Calendar
OCTOBER 10-13, 2014
THE INSPIRATION
We are in a movement moment.
Droves of people, many of them young and black, took to the streets of Ferguson to demand justice for Mike Brown. Millions stood in solidarity as protestors were met by a brutal and militarized response by local police departments.
Our country can no longer deny the epidemic of police violence facing Black and Brown communities. Mike Brown is now part of a long list of people like John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant and countless others who have been unjustly killed by police. And, their lives mattered.
JOIN HANDS UP UNITED AND OUR PARTNERS IN FERGUSON FROM OCTOBER 10-13TH FOR A SERIES OF EVENTS, MARCHES AND OPPORTUNITIES TO CONTINUE BUILDING OUR MOVEMENT FOR REAL CHANGE.
Report-back from activists who “went inside” the Urban Shield convention and trade show in Oakland September 4th-7th and were “volunteers” at some of the exercises. And discussion of next steps.
Directions: From 580, take Park Blvd west one long block; turn right on McKinley Avenue, turn right again on Home Place East, park in the parking lot to your left. Entrance is there, walk past the cafeteria to the auditorium.
Join Shane Bauer and others on this, the 3rd anniversary of the occupation of Oscar Grant Plaza.
Shane Bauer is a journalist who, with Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattel, were kidnapped by Iranian border guards and imprisoned in solitary in Iran for many months. After his return to the US. Shane wrote about Pelican Bay, California’s notorious solitary confinement facility for inmates.
As he was observing one of the Urban Shield exercises as a official member of the press he was ordered to stop taking pictures and leave.
Urban Shield, a convention devoted to the glorification of the militarization of the police, has been happening in Oakland since 2007. The Mayor announced that it would not be held in Oakland next year, but it will still be held, probably somewhere else in Alameda County. It should be stopped once and for all or, barring that, Oakland and Oakland’s police should not participate.
Links to Letter Sized PDF of flyer
Older flyer and poster versions:
Inside Urban Shield Half Sheet Inside Urban Shield 11×17″ Poster IUS 18×24″ Poster PDF
Click to download 2-to-sheet PDF
Final flyer:
inside urban shield poster 11×17 rev
inside urban shield poster 18×24 rev
Inside Urban Shield Fact Sheet and Forum Schedule (PDF): IUS-Schedule-Fact-Sheet
From Ferguson To The Bay Area: Connecting the Dots
KPFA 94.1 FM
Pacifica Live Programming On The Streaming Channel
http://www.kpfa.org/events/ferguson-bay-area
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
http://www.kpfa.org/kpfa-live-stream-channel
On October 11, 2014 thousands of working people and youth will be converging in Ferguson to protest the continuing racism, discrimination and failure to arrest the policeman who murdered Michael Brown. KPFA WorkWeek will provide live streaming program from the station’s channel with activists and teachers from Ferguson and also will connect the dots to Northern California. We will hear from working people and trade unionists about militarization of police departments in the bay area, the censorship of education by the Oakland school district of the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the same economic and social conditions in Northern California that exist in Feruguson. We will also have video from Ferguson from the rallies and struggles. SEIU 1021 Social and Economic Justice Committee and other organizations are supporting this program.
There will be a gathering at Eastshore park near Lake Merritt right where Lakeshore Blvd. meets El Embarcadero. We’re excited to be joined by Oakland City Councilman Dan Kalb, the talented Occupellas, Students Against Fracking and other wonderful allies fighting Big Oil in the state.
Bring a light-colored t-shirt to screen print an awesome “I support a Frack-Free California” logo, a blanket to sit on and your smart phone for our interactive social media booth to tweet at Jerry Brown. There will also be a 10ft tall mock fracking rig and other great ways to take action to stop fracking in California.
This event is not meant to be a rally, rather a day of action and community building. So please stop on by anytime between 12-3pm.
Hear the stories of how the German state infiltrated animal liberation struggles and spied on activists.
Second Sundays:
Interfaith prayer meeting for healing, dedicated to the survivors and victims of violence and police brutality in Oakland.
We are organizing this gathering for the community to connect, share prayers, writings and poems from all spiritual traditions, reflect and recharge and build coalitions interested in healing.
Please feel free to bring quotes or passages to share
All are welcome
We will serve simple breakfast.
“FROM DENZIL DOWELL TO MIKE BROWN..IT’S STILL GOIN DOWN”
48th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party
Panthers Speak
Panelists Perspectives
The 10 Point Platform
Fallen Comrades
“U.S. officials have portrayed the coup regime that came to power in Kiev, Ukraine, early this year as a beacon of democracy. These photos document a very different reality,” asserted Butterfield.’
“War crimes are being committed daily by the Kiev government against its own citizens, with funding and political support from Washington,” Butterfield charged. “People in the Donbass region and throughout Ukraine are resisting a far-right regime dedicated to austerity and NATO expansion to Russia’s border, which includes openly pro-Nazi elements.”
“Before we are dragged into a dangerous confrontation with Russia, poor and working people in the U.S. need to understand what our taxes are really paying for in Ukraine,” concluded Sara Flounders.
Light refreshments served, wheelchair accessible.
The rounding-up and deportation of immigrants, including children, is part of Mass Incarceration – it is a conscious policy that criminalizes Black and Latino peoples, and treats them as less than human. Families are torn apart and children are being sent back to countries from which they fled for their lives. Along with police murder, and the imprisonment of 2.4 million people, the vicious targeting of immigrants is part of a genocidal program that is accelerating in both numbers and brutality.
WE MUST STOP IT NOW!
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Occupy Forum presents
Two films on the politics of food
Ripe for Change — a film by Emiko Omori &
Jed Riffe and Occupy the Farm (Trailer)
by Todd Darling
Ripe for Change: California — always a fascinating marriage of opposite extremes — is at a crossroads in agriculture. Many Californians are struggling to fend off over-development and the loss of farming lands and traditions while embracing innovative visions of agricultural sustainability. At the same time, California is where fast food was born and a center of the biotechnology industry and large corporate agribusiness. The debates raging in California over issues of food, agriculture, and sustainability have profound implications for all of America, especially in a world where scarcity is the norm and many natural resources are diminishing.
Ripe for Change explores the intersection of food and politics in California over the last 30 years. It illuminates the complex forces struggling for control of the future of California’s agriculture, and provides provocative commentary by a wide array of farmers, chefs, and noted authors and scientists. The film examines a host of questions: What are the trade-offs between the ability to produce large quantities of food versus the health of workers, consumers, and the planet? What are the hidden costs of “inexpensive” food? How do we create sustainable agricultural practices?
Through the window of food and agriculture, Ripe for Change reveals two parallel yet contrasting views of our world. One holds that large-scale agriculture, genetic engineering, and technology promise a hunger-less future. The other calls for a more organic, sustainable, and locally focused style of farming that reclaims the aesthetic and nurturing qualities of food and considers the impact of agriculture on the environment, on communities, and on workers.
Occupy the Farm will premier November 7th at the UA Berkeley (see link below — OccupyForum will preview the trailer!) On April 22, 2012, hundreds of urban farmers (and many Occupy peeps) marched onto the land in East Bay’s Gill Tract in Albany�an agricultural research center for the University and the last large piece of farmland in the East Bay, which had been marked for development by UC Berkeley. They brought 15,000 seedlings, farming equipment, camping gear and a powerful conviction about the human right to grow their own food and to connect with the land. Students, community members and even UC Berkeley professors and researchers joined forces to “take back the tract” and protect the land for important food research and as a valued public resource for access to land and agriculture.
On that same day, film director Todd Darling received a text about the protesters who were occupying the Gill Tract, and he grabbed his camera and followed their story for five months. Out of this was born Occupy The Farm, a documentary film about the plight and triumph of hundreds of urban farmers during their campaign to protect the tract from development. This film focuses on the human need for access to local agriculture, and shows the possibility that local communities can change the direction of powerful institutions and have a lasting impact on generations to come.
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http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/ripe_for_change
http://ediblesiliconvalley.com/2014-articles/occupy-the-farm/
WE DID IT! AFTER 14 MONTHS OF WORK, THE ZONING OVERLAY ORDINANCE PASSED ON SEPTEMBER 30th.
Read more about our victory here.
Nonetheless the Postal Service still has the Berkeley Post Office up for sale!!
And the Postal Service outsourced Post Office services to Staples, replacing union jobs with low-paying, low benefit work.
We’re still fighting against both!
Come help us plan our next steps.
On July 29th, at our invite, Ralph Nader spoke on the steps of the Berkeley Post Office against privatization and corporatism. Watch and listen to his talk here.
We began the “Don’t Shop at Staples” campaign with some awesome… what else? … postcards to send to Staples management! Here’s the front of the postcard. The campaign has been adopted by a large number of national and local unions, including teachers’ unions and the AFL-CIO.
Check out our correspondence with the President of the American Postal Workers Union, Mark Dimondstein. The APWU has been leading the charge against Staples.
For three months the Berkeley Staples has been ‘occupied’ 24/7 by an intrepid band of San Francisco occupiers with solidarity and support from BPOD members distributing literature and convincing people not to shop at Staples. They’re still there! Come hang out with them outside Staples at Durant & Shattuck.
The Advisory Commission on Historical Preservation came out with its report, recommending that sales of Historic Post offices be halted until the USPS conforms with historical preservation law. Here is our response. The Post Office has ignored the report, recently selling historic Post Offices in The Bronx and Burlingame, CA.
We need to be prepared if the Post Office announces a sale!
We have joined with other activists in Berkeley to put a ballot initiative, Measure R, on the ballot to cement the rezoning of the Berkeley Post Office and other areas in the Historic District to prevent privatization, and also to insure a better Downtown Berkeley. (The City Council could undo what they just wrought at any time; a ballot initiative become law can only be undone by another vote of the people).
Come help us plan our next steps.
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.
Drawing upon work by both artists and social movements, Max Haiven will examine how debt and today’s debt-driven capitalism shape creativity and inhibit the true potential of creative communities.
Max Haiven teaches political economy and cultural studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and is author ofCrises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons. With Alex Khasnabish, he directs the Halifax-based Radical Imagination Projecton Canada’s East Coast. Their book, The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity, is published by Zed Books.
Moderated by artist Cassie Thornton
This event is part of the Omni’s Jubilee Year initiative.
This panel focuses on the latest trend we’ve seen of governments abusing their authority. More specifically, the panel will narrow its focus onto the increasing militarization of peace keepers in the United States. Through this panel we hope to complete two objectives: (1) shedding light on this issue for those who have been kept in the dark, and (2) showing those in attendance how best to plug and support the movement to end rampant militarization. We are targeting new lawyers and current law students.
**We encourage anyone who is interested to come! This issue affects all of us.**
Presented by Golden Gate University Black Law Student Association.
We meet, usually every other week, to discuss various readings in the theory and practice of debt, from personal to corporate to sovereign. This week we are reading from a recent IMF paper that discusses unconventional solutions to current world economic problems.
Here is the paper:
IMF Working Paper, Chicago Plan Revisited
Some of this is way too technical, with partial differential equations and whatnot. We’ll be reading only
pg. 1-19, 49-56.
So, that is section I, II, VI, VII, VIII
Concert and Show.
Honoring the lives of all those killed by police brutality
35 year angel-versary of Lil Milagro Ramirez
Building unity amongst the oppressed
We convoke her spirit of resistance as we recite her poetry and give honor to her life. “Lover of peace, I want to struggle for her desperately, because since the beginning, I have dreamt of peace.” -Awakening
A lawyer by profession, and a guerrilla fighter by compassion, Lil was characterized for her intellect and courage. She was part of a group of writers for whom aesthetic renewal and social revolution went hand in hand. A daughter of educators, Lil played the guitar and piano, wrote poetry, practiced yoga and was a vegetarian. Disenchanted by the broken legal system, she decided not to practice law for she saw it as an instrument of oppression by the ruling political class.
Lil Milagro entered the People’s Revolutionary Army in 1972, but due to ideological differences, she broke with the organization in 1975, after the assassination of fellow poet and lover Roque Dalton. After founding the political-military National Resistance Movement (RN), she was kidnapped one morning in August 1976 by the National Guard. Tortured for three years, Lil was kept shackled, blindfolded and held completely naked. Allowed to eat four corn tortillas and about 25 grams of beans per day with five grams of cheese once a week, she died in this state of captivity. On the anniversary of her death, we convoke her spirit of resistance as we recite her poetry and give honor to her life and all those killed due to police brutality.
We will then continue with a community event at the Eastside Cultural Center from 8-1030p.
This Week's Titles:
Nothing Directed by Vincenzo Natali, 2003 90 min, (Comedy, Fantasy) MirrorMask Directed by Dave McKean, 2005 101 min, (Adventure, Drama, Family)
Film Nights are held in the basement of Omni and start at 7pm; the theater dims no later than 7:15, so don’t be late!
BYO; Drinks, snacks, pillows, cushions, beanbags, etc.
Suggested Donation for popcorn and tea: $2
More Information:
You can submit your screening requests to the lottery fish bowl at any time during a Film Night.
All genres and eras are welcome; as are shows, shorts and documentaries!
Once there is a formidable collection of titles (compiled from various sources), that list will replace the lottery, and you’ll be able to see the line-up ahead of time! (Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to request films).
- First Fridays of the month: Light-Hearted Titles – e.g. Comedy, Drama, Family
- Second Fridays: Dark, Intense Titles – e.g. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Action, Thriller
- Third Fridays: Educational & Historical Titles – e.g. Documentary, Period, Biographical
- Fourth Fridays: Indie Week – Festival Favorites, Shorts, Independent Project Screenings (Screen your video projects here!)
On FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/697965096966064
2nd Annual Gaza Solidarity 5K Walk/Run (San Francisco)
Proceeds from the Gaza 5K Walk/Run will benefit UNRWA’s psycho-social support program for children in Gaza suffering from psychological trauma and PTSD due to the devastating crisis of July-August 2014 and the prolonged blockade. Many of these already vulnerable children have now lived through three traumatic rounds of violence, witnessing death, destruction, and displacement. It’s estimated that 375,000 children in Gaza now require immediate counseling.
These children need our support now, and that’s why your participation is so critical. Whether you participate as a sponsor, runner, walker, or cheerleader, we want to see you there!
By participating, you will directly support UNRWA’s psycho-social support program to provide these children with critically needed counseling services, offering them a safe space to express their emotions and fears, and the opportunity to work with trained counselors to learn valuable coping skills.
Lace up your running or walking shoes, bring your friends, your family, and even your pets and we’ll see you October 18th!
GET SOCIAL
Join the conversation on social media by using #Gaza5K in your posts and tweets! Read our tips: https://unrwausa.org/gaza5K-spread-the-word
UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees, is the primary provider of healthcare, education, and other basic social services to 5.3 million Palestine refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. UNRWA has been the largest humanitarian operation in the region since its inception in 1950, and continues to help Palestine refugees achieve their full potential in human development. In Gaza, UNRWA provides assistance and protection for over 1.2 million registered refugees. This includes mental health counseling for 50,000 refugees every year, and in 2014, individual counseling for an additional 12,600 refugee children to help them cope with the trauma of bombings and blockade in 2014. American Friends of UNRWA (UNRWA USA) is the US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports the work of UNRWA in the United States with fundraising, education, and advocacy work. All donations to UNRWA USA are tax-deductible.
The Fight Against Privatization Of Education & Public Services Conference:
Stop Union Busting, Outsourcing, Workplace Bullying
For A National Campaign To Defend Public Services and Public Education
A massive coordinated attacks is taking place through privatization and deregulation to destroy public services and public education throughout the country and internationally. This conference will look at the history of this attack, who is doing it including through the use of technology, how they are doing it and how we can organize, educate and uniting all public workers and the communities to fight back and win.
Conference Issues
> Overview and history deregulation, charters, Ideology of privatization of public services and civil society, racism, Post Office, Education, Transit Workers, City Workers, State Workers, Federal privatization military, attack pensions, concession bargaining, non-profits NGOs
> Role of Governor Brown and politicians In California along with Obama and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan
> Role of unions in education, transit, public services
> International role of privatization Greece, Ukraine, Argentina, Korea, Japan, South Africa, Russia, El Salvador
> Strategy and Agenda For National Campaign Against Privatization, Education workers strike statewide, Campaign against Vergara decision and more segregation of education.
> The Struggle In Ferguson, Racism and Lessons of the struggle to protect education and public services
> Media Channel, Program for the fight back and regional and national rallies against privatization and privatizers
Initial Speakers:
Brenda Barros SEIU 1021, George Wright AFT 1493 retired, Rick Baum AFT 2121 Lecturer, Bob Price AFT 2121 CCSF, Dorian Maxwell TWU 250 Former Member, Anand Vaidya, Associate Professor CSUSJ, Sean Gillis IFPTE Local 21 Political Director Oakland Unit M
Agenda
> 10:00AM Areas of privatization and the affect on labor and the communities
> 12: 30 Lunch & Video “Crenshaw” About The Reconstitution Of LAUSD Crenshaw High School
> 1:15 PM Ferguson, Militarization, Role of Democrats and Unions/Non Profits
> 200 PM International Role of Privatization-Lessons From Around The US & The World
> 3:00 PM Strategies and Action Program To Fight Privatization locally, regionally & internationally
> 4:00 PM Conference Closes
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED OR POSTPONED. STAY TUNED.
On Behalf of the Serrano Family, we are asking our beloved Community, to join in solidarity, to demand justice for Yanira Serrano, who was mercilessly gunned down , June 3, 2014, in front her family, by San Mateo County Sheriff.
Please come and support our effort to STOP BUSINESS AS USUAL, during the Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival. Let’s remind the city, county, state and the nation, that while this is a time when most families are enjoying the happy joy and harvest of the season; the Serrano family will not be celebrating this love & bounty because of senseless police brutality.
TRANSPORTATION:
FOR THOSE OF YOU, WHO HAVE ACCESS TO CARS AND VANS, OR HAVE THE RESOURCES TO RENT VEHICLES, LET’S ORGANIZE CARPOOLING OPPORTUNITIES FOR FOLKS IN SF BAY AREA, EAST BAY, NORTH BAY, SOUTH BAY, STOCKTON, SANTA ROSA, AUBURN, ETC. ♥
Please check out Yanira’s story on the Facebook page… And LIKE Justice 4 Yanira Serrano:
Come get connect with SDBA’s many projects:- organizing for public banking in Oakland
- 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
- distribution of Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual
- student debt resistance
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization
- our famous Strike Debt radio program
- and much more!