Calendar
On the agenda is the use of a residential street as a staging area for the cops during the protests against killer cops beginning December 6, as well as discussion about policies regarding the use of teargas and mutual aid.
Agenda and related documents here: http://www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=12962
BAY AREA CIVIL LIBERTIES COALITION GENERAL MEETING
The Bay Area Civil Liberties Coalition works actively to empower individual efforts and support collective initiatives within the San Francisco Bay Area to support human rights, defeat illegal spying and surveillance and end abuse and militarization by local, regional, statewide and national government agencies and criminal justice/homeland security programs.
Individuals and organizations that support this work are encouraged to join us. Voting memberships for new organizations are subject to approval by the founding organizations. BACLC also engages in project-based collaborative work with a wide variety of organizations.
The Anti-Police Terrorism Project is a project of the ONYX Organizing Committee that in coalition with other organizations like the Alan Blueford Center for Justice, Workers World and Healthy Hoodz is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.
We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.
We meet the 3rd Thursday of every month at Eastside Arts Alliance at 7:30 pm.
Come organize to challenge:
- SLPD profiling/harassment of POC
- SLPD shootings and killings of POC
- militarization, including the BearCat and military-grade weapons
- Increased surveillance
- SLPD School Resource Officers creating “dossiers” on “at risk” elementary school students
- more
“You may well ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
On
Sunday, January 18, the run-up to the historicMarch for Real Climate Leadership begins with an Oakland forum on “Organizing at the Crossroads: What Real Climate Leadership Looks Like,” one of seven forums to be held throughout the state on the community impacts of the gas and oil industry.
California is standing at the crossroads between deadly fossil fuel-dependency and the promise of an emerging social and economic renewal. And only an equitable, green energy transition rooted in environmental justice can take us there.
Come hear an inspiring panel of real climate leaders who are unafraid to face this challenge head on: newly elected Assemblyperson Tony Thurmond of AD 15 and Richmond City Councilperson Eduardo Martinez; Mary Lim Lampe of Genesis and Gamaliel; a representative of the California Nurses Association; community organizers Andrés Soto of Communities for a Better Environment, Margaret Gordon of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, and Juan Flores of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. Pennie Opal Plant offers the opening invocation. Forum MC is New Yorkers Against Fracking co-founder and Californians Against Fracking organizer, David Braun. Other speakers TBA.
The evening panel discussion will showcase how everyday Californians are in the fight of our lives against all aspects of the fossil fuel economy including extraction, infrastructure and transport, and our resistance to the industry’s assault on sustainable businesses and innovation. We’ll be exploring the intersections between our movements and aligning our energies behind one common goal: a truly clean energy future where our children are not poisoned for toxic profits.
Hosted by Californians Against Fracking, California Nurses Association, Sunflower Alliance, 350Bay Area, 350.org, Sierra Club, and others.
What: An inspiring organizing meeting to get ready for the March for Real Climate Leadership
Why: To meet local activists near you, learn about the local organizing that’s happening in the Bay, and build momentum towards the March for Real Climate Leadership
Next month’s march is one of our best chances to demand real action to combat the climate crisis here in California — and the next step towards making Oakland part of that is coming to the community organizing meeting on Sunday.
We have an amazing chance to build on the momentum from 2014, from over 4,000 people rallying in the state capitol to demand a ban on fracking, to historic mobilizations across the country for the People’s Climate March, to New York banning fracking in December. Let’s make the March for Real Climate Leadership the first of 2015’s big movement moments.
These organizing meetings will deepen our local networks and create new connections — because real climate leadership isn’t just about banning fracking (though that’s a big part of it). We will talk about the march itself, as well as: organizing and recruitment, how to be a bus captain and bring dozens of people from your community to the march, and ways to create art to make the day transformative.
Click here to sign up for the organizing tour stop in Oakland on Sunday.
Let’s make this amazing,
CANCELLED
For this week. Back next Monday.
Organizing meeting of City College of San Francisco students, faculty and classified staff to fight against the downsizing of public education.
Unfortunately we have lots to talk about with the latest outrage of our administration closing Civic Center Campus.
On December 9th, Judge Curtis Karnow heard oral closing arguments in the matter of the People of California vs. the ACCJC. He will issue a tentative ruling any day now. The attorneys will then have 15 days to submit written objections. Sometime after that Judge Karnow will issue his final ruling. (Perhaps February?)
AFT 2121 is calling for a rapid response the first work day after his tentative ruling. The Coalition will be organizing a rapid response after the final ruling. Please check these websites for updates.
http://www.aft2121.org/
www.saveccsf.org
We are reading up on Syriza (the Greek leftist party that could win the Jan 25th election)
and the (current) Greek debt crisis for the next meeting.
Here are some recent articles.. They are all pretty short. People should pick and choose
the ones that seem interesting to them, at least four of them.
If we can find an in-depth analysis of the current Greek fiscal/monetary situation, the reading list may get updated/augmented.
The last is an in-depth analysis of austerity in Europe. However, it is by the Heritage
foundation. It might be interesting to read this to see what the “other side” thinks, so you may wish to peruse it.
Ellen Brown:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/07/greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid/
Some articles she cites:
Greek Left Review
Leftist Leader Urges Eurozone to End Austerity in Greece
Jacobin:
RT:
http://rt.com/op-edge/185052-greece-crisis-eu-default/
Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/01/economist-explains-1
Foreign Policy:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/08/why-greeces-economy-needs-syriza-to-win-election/
Real News:
Bill Black on US News Coverage of the “Triumph of Austerity” in Greece
Austerity: A Decisive Factor in Greek Elections: Part I, Part II
New Republic:
Paul Krugman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/opinion/paul-krugman-greece-economy-mad-as-hellas.html?_r=0
Guardian:
Greek politics and economics in numbers.
Salon:
Occupy May Be About to Win Its First National Election
Heritage foundation on austerity in Europe
- organizing for public banking in Oakland and elsewhere.
- advocating for Postal banking.
- saving the Berkeley Post Office and stopping the Staples non-union takeover of good Post Office jobs
- working with the City of Richmond and other municipalities for eminent domain seizure of underwater mortgages from the banksters
- ongoing study group
- student debt resistance
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- our famous Strike Debt radio program
- and much more!
Come learn about continuing developments in the battle save the Berkeley Post Office and the Postal Service from privatization, support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.
THE POSTAL SERVICE WANTED TO SELL THE POST OFFICE TO HUDSON-MCDONALD DEVELOPMENT GROUP. HUDSON-MCDONALD BACKED OUT OF THE DEAL IN EARLY DECEMBER. THE CITY OF BERKELEY SUED THE POST OFFICE TO STOP THE SALE. A TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER WAS IN PLACE UNTIL DECEMBER 17th, BUT WAS LIFTED BY THE JUDGE WHEN HUDSON WITHDREW.
Get an overview of the sale announcement here. Here’s a good more general overview piece.
There was a hearing in Federal Court on December 11th.
The next hearing is March 19th.THE FEDERAL JUDGE WILL DECIDE WHETHER THE LAWSUIT WILL CONTINUE OR BE DISMISSED – HE’LL DECIDE SOMETIME AFTER MARCH 19th.
THE POSTAL POLICE HAD BEEN RAIDING THE OCCUPATION INTERMITTENTLY IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING. BUT THE OCCUPIERS ARE NOT LEAVING! Read about one of the eviction attempts here. There haven’t been any raids since a few days before Christmas, but they might start up again at any time.
Check out the new Community Garden at the Post Office.
Also CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE. and the Save the Berkeley Post Office website, and First they Came for the Homeless Facebook for updates.
BPOD is an offshoot of Strike Debt Bay Area, which itself is an offshoot of Occupy Oakland and a chapter of the national Strike Debt movement, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.
SHUT DOWN DIABLO CANYON
JOIN US in the accelerating campaign to shut California’s last nukes: the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo. Citizen activism has closed the reactors at Humboldt, Rancho Seco and San Onofre, and stopped proposed projects at Bakersfield, Bodega and elsewhere. We believe we can force this deadly, dangerous and disastrous plant shut if you will join with us.
PG&E’s Diablo is two 1200+ megawatt monsters surrounded by earthquake faults, in a tsunami zone, out of compliance with clean water and fire safety regulations, lacking a credible evacuation plan and now completely priced out of the market by clean, cheap, safe and job-producing renewable energy.
Pacific Gas & Electric has recently killed 8 people in a San Bruno neighborhood it burned to the ground due to negligence and greed. A replay at Diablo would irradiate much of California, and create a lethal cloud that would blow across the entire United States. It would bankrupt California and much of the nation, with virtually no responsibility to be shouldered by PG&E.
Long-time No Nukes activist Harvey Wasserman will speak and facilitate an on-going strategy session aimed at winning this shut-down as quickly as possible. We will have a strategy in formation and a resolution in hand to push forward the process of finally making California free of all nuke reactors. The time to flip the “off-switch” is NOW! This will be a meeting to further that necessary cause.
The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers. We meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at the SEIU Local 1000 union hall, 1433 Webster Street, 2nd Floor in downtown Oakland. These assembly meetings occur from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
Our work together encompasses:
- (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent and care workers;
- (2) current campaigns to improve wages for low-wage workers; and
- (3) efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.
We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.
We look forward to learning with you and making change for the better. Please love and support one another. We have a duty to fight. We have a duty to win.
Inaugural Assembly: Tuesday January 27, 6:30 pm
This is a meeting for privacy minded people in San Francisco. January 28th is International Data Privacy Day, a fitting time to host the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of Privacy Lab Meetups in the Bay Area.
At this meeting our speaker will be Cooper Quintin from the EFF, who will present “A State of the Union for Privacy and Consumer Protection and Wishlist for 2015”. His presentation will be preceded by 30 minutes of socializing as people arrive, and then followed by about an hour for general questions, interactions, discussion and networking. Additionally the event will be held at Mozilla’s San Francisco office, where developers of the Firefox browser can more easily join.
Our aim is to include and bring together privacy professionals and others interested in privacy at for-profits, non-profits, and NGOs in an effort to contribute to the state of the ecosystem for privacy. By attending you’ll be able to hear about what other people and organizations are working on and how to get involved.
We hope to see you attend and become part of the growing community of privacy advocates in San Francisco.
The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) will convene a public meeting on January 28, 2015, starting a 6:00 p.m. at the 450 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond, CA, 94804.
Next Wednesday, January 28, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) will hold a public meeting, to present the third and final investigation report and safety recommendations from the August 6, 2012, crude unit fire that occurred at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond, CA. That fire endangered 19 workers and sent more than 15,000 residents to the hospital for medical attention.
The Draft report is here [big PDF file]:
The first of eight meetings is January 28th.
This seminar will study the corporate structure, its historical development, and its modes of political control.
A careful & close analysis of the Haitian Revolution (the world’s first nation of Africans to overthrow slavery)! How does it connect to today?
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HAITI ACTION COMMITTEE
STUDY GROUP
We invite you to be apart of our monthly study group. We use films, texts, and speakers to explore Haiti’s history, current political situation, and make connections to parallel struggles throughout the U.S. and around the world.
Come to this month’s meeting!
The (Ongoing) Haitian Revolution
January 1st marked the 211th anniversary of Haiti’s independence. Join us as we analyze how Haiti gained its independence and discuss the connections to today.
Future Topics include:
The return to dictatorship; mass incarceration and political prisoners; sweatshops and privatization; the ongoing pillaging of Haiti’s resources; labor activism; COINTELPRO tactics in Haiti and the U.S.; racism; parallel struggles in Latin America; and many more!
What would you like to learn about? Send your suggestions!Got an idea for a study group topic? Let us know! Email us at action.haiti@gmail.com, Tweet us, or visit our Facebook page!
Sent by Haiti Action Committee
www.haitisolidarity.net and on FACEBOOK