 if you have stuff to drop but need to find another time. https://t.co/TdhBWtOklV

— ellie hwa (@spectralsex) November 2, 2018

Come help us rebuild Daniela’s home. No more leaky roof for her Monica her mom age 43 and her younger brother.
In fine barn raising fashion we will also be rebuilding several shelters for her unhoused neighbors.

11 am
Opening remarks by encampment resident and project cooridinator Derrick Soo

1pm Community potluck lunch. Please bring food to share

2 – 5 pm finish rebuilding shelters

Suds, Snacks, & Socialism at the Starry Plough

The Peace and Freedom Party presents

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

In 1850, in an essay on Chinese Socialism, Karl Marx wrote:
It may well be that Chinese socialism is related to European socialism just as Chinese philosophy is related to Hegelian philosophy. But it is an amusing fact that the oldest and most unshattered Empire on this earth has been pushed, in eight years, by the cotton ball of the English bourgeois toward the brink of a social upheaval that must have most profound consequences for civilisation.
When our European reactionaries, on their next fight through Asia, will have finally reached the Chinese Wall, the gates that lead to the seat of primeval reaction and conservatism, who knows, perhaps they will read the following inscription on the Wall:
République Chinoise
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

We are putting together a group of knowledgeable comrades to discuss the contemporary relevance of Marx’s words, including David Ewing, US-China People Friendship Association;, Al Sargis, founder of the Friedrich Engels Institute of Marxist War and Military Analysis (FEIMWAMA); and Gerald Smith, Oscar Grant Committee.

This is part of our on-going Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every month. Doors open at 2 pm and the program will start promptly at 2:30 pm. The forum will end by 4:30 pm, but folks can stay and talk afterwards. The opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not reflect official views of the Peace and Freedom Party.

The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and 
anti-war movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.

Join Yemeni Alliance Committee (YAC) and our partners in SF to protest the ongoing US involvement in the war in #Yemen.

Since March of 2015 Saudi Arabia and its coalition, which includes the Arab countries of: UAE, KUWAIT, BAHRAIN, QATAR, SUDAN, EGYPT, JORDAN, MOROCCO, backed and supported by the US AND THE UK-have been bombing Yemen. It has not been a civil war since then. The United States has provided the Saudis with weapons and logistical and intelligence support and helped refuel coalition jets (mid air) as they drop bombs on Yemeni civilians.

The U.S.-backed Saudi-led campaign has killed over 50 thousand Yemenis, destroyed the country’s infrastructure, has led to widespread disease and sparked a famine thats become one of the worst in living memory.

On top of this the Saudi blockade has restricted humanitarian aide, medical supplies and clean water to Yemen. According to the UN, Yemen is the worlds worst humanitarian crisis in decades. The war in Yemen has left more than 22 million people—75 % of the population in dire need of aide.

By now, we all know what the Saudi de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman and his regime are capable of, and its clear from the brutal murder of one of their own; when Washington Post journalist Jamal #Khashoogi was beheaded and dismembered earlier this month AND the atrocious attack on a school bus that killed at least 40 children by American-made bombs in August of this year-which is just a strike in a long string of attacks on the poorest nation in the Arab world. Only by Saudi Arabia could a crime like premeditated murder, or the mass killing of innocent Yemenis be called a mistake. Saudi warplanes target schools, hospitals and wedding halls in Yemen, and they shamelessly call such crimes “mistakes.

The Trump administration is allowing Saudi Arabia’s rivalry with Iran to dictate its policy in the region, and it comes at the cost of the innocent lives of Yemenis.

The only realistic check left is in Congress, where more voices are asking why the world’s most powerful country is helping to perpetuate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. We’ve been complicit in this war, But Its time to take action, especially during election season.

WAYS YOU CAN HELP:

Contact your Representatives: ASK them to sponsor #HConRes138 to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. CALL: 202-224-3121 or visit: https://callyourrep.co
Contact your Senators: ASK them to support #SJRES54, ending unauthorized U.S. military involvement in Yemen’s war. CALL: 202-224-3121 or visit: https://bit.ly/1ujDDoD
Take it to the streets, join a protest or organize one and use this hashtag: #YemenCantWait
Sign and share this petition by CREDO
Help YAC amplify next Saturday’s action on social media (using #YemenCantWait): http://bit.ly/2CLaTkn

In Solidarity,

-Yemeni Alliance Committee

To join the list of event hosts and add your organization’s name to this effort, complete this form: http://bit.ly/2yBTzvi

Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.

• Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions.
• Relieving Medical Debt through pennies-on-the-dollar buyback programs.
• A book group focused on Economic Inequality and Economic Theory for the modern age.
• Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
• Money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
• Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
• Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
• Helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
• Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
• Promoting the concept of Basic Income
• Advocating for Postal banking
• Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
• Bring your own debt-related project!

If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com

Zahra Billoo on Racisim, Islamophobia and Empire. She is a civil rights attorney and the ED of the SF Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Food Not Bombs will prepare a delicious vegetarian dinner.

Donations for the 13 people directly impacted by the encampment fire @ e12th & 23rd can be dropped at Omni Commons on Saturday and Sunday, 11/3 and 4, from 10 am-3 pm.

Contact T (512) 663-8871 if you have stuff to drop but need to find another time. https://t.co/TdhBWtOklV

— ellie hwa (@spectralsex) November 2, 2018

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

How the US Left Can Resist the New Forms of US Imperialism

What is common to LBJ’s “Falling Dominoes,” Carter’s “Humanitarian intervention,” Reagan’s “Shining City,” G. H. W. Bush’s “What We Say Goes,” G. W. Bush’s “God’s Mission,” Obama’s “Indispensable Country,” and Trump’s contradictory statements? It is imperialism in different garbs, adopted to the decaying capitalism over the past 40 years.
ICSS Members Raj Sahai, Rick Sterling, and Roger Harris will speak, Charles Andrews will be our moderator.

Seating is limited, so plan to come early. We start promptly.

About Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
A weekly discussion series inspired by our respect for the work of Karl Marx and our belief that his work will remain as important for the class struggles of the future as they have been for the past.