Calendar
Pelican Bay State Prison is one of the largest prisons in our state. With close to 3 thousand men, and more than a third kept in solitary confinement, this prison is one of California’s most notorious for its unjust treatment of folks inside.
Join us tonight at the Omni in Oakland, for a performance of Hell in Paradise: My Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison. A play written and preformed by Charlie Hinton, based off the prison letters of Clyde Jackson.
Hell in Paradise screening & Panel Discussion
Followed by a panel discussion on Prisons: Budgets, Conditions and Resistance:
- Danny Murrillo – UC Berkeley student and imprisoned at Pelican Bay SHU
- Emily Harris – Californians for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
- Annie Kane – Human Rights Pen Pals
The event is free and is being hosted by the Bay Area Public School.
You are invited to join us in presenting Fruitvale, Florida, Ferguson and Beyond: A Summit about Ending Mass Criminalization in Oakland.
The summit will consist of workshops for youth on knowing your rights, for parents on how to keep our children out of jail, and for everyone on busting the school to prison pipeline and ending mass incarceration and deportation. This summit will be focused on youth and parents in the Oakland schools and lead up to a larger conference on these issues in April 2015.
Nationally, more than $60 billion is invested in correctional systems that incarcerate or supervise nearly 7 million people. Yet data shows that the US recidivism rate remains at approximately 67% (81% for youth)–one measure of the systems – failure to improve public safety. In 1970, there were 200,000 people in state and federal prison; in 2013, there were 1.5 million. 65% of prisoners are Black or Latino, though the combined percentage of the population for these two groups is around 30%. It costs $62,000 per year to keep someone in prison, while the California schools spend $9200 per student a year. The U. S. has the highest prison population in the world. According to one study, a Black man is killed by police, security forces, or vigilantes every 28 hours. This situation must change.
We know you understand the importance of this issue.
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
Speak-Out Now! Presents: Wealthcare vs. Healthcare
Our health is one of the biggest markets for the big healthcare companies, pharmacuetical companies and insurance companies. The system profits off our illnesses, turning healthcare into wealthcare for big business. Join us for a discussion of healthcare under capitalism.
Our global ecological crisis has created an increasing interest in Marx’s theory of metabolic rift as a crucial aspect of capitalism. To appreciate fully how capitalism creates this rift, it is important to examine the human metabolic relation with nature in general and theoretical terms. ICSS member Gene Ruyle will explore the implications of Marx’s insight that labor is “the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and it is therefore independent of every form of that existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings live.” (Capital, Vol I, p. 291)
Plan to come early for coffee and donuts. We start promptly.
FREE – but hat will be passed for donations to NPML
This is a benefit for Tristan Anderson!
Free food will be served at 6 PM, the music begins at 7 pm…this will be an acoustic concert. Sunday, November 16th
Art House Gallery & Cultural Center
2905 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, California
David Rovics is a great, revolutionary folk singer of songs of social significance.
You can download most of his music at his web site or over at Soundclick and other places
Tristan Anderson is an activist and photographer who was critically injured by an Israeli tear gas canister in 2009 during a peaceful protest. Tristan is hemiplegic- mostly paralyzed on the left (formerly dominant) side of his body. He uses a wheelchair. He has lost sight in his right eye, suffers chronic pain in his paralyzed limbs, and has had pronounced, life changing cognitive and emotional repercussions as a result of the injury that was done to his brain. He has an ongoing lawsuit against the Israeli government.
David’s music is simply wonderful, sometimes moving and emotional, often hysterically funny, but always vitally concerned with making the world a better place.
But a song is worth 10³ words, here are a couple of examples:
This one cost David a few friends:
Since Occupy has had to deal with the social consequences of Hurricane Sandy to step in where the state and private charities have failed check out Rovics’ take on an earlier “natural” disaster:
A take on 9-11:
A tribute to internationalism:
Since we just exercised our freedom by voting:
Here is a version of David’s song about the Occupy movement.
This one is Einstein’s favourite Rovics tune about his idol Loukanikos:
As Woody Guthrie said, I hate a song that makes you think you were born to lose:
David will also do a set on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office Monday, Nov. 17th at 4 PM.
He will also do a house concert later that evening in Berkeley.
Monday, November 17th
Contact daniellsdin@gmail.com or call (510) 277-6669 for info if you want to attend!
Berkeley, California
Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area –
Black and Brown Lives Matter
A Night of Healing for the Community
Oakland CA, November 16, 2014: We are Fighting Jim Crow from Ferguson to the Bay Area with knowledge and unity! Open to the community a night of sharing, entertainment, Food, and so much more! The Event is hosted by Anita Wills, Executive Director of the Inter Council for Mother’s of Murdered Children. Speakers include Alex Salazar, Dionne Smith, Anita Wills, and others from the community whose lives have been touched by violence. The evening will also include will include Chicken Dinners, Seafood Gumbo, Enchiladas, Peach Cobbler, Potato Pies, Cakes, and other dishes, as well as beverages.*
Speaker Anita Wills will share her experience of traveling to Ferguson within a week of Michael Browns death. Other speakers, Dionne Smith-Downs and Alex Salazar will share their experiences in Ferguson. Alex Salazar spent weeks in Ferguson and has set up Cop-watch Workshops. He is an Activist who will share his experience as someone who has been on the inside and outside of Police Work. We have other speakers from the community, short films, and items such as candles, crafts, baked goods, and good food for sell.
Booth space is available for $25, (inbox for details, ntawls@gmail.com). A $10 donation is requested at the (no one will be turned away for lack of funds). Those who donate $15 or more will receive a free dinner. All proceeds go to the Kerry Baxter Senior Legal Fund (Event is sponsored by the Mary & Patty Bowden Foundation).
David Rovics is a great, revolutionary folk singer of songs of social significance.
You can download most of his music at his web site or over at Soundclick and other places.
Come and hear him play a set in our common space, the Post Office!
You will not be disappointed.
David will give (or will have given) a benefit concert for Tristan Anderson on Sunday, November 16th at the Art House in Berkeley.
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
OccupyForum Presents
Front Line of Aceh’s War —
the struggle for independence
The 2004 tsunami suddenly turned the isolated Indonesian province of Aceh into a household name. Yet the deeper story of the Acehnese and their long struggle for independence has been untold… until now. The Black Road is the harrowing account told by journalist and activist.
Billy Nessen, who was determined to find out the truth and tell the world. Nessen lived for many months with the independence guerrillas, was hunted by the military, and eventually spent time in jail in Indonesia.
Billy Nessen spoke came to OccupyForum last Monday and spoke about his work, including his current work with the UC Berkeley students to organize a campaign for divestment from fossil fuels.
“An extraordinary achievement. One of the most courageous and unflinching journalistic efforts I can recall.”
— Johnathan Holmes, ABC Four Corners, Australia
Oakland’s beautiful and wild Knowland Park is under threat, and we need your help at an important City Council vote. Right now, the free public park is home to a range of wildlife, including threatened species, native grasslands, and woodlands.
However, the Oakland Zoo is trying to take over the heart of the park’s 77 acres! – which would displace local wildlife…for an exhibit about species that are regionally extinct due to development. What?!
This would also mean privatizing our public park, and since the zoo has been working behind closed doors with local officials for years, the City Council just might let them do this. Unless we all stand up.
Knowland Park is item 9.2 on the agenda. You can sign up to speak on this item online here.
The zoo will be busing in its employees, and we need to pack the room and show them what democracy looks like. It is absolutely critical that we turn out a BIG crowd.
The Oakland City Council will meet on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 starting at 5:30 pm at Oakland City Hall to vote on whether to grant the zoo additional park acreage. The zoo is trying to take even MORE parkland from the public to “mitigate” for destroying the best of it…and if the Council votes for the zoo on 11/18, that’s it. It would set a terrible precedent.
Join us at the City Council meeting to tell the City Council what the wildlife protection agencies recommended in the first place, and the public has been demanding for years: move the development elsewhere – and preserve the park for all the resident wildlife, including the prime habitat for the threatened Alameda Whipsnake, rather than having to mitigate for its loss.
Sign up here if you can come or want to help out: bit.ly/knowlandmeeting.
FIGHT THE FEE-HIKE!
SATHER GATE. (At the tree between Dwinelle and Wheeler)
The Regents (the administration of the UC) will vote on a $3,300 tuition increase on Wednesday by 2pm.
*** We will discuss actions whether or not they approve fee hikes that day, so that we can proactively organize to roll-back our tuition, and prevent further attempts to raise fees. ***
GA hosted by Cal Progressive Coalition
Twitter:
@CalProgressives
#MoveTheMoney
#OurUniversity
#FundTheUC
Capitalism vs. the Climate: Naomi Klein on the Need for a New Economic Model to Address the Ecological Crisis
Join the Northern California System Change not Climate Change chapter in watching the film interview of Naomi Klein by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now (September 18, 2014).
After the film we will discuss her ideas and her recent book, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, by Naomi Klein.
From http://thischangeseverything.org:
“Forget everything you think you know about global warming. The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.”
In her most provocative book yet, Naomi Klein tackles the most profound threat humanity has ever faced: the war our economic model is waging against life on earth. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.
We have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight for the next economy and against reckless extraction is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. Climate change, Klein argues, is a civilizational wake-up call, a powerful message delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms, and droughts. Confronting it is no longer about changing the light bulbs. It’s about changing the world—before the world changes so drastically that no one is safe. Either we leap—or we sink.
We’re currntly reading about our banking system, what’s wrong with it and alternative ways of having one.
This time, we’re reading Positive Money’s proposal for an alternative banking system. Parts 1-4.
You are invited to join EFF next Thursday, November 20, for a free public event on the quickly unfolding national debate on net neutrality, to be hosted at San Francisco City Hall.
The event is Bay Area Speaks: A People’s Hearing on the Future of the Internet, where you are invited to testify at City Hall about why net neutrality matters to Bay Area communities. Attendees will also receive an update from the lawyers, policy analysts, and activists who have been working on the front lines to make sure the FCC takes the right path forward.
Before the hearing, supporters will rally outside City Hall at 5:30pm and are encouraged to bring cell phones, laptops, and flashlights for a cell phone vigil and to hold signs and colorful art to demonstrate support for Internet freedom. Download this image to display on your screen at the rally.
Who: Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps; Amy Sonnie, Outreach Director of the Oakland Public Library; Jay Nath, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of San Francisco; Corynne McSherry, Director of Intellectual Property at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice; Tim Poznar of Fandor.com; and others.
PLEASE RSVP HERE
The People’s Hearing comes at a key moment in the debate over net neutrality. Last Monday, President Barack Obama issued a statement in support of full, clear net neutrality rules, echoing the demands of the 4 million Americans who have spoken out in favor of the same reforms throughout the year. The FCC is weighing its options now and is expected to act as early as December.
It’s time to make sure California voices are heard in the national discussions.The fight isn’t over yet; come meet us at the front lines.
Autumn brings Recipe, a profoundly funny new work by Michael Gene Sullivan, resident playwright for the Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Central Works serves up the laughs in this delicious take on a circle of sweet old grandmotherly bakers, who just happen to be dedicated to the armed overthrow of the United States government. But baking pies and cakes isn’t enough to satisfy these four intrepid refugees from the 60’s (and 50’s, and 40’s), and their burning desire to “Up the Revolution!”
Read the Radical Recipe Blog!
Pay-what-you-can every Thursday, at the door as available
Pop-up Talk: Javier Arbona on the Architecture of Surveillance
Join geographer and artist Javier Arbona for a brief talk in the Gallery of California History. Arbona will discuss infrastructure and surveillance in the port city of Oakland. Using a foreboding downtown telecommunications building as jumping-off point, he will make connections between the long history of the telegraph in Oakland and state surveillance in our midst today.
This in-Gallery pop-up talk takes place during Friday Nights @ OMCA, featuring Off the Grid food trucks, live music, and more.
Included with Museum admission. During Friday Nights @ OMCA, from 5 to 9 pm, admission is half-price for adults, free for ages 18 and under.
Admission for OMCA Members is always free.
A documentary about Rodney Reed – an innocent man the State of Texas is preparing to “legally” lynch by execution on January 14th, 2015.
#Justice4Rodney
Campaign to End the Death Penalty.
An inspiration film about the recent occupation of UC Berkeley land that saved 10 acres from the clutches of privatization. This film is still in theaters but we are hosting a FREE SCREENING in the Open University in Wheeler Hall!
OCCUPY THE FARM tells the inspiring story of a community taking direct action to create a healthier and more just food system and question the stewardship of a precious resource: publicly owned urban farmland.
200 farmers occupy a last piece of farmland in California’s urban East Bay, plant 15,000 seedlings to feed the community and disrupt plans to build a shopping mall. What happens next will change the fate of the land and reveal a new strategy for activism.
From tilling soil to police raids, from lawsuits to overflowing harvests, OCCUPY THE FARM reveals a resourceful, creative, and determined community as it fights against the privatization of the land and responds with direct action to a serious social need: access to healthy food.
The Village Voice calls OCCUPY THE FARM “riveting from the start” and this true story will inspire your community in the power of people working together to make a profound difference. Please share to support!
– See more at: http://