Hands Off Oakland Rebels

Oakland Court Support Needed

Here we go again! On Thursday July 8th, 2010 close to one hundred people were arrested after an inadequate verdict was released for the Mehserle trial. Just like the Oakland Rebellions of January 2009, most of those who were arrested will not face criminal charges.

However, THIS IS A CRUCIAL MOMENT for us to show the D.A. and the courts that they cannot decide the fate of those demonstrators that are still facing charges without being accountable to the larger movement for justice for Oscar Grant. Right now, 13 are still in jail with 55K or higher bail or being held with no bail.

This is a call out to all who are able to come support the people still facing charges. Show up to hearings 30 minutes prior to the times below to meet outside the court and walk in together.

Below are the dates and info for the upcoming hearings. Hearings will be held at Wiley W Manuel Courthouse, 661 Washington St @ 7th St., Oakland.

Thursday July 22nd 9AM rm 115 4 people
Friday July 23rd 9AM rm 104 1 person
Monday July 26th 2PM rm 112 1 person

Also, try and make special arrangements to come out for the mass arraignment, to stand in solidarity on the day that most of those arrested will have to show up to court.

Monday August 9th 9AM rm 107 60+ people

http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com/

Corpses in the Mouth

BERKELEY, California – A California Public Records Request has revealed a 300+ page pdf of email correspondence between UC Berkeley deans, chancellors, public relations officers, cops on how to stop the building occupations in Fall 2009.

Read up here.

CSU Fresno: Library study-in suppressed with police

Central Valley IMC:

FRESNO, California – Today after the Fresno State library closed at 5, 11 students refused to leave. In protest of reduced hours 11 students stayed in the Fresno State library after it closed on Saturday. This was in protest of the fact that finals are next week and the school has done nothing to increase library access to students. Friday night, students were also asked to leave early so that donors could have a “Wizard of Oz” conference, this also was protested by students.

At Saturday’s occupation, nearly a dozen campus police and FPD (who are not allowed on campus) came in along with Dr. Coon to threaten the students with a judicial review and delayed graduation. This is absurd since the budget cuts have led to cut classes and overcrowded classes which is already leading to delayed graduation for many students.

After 2 hours the students had their names taken down by the PD and were escorted out of the building. None of the law enforcement were willing to answer any questions, this includes FPD who were asked why they were there when they weren’t supposed to be there, they were also asked for names and badge numbers but refused this as well.

High school protests and walkouts in Atlanta area

ATLANTA, Georgia – This article covers protests at several schools, including one feisty walkout involving fire alarms which the school district spokesperson smeared in the media as a “fake protest”.

Cleveland, OH: Police brutalize high school walkout participants

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The video shows middle-aged white male cops slamming young black females into a car and choking them during arrest.

The occasion was a walk-out in protest over teacher layoffs at Collinwood High School. Cleveland FIST has more info on the protest, which drew hundreds, and the call-in campaign to drop charges against the students who are being charged with assaulting officers.

(Note, this blog does not endorse Cleveland FIST or “Bail Out the People” which are fronts for the Stalinist Worker’s World Party.)

Itemized list of Kerr Hall “expenses”

TWANAS obtained a copy of the admin’s itemized list of “damages” and expenses associated with the Kerr Hall occupation, totaling $34,992.04, for which [35] students are being fined $944 each and one spokesperson threatened with cancellation of her degree. A micro-level reprise of November’s fee hikes: the regents shamelessly robbing students to pay for bullshit. The list includes $8637 for paint even though there was no graffiti anywhere, and around $1000 related to lightly-damaged tables. At a time when the school is raising fees, firing employees and cutting entire majors, they decide to impose further financial hardships on students involved in protests just so they can waste the money making Kerr Hall look exactly like it did before November.

But you know what, bourgeois? There will be no return to normal.

Bologna Burns: European resistance to privatizing education, Madrid 4/13

from Bologna Burns Madrid

A New Website for the Counter Summit of European Education Ministers has been Born.

On the 13th April an EU education ministers’ summit will take place in Madrid, due to the Spanish turn at the EU presidency.

In response to this summit the Platform Bolonia Fucking Up Group, formed by Students Assemblies, associations, collective groups, student unions etc, is organizing a counter summit between the 8th and 14th of April.

We call students and people both in the Spanish State and internationally to join us in Madrid on these days to fight neoliberal reforms from the streets and hold workshop discussions about the university we currently have and the universities we would like to have.

As well as accomodation for all participants, we are organizing international assemblies in which to continue building a European network, a demonstration on the 12th with the motto “We won’t Let Education Pay for Capitalist Europe. Don’t Let them Make Decisions for You, Against the European Union’s Ministers Summit”, and more.

If you have questions, would like to organize a workshop or want to come, CONTACT US so that we know when you are arriving and how many of you there will be!

Spread the word,
La lucha es el único cámino!

More info at Bologna Burns Madrid [English].

Contact: bolognaburnsmadrid@gmail.com

27 March, 2010

4/8-9 Days of Action Against State Violence

West Coast Days of Action April 8-9
Oscar Grant, Aaron Campbell, and all the others: We Won’t Forget!
Freedom for Joel Dow and Holly Works!

Organize protests and autonomous actions in your own city!

Early on New Year’s morning, 2009, BART police in Oakland, California, shot and killed Oscar Grant as he lay unarmed on a subway platform. Only after community members rioted did the cop get charged with the shooting.

On March 22, 2010, Portland police shot and killed a homeless man, Jack Dale Collins, just two months after they shot to death Aaron Campbell, an unarmed black man. Anarchist and other community members responded immediately, taking to the streets in a riotous protest that marched on the police station, expressing anger at cops for the systemic killings, and at the media for covering up the prevalence of police violence. On March 23 there was another protest, at which police on motorbikes attacked the crowd. In a typical move, they charged one protester with attacking them. Joel Dow is currently sitting in jail, facing a felony charge and two misdemeanors.

The only times the police have ever been held responsible for their murders is when we take to the streets and halt business as usual. Following the law, being peaceful, being quiet, has never discouraged police violence, because it is the function of the police to use violence against the exploited, against the oppressed, against those who fight back.

Police violence is systemic. It is not a matter of isolated cases, or bad apples. For that reason, we are calling for two Days of Action, up and down the West Coast. The trial for Oscar Grant’s killer has been moved all the way to Los Angeles, where the government hopes it can get an acquittal. The problem of state violence stretches across borders. Only by extending our solidarity from city to city can we gain the strength to fight back and show that this is not an isolated problem.

People have already started using a diversity of tactics to resist the police. After the killings of Oscar Grant and Jack Dale Collins, people rioted. After the most recent killing in Portland, anonymous anarchists smashed up the police union office. In the Bay Area, Oakland Peace and Justice is organizing a blockade of the Embarcadero BART station for April 8. In Seattle, people are organizing flyering and protests in the city center. All the tactics are needed!

When we recognize the need to stand up against state violence, we have to remember to support those who have been arrested in the struggle. Joel Dow is in jail for two felony charges and two misdemeanors for a counterattack against police at the March 23 protest in Portland. On April 5, Holly Works goes to trial for felony charges from the Oscar Grant riots. They need to be freed, not on the basis of their guilt or innocence, but because the actions that took place were a necessary response to the police murders. Without those riots, the killings would have been swept under the rug, like so many times in the past. The struggle is not over until everyone is free!

Solidarity protests, flyering, blockades, and other actions will take place in the Bay Area, Portland, Olympia, Seattle, and elsewhere. Take initiative! Organize your own action and publicize it on the internet!

Freedom for Joel Dow and Holly Works!
Oscar Grant, Aaron Campbell, and all the others: We Won’t Forget!

Portland riots
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10921

Support Joel Dow
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10944

Support the Oakland 100
http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com/

Bay Area April 8th action
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/29/18643281.php

Seattle April 9th protest
http://www.seattlediy.com/?p=822

Sample flyers
Because the media will always lie, it’s important to let everyone know, in our own words, why we protest, why we riot, why we fight back. Take these, change the date and time for your own events, and print off thousands!

The Police Will Always Murder

Let the politicians mince words about better training and community policing. The truth is, police will always murder. Our entire economy is based on exploitation, on wage-slavery, on violent blackmail: spend your life working for those who own everything, or sleep on the streets. The economy kills people every day. Our country is founded on slavery and genocide. Generations later, the divides only continue to deepen. How can there be peace between rich and poor, between those who profit off this state of affairs and those who have even had their futures stolen from them?

That’s where the police come in. It’s their job to keep people in their assigned places, to use violence against those who resist, those who fall out of line. That’s why every week in this country, cops are murdering homeless people, murdering people of color, murdering transgender people, attacking protesters, spying on dissidents. It’s their job. The problem can’t be reformed away. It’s useless to talk about freedom and happiness as long we live in a world based on isolation, coercion, and exploitation.

That’s why we are not ashamed to talk about abolishing the police, abolishing prisons, abolishing the entire government. We can start right now by fighting back against police violence, against new laws of social control. We can start right now by reclaiming our communities, getting to know our neighbors, and building networks of self-defense without relying on the police. Society has organized itself many times before without hierarchy, without Authority. Suppressed stories of rebellion and freedom can be found everywhere.

If you’re not afraid to take your life in your hands, if you’re truly interested in the possibility of a world without police murders, here’s one of many places you can start searching for ideas: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/
Otherwise, don’t worry. If you do nothing, the police will continue to murder to uphold the world you rely on. Just don’t let them catch you out of your place.

For Freedom, for Anarchy!

Enough is Enough!
March Against Police Brutality
Friday April 9th, 12pm at Seattle Central Community College

Protect Our Communities, Protect Ourselves!

On Monday, March 22nd another Portland community member, was brutally murdered by the police. Friday, April 9th we are calling a march in solidarity here in Seattle to recognize that Portland’s struggle against police brutality is also our struggle. Police brutality is a systemic issue that is effecting the entire country. We refuse to sit by and just shake our heads as police shoot down people here or in Portland or anywhere. We refuse to feel unsafe in our own neighbourhoods, streets and workplaces.

The police are one part of the prison industrial complex that is expanding rapidly, and more and more sectors of our society are gearing themselves toward promoting the proliferation of prisons– and profiting off it. They are not making us safer. They are killing us and locking us up at an exponential rate. Today the US has 5% of the world population and 25% of the worlds prison population. With the highest rate of incarceration in the world, we have been sold the idea that police and prisons are the solution to crime. Upon investigation of the prison system we find a system that targets poor people, people of color, transgendered people and the mentally ill.

Instead of turning to the prison industrial complex, we want to build networks of support and safety within our own neighborhoods and communities. Instead let’s defend each other to preserve community safety. Talk to your neighbours! Form community assemblies and phone trees to create immediate response to danger in your neighbourhood, from the cops and otherwise. Build an understanding of the root causes of crime and the capacity to think up solutions that could really work to create real safety and healing for all of our community.

Let’s stand up and be loud! Let’s build a community movement against police brutality.

A flyer from Portland with that hot new style: protest info on the front, our manifesto on the back
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/03/398059.shtml

DEFEND STUDENT ACTIVISM: SIGN THE PETITION

Sign the petition at ucstrike.com

We the undersigned are opposed to the university’s disciplinary position regarding the students involved in the Architects and Engineering building sit-in on November 18, 2009, the Wheeler Hall protest November 20, 2009 , the arrests in Wheeler Hall on the morning of December 11, 2009, and the students that are facing sanctions for flyering. Over 100 student activists are facing a variety of charges related to recent protests. UC Berkeley is an institution that widely advertises its activist past and prides itself on its commitment to the principles of the Free Speech Movement, but the university is using the recently revised student code of conduct in a manner that is arbitrary in order to intimidate and punish student activists who continue to challenge the increasing privatization of California public education in the UC, CSU, and community college systems.We reject the accusations that the students involved in the Wheeler Hall protest put the safety of other students and community members into question. The November 20, 2009 protest was supported by students and community members; it was a call to the university to change the way that it engages with those upon whom its continued operation depends. The administration not only ignored this call, but is now attempting to silence student dissent on the campus by physically removing students from the campus. The December 11, 2009 arrests of over 60 students in Wheeler Hall were made in bad faith and without a dispersal order. The administration has defended its decision to threaten two students with sanctions for flyering by saying that there are clear rules about posting flyers. This use of the student code of conduct is a tactic of intimidation to silence opposition to the university administration’s position on its direction. We find this unacceptable and demand that all sanctions against these students be dropped immediately.

Victory in Sussex

Cheres amis,

Finest from Anglo-Normandy, where we really hit the nail on the head in the last week. We invite you to spread the word of our little victory, and word of our little sadnesses at what’s lost for the moment, and of our pride and hope for the future too.

There’ll be some good writing coming up soon, I think.

Comunique below.
—

Victory – a leaving statement
After eight days of occupation, management have conceded to our demands. We have seen a mass movement spring up around the occupation – staff, students and faculty have come out in strength this last week to fiercely oppose the summary suspensions of six students, and the continued threat to Sussex.

Yesterday an 850-strong Emergency general meeting proved that we, the students, have no confidence in the VCEG. We, the students, have spoken. The occupation became far more than a symbolic opposition; it was a positive and exciting space in its own right – which has embodied our vision of what Sussex can, what Sussex should be, and of what we want from our education.

The strike today, the Senate meeting yesterday; these ratify our position – we the sussex community are united against management and their ‘proposals for change’. This result proves that a sustained movement; built with a diversity of tactics, skills and perspectives, can achieve concrete results.

We will not stop here.

This has been the first of a series of victories to come at Sussex – the first of a series of victories nationally, internationally. We have left A2 in perfect condition, and are now going out to join the UCU strike rally. Next term will see more action, more fighting cuts; management on the run.

We leave for the holidays in a position of strength. There is much work yet to do.

Till next term,
Stop the Cuts

March 4 Oakland Arrestees – Please Contact the NLG

The National Lawyers Guild SFBA is coordinating legal support following the March 4 arrests in Oakland. NLG lawyers will be appearing at the hearing dates in early April for anyone who wishes to have legal help from the NLG.

For further details,

See : http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/18/18641836.php

Racial Tension @ CSUMB

guerrillathink.wordpress.com

statement from BSU & other community members in solidarity on Thursday, 3/18:

Dear CSUMB Community Member,

Wednesday morning the words “f**k black people” were found chalked on sidewalk outside the Otter Express. This follows an incident the night before where an African American student was called the N-word by a student she did not know who later claimed to be “joking.” The hateful words of Wednesday morning underscore that racial insensitivity is never a joke. Racism must never be taken lightly. By Thursday night, members from all racial communities came together in solidarity with the African American community that was the target of this particular racist incident to decide how to address this as a united community.

Please join our CSUMB community tomorrow outside the OE where we will come together in silent communion, black and white, male and female, gay and straight dressed in black to represent the death of all forms of discrimination. The words that were meant to hurt and divide us will instead bring us together tomorrow as we demonstrate our commitment to the Vision of CSUMB which values each and every member of our community whatever their race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion or personal identity.

We come together to send a strong message tomorrow that racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry and all other forms of discrimination will not be tolerated on our campus. Anytime any member of our campus community is targeted in this way, it is absolutely necessary that all CSUMB communities come together in condemnation of discrimination and support for those discriminated against.

– BSU & CSUMB Community Members

Event pictures @ guerrillathink.wordpress.com

Another update on Greece

“THERE’S ONLY ONE THING LEFT TO SETTLE: OUR ACCOUNTS WITH CAPITAL AND ITS STATE’’A REPORT ON RECENT STRUGGLES IN GREECE

In periods of crisis, such as the current period of overaccumulation crisis, capitalists use the politics of “public debt” in order to devise new ways to intensify exploitation. In contrast with capitalist upturns when the private debt is increased, downturns are characterized by the increase of the “public debt”. Private investment in state bonds ensures profits which are extracted from the direct and indirect taxation of the workers, aiming towards interest repayments, and leading, ultimately, to the reinforcement of the banking sector capital. Therefore, the “public debt”, contrary to what is usually said, provides help to private capital and, in this respect, should be counted in its profits.

Moreover, in the last 20 years, the “public debt” tripled in 20 out of 27 countries of EU because of massive expenditures for bailing out the financial sector. This is money that was not given through loans to (non-banking) private capital for productive investments. Furthermore, public borrowing was done and continues to be done on terms that exceed by far the average profit rate, making investments in state bonds far more profitable than investments for the creation of production units, and, all the more so, since this kind of investment is exempted from the risks of class struggle in the sites of production.

Downtown LA on March 4th

A great account of what happened in downtown LA: the desire/need for self-organized struggle