Tag: Occupy Oakland

Occupy Fly’s hearing Friday, April 27, 9 a.m., 850 Bryant, SF! Help him now before it is too late. We should not just sit by doing business as usual while his freedom is about to end. We have an opportunity here to make a difference. We must mourn and seek justice for our dead, but we should just as strongly fight for the freedom of our living. We need to own that courtroom. Fly is putting the SFPD on trial. The right to videotape police is on trial here. Everybody video the police, not in the courtroom but in the hallways and outside. Bring your phones, cameras and camcorders and use them.

Supervisor John Avalos is calling for suspension of foreclosure activities in San Francisco. Rally to support Avalos’ resolution Tuesday, March 20, 12 noon, on the City Hall steps, Van Ness side, where foreclosure sales are held. “We have to do everything in our power to stop any more foreclosure fast-tracking,” he said.

When the Occupy San Quentin rally ended, San Rafael police followed us to the Richmond Bridge. I don’t know if it was Jabari Shaw’s orange CDCR jumpsuit that kept them wondering – Is he an escapee, one of ours? – or if it was the sheer magnitude of fearlessness represented by women like Kelly, a former prisoner who would not let her traumatic experience silence her. One brother got so full looking at the guards on the other side of the gate watching that he looked like he was going to leap the gate and hurt someone as he recalled the violations of his person over and over again. Members of All of Us or None dropped everything to embrace him when he left the stage.

On Monday, Feb. 20, over a dozen rallies will be held throughout the U.S. for a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.” Join the Bay Area rally 12-3 p.m. at San Quentin by getting or giving a ride at 10 a.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland or 1540 Market St. in SF. “The U.S. is the world’s leader of the incarceration industry – it’s time for the focused attention of the Occupy Movement,” notes Mumia Abu-Jamal. Big rallies on Feb. 20 will push California authorities to meet 12,000 California prisoners' five core demands and challenge the prison industrial complex everywhere.

God could not have sent us a more fitting setting for Occupy Cal at the University of California, Berkeley – the sun rising, yellow and warm. I was going devote today to observing and reporting on the social movement.

Karryl Smith (Special One) and Carla Green (CMG), better known as The Conscious Daughters (TCD), exploded nationally on the hip-hop scene when their first single, “Funky Expedition,” from the debut album “Ear to the Street” dominated video stations like MTV, BET and The Box in the early 1990s.

The last 30 years have led to an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the 1 percent – as well as the creation of another 1 percent: the 1 in 100 people currently locked in U.S. prisons and jails. Can we imagine what it would look like for imprisoned people to participate in General Assemblies?

Occupy Oakland’s Thanksgiving gathering turned violent Thursday after police orchestrated the removal of portable toilets from Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, which the protesters have renamed Oscar Grant Plaza. Occupy Oakland is one of the most assertive and appreciated of all of America’s Occupy groups.

Join the Occupy movement. But join with caution and ask yourselves of any movement: Does this group have a collective goal or game plan to work on which assures that we, Black people, are making progress for our people every day, if not every hour?

Is the Occupy Movement against slavery, or is it that some people are just mad because they never get to hold the whip? Do you not see racism? Can you see it in this movement? Where is the support for justice for Raheim Brown in Oakland and Kenneth Harding in San Francisco?

The struggle against school closures is far from over. Now is the time to stand up and speak out against this attack on public education – an attack designed by those who should be defending it, Superintendent Tony Smith and the OUSD School Board. You can call Superintendent Smith at (510) 879-8200.

On Thursday, Nov. 10, Occupy Oakland was supposed to celebrate its one-month anniversary in the renamed Oscar Grant Plaza in front of City Hall. Instead the Occupy Movement worldwide was shaken by the cold-blooded murder of a participant less than an hour before festivities were scheduled to start.

The interests of big business have become the law of the land. The fictive “people of Oakland” invoked by business improvement districts (BIDs) LMUDA and DOA are nothing more than the personified corporations who want to turn Oakland into a gentrified metropolis devoid of any real public space.

All of this was more than a reaction to the Occupy movement. It’s best understood as the latest battle between police and residents in at least two years of civil unrest in the city, beginning with the killing of Oscar Grant by ex-transit officer Johannes Mehserle on New Year’s Day 2009.

“Everyone to the streets! No work! No school! Converge on downtown Oakland.” The General Strike demands are: 1) Solidarity with the worldwide Occupy Movement; 2) End police attacks on our communities; 3) Defend Oakland schools and libraries; 4) Oppose an economic system built on inequality and corporate power that perpetuates racism, sexism and destruction of the environment.

On Oct. 16-17, SFPD conducted a brutal raid on the Occupy San Francisco encampment. Videographers recorded police stepping on backs, dragging protestors and striking them with batons. Before police dispersed, tents reappeared. San Francisco occupiers joined the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality in a short Bayview march protesting unrelenting police assaults on residents.

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1 percent. We propose a citywide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city. All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them. ... The whole world is watching Oakland. Let’s show them what is possible.