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Otis writes:,"The rally and march against police brutality on Thursday, October 22nd, in Oakland at 14th and Broadway at 12pm, must be a powerful political expression of our anger and determination to stop a system which sets the police on the people, and then defends them from punishment. First the police murder Oscar Grant in Cold Blood! Now, the the judge has agreed with the murderer's attorney, that killer-cop Johannes Mehserle cannot get a fair trial in Oakland. A screaming irony, considering the "fair trial" that Oscar received at the hands of judge-jury-executioner Mehserle." Actions will also be happening in Arcata, Eureka, and Santa Rosa.
On October 16th, Superior Court Judge Jacobson ordered Johannes Mehserle's trial be moved outside of Alameda County. Judge Jacobson attempted to distance himself from the racism in Mehserle's change of venue motion, but by granting the move, he has in effect given credence to defense attorney Michael Rains' assertions that due to news coverage and protester's actions the citizens of Alameda are not qualified to be impartial jurors. A final venue will be chosen within about two weeks.
On Tuesday, October 13th, Shlomo Zand will be speaking about his newly translated book The Invention of the Jewish People, at 4pm in UC Berkeley's Dwinelle Hall. In this new book, Zand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times — when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.
Feeling conservatives had been winning the limelight in the debate over health care reform through a serious of high profile stunts and remarks, advocates of reform decided to steal back some of the media's attention, forming a flash mob September 26th in an Oakland Whole Foods in response to the CEO's recent Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he opposed reform.
On Tuesday, September 29th, Max Blumenthal will discuss his new book Republican Gomorrah at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Republican Gomorrah is an exposé of the dysfunction, scandal, and crime from the heart of the Religious Right; the fringe movement that has come to define the Republican Party.
On April 9th, after numerous community activists spoke during a BART Board meeting takeover, Gabe Meyers independently threw a small amount of red paint onto BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and Assistant General Manager Marcia deVaughn. On September 4th, Gabe Meyers accepted a plea bargain that was offered to him by the judge in his case, who described the action as civil disobedience in the tradition of earlier civil rights and Vietnam-era anti-war protests.
On September 21st, J.R. Valrey stood for trial in Oakland on felony arson charges, after he was arrested while reporting on the Oscar Grant Rebellion on January 7, 2009. Valrey is a producer at KPFA radio, associate editor and multimedia director of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and runs the Block Report Radio website. His trial was postponed until late October. Supporters are asked to show they stand with J.R. by attending upcoming court dates.
On September 11th, Johannes Mehserle's attorney Michael Rains filed his long-expected motion for a change of venue. Mehserle and his defense team appear to be hoping for the murder trial to be moved out of Alameda County as their last best chance for him to avoid a conviction for the murder of Oscar Grant III on January 1st, 2009. In the motion, Rains accuses activist groups and Indybay of spreading "disinformation" about the case and unfairly amplifying political pressure to prosecute.
On Wednesday, September 16, Maya Wind and Netta Mishly from the refusenik group "Shministim" spoke at the MLK, Jr. Building at UC Berkeley. Maya Wind and Netta Mishly both signed the 2008 Shministim Letter: a declaration by Israeli high school students that they would not enlist in the IDF to occupy Palestinian territories and rule over Palestinian life. Since military service is mandatory for Israeli Jews upon completing high school, Maya, Netta, and many of the dozens of teenagers who signed the letter have been sentenced to military prison, sometimes for multiple terms.
Mark Hawthorne writes: Animal Place, an education center and sanctuary for farmed animals, is pleased to announce that in addition to our new location in Grass Valley, we will retain our current property in Vacaville, California.... Animal Place will keep our 60-acre location, transforming it into Rescue Ranch.... The Ranch will be dedicated to finding loving homes for easily adoptable animals, such as chickens, sheep, and goats.
Justice for Oscar Grant activists returned to East Bay BART trains and stations on September 4th to inform riders about BART's intransigence toward holding anyone accountable for their police officers' behavior on New Year's Day. Later the same day, it was learned that BART's attempt to pass AB1586 would fail in this legislative session, meaning that there would be no new police oversight of any kind established before the end of the year.
On August 16th people gathered on the sidewalk in front of Whole Foods in Berkeley to let customers know that its founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board, John Mackey, is working to prevent public funding of health care. In an August 11th opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (it is also available on the Whole Foods website), Mackey wrote in a piece entitled "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare" that the "last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement."
On August 15th, hundreds rallied at the Richmond BART and then marched to the Chevron oil refinery. The protesters called attention to Chevron’s polluting oil refinery in Richmond and to its oil industry expansions - killing people and the planet for profit. A critical mass bike bloc also meet at the Richmond BART and followed the main march to the Chevron refinery. At the end of the march there was non-violent civil disobedience action against the refinery.
Michael and Stephanie Williams report that they were brutalized by the Albany police department on June 5th in front of their children. Michael was tasered multiple times and Stephanie was searched under her clothing by a male officer. A rally was held at the Albany City Council meeting on August 5th in support of the family. Michael Williams has a preliminary hearing on Monday, August 10th, for charges related to the Albany police claim that he threatened them.
On Saturday, August 1st, an Oakland police officer shot and killed carpenter and handyman Brownie Polk at a liquor store in East Oakland. Police claim he was threatening people, but employees and other witnesses have contradicted the police account and say they didn’t call the police.
“He was not some drunk that was wielding an ax, walking around threatening people,” Tiffany Townsend told KTVU. “He didn't do that. He carried tools with him all the time. Your car would be broke on the side of the road and my uncle would see you and help you.”
A store employee also told KTVU that
“You could see her charging her gun at Brownie telling him to put his ax down while he was at the store,” said Tolin’s store employee Riad Elhai. “[The ax] was in his hand facing the floor... She was telling him to put his ax down. He would just tell her, ‘For what? I didn't do nothing'. And when he was trying to walk out the store… that's when she started to shoot the gun at him.”
Polk's 16-year-old son is now left without either parent since his mother died three months ago from cancer.
 Photos of Vigil | Serial Killers of the Oakland Police Department Strike Again
Other recent police shootings and homicides in Oakland:
Parnell Smith
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Lovelle Mixon
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Oscar Grant
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Gary King
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Jerry Andrew Amaro
On Sunday, August 2, the documentary William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe will screen in Berkeley as part of the Jewish Film Festival. The late civil rights attorney William Kunstler was one of the most famous and controversial lawyers of the 20th century. He represented civil rights and anti-war activists, as well as accused terrorists and murderers.
On Monday, July 20th, Oakland's Street Level Health Project held a community rally and press conference in response to the burglary and vandalism of the center that took place the night before. The perpetrators of the attack broke equipment, destroyed wall paintings and files, and stole three computers.The break-in took place while the security cameras were down due to repairs. This has forced SLHP to close down for a week and turn away people seeking health services.
The community rally on Monday brought together an amazing level of local support for Street Level Health Project / Proyecto de Salud para Todos. The staff, volunteers, board members, partner organizations and community members of Street Level gathered to speak out against the acts of vandalism and attack, and bring together the community. The rally focused on moving forward with strength, hope and unity to continue and expand Street Level's work in the community. As Jane Garcia, CEO of La Clinica de La Raza, stated, "in the long run this is a small thing, nothing more than a mosquito bite. The important thing is to move forward together." Laura Perez, director of SLHP, expressed during the rally that "when my staff began to trickle in one-by-one on the night of the attack, I felt like my family was coming back to our home, and something back inside me to have the strength to go onward." Everyone who spoke at the rally expressed their pleasure at seeing so many supporters from so many different communities and organizations, all coming together to build a stronger sense of community in the wake of this attack.
Street Level Health Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of under-served urban immigrant communities in the Bay Area. The organization is an entry point to the health care system for those most often overlooked and neglected, namely the uninsured, under-insured, and recently arrived. Read more
Oakland's Street Level Health Project offices broken into and vandalized | Press release: Oakland's Street Level Health Project Burglarized
Related story: Closing of Women’s Choice Clinic Mourned by Community Members
On Saturday, July 25, the 2nd annual Bay Area Bike 4 Life will be held in Oakland, starting near Lake Merritt and ending up at DeFremery Park. Bikes for Life (B4L) is a community social enterprise in West Oakland promoting peace and a call for a gun truce. Bike 4 Life will feature a scraper bike video shoot, skateboarding, rock climbing, basketball tournament, baseball game, and Circus Bella all happening simultaneously.
Over six months have passed since the murder of Oscar Grant III and BART has yet to tell the truth about what happened on January 1st, nor has a single employee been held accountable. On July 16th, No Justice No BART boarded BART trains to inform thousands of people about what happened on the Fruitvale BART platform moments before Oscar Grant was murdered, and the lies told by Police Chief Gary Gee shortly thereafter.
"Copwatch 13" writes: Two Oakland police officers, Phong Tran and Scott Hewitt, shot and killed Parnell Smith on Wednesday, July 15th, near the corner of 16th Avenue and International Boulevard. Smith, who was unarmed when he was shot, was running away from Tran and Hewitt as they fired on him. On Thursday, when grilled about why police would shoot Smith if he was only running away, Oakland Police Spokesman Jeff Thomason initially said, "This was a gunfight...it was a gun battle that took place in the streets of Oakland." However, on Friday, Thomason acknowledged that his earlier statements were premature.
Advance the Struggle writes:"The murder of Oscar Grant set Oakland on fire, but who put the fire out? The working class people of Oakland, their consciousness set ablaze, found an inadequate set of organizational tools at their disposal to do the work that deep down we all know has to be done – confront the state (government) and its underlying property relations."
On July 13th, defense attorneys for Joseph Buddenberg, Maryam Khajavi, Nathan Pope and Adriana Stumpo (the AETA 4) presented oral arguments on their motion to strike down the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). The AETA 4 are being represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), and other well-respected civil rights attorneys, including Tony Serra. The defense demanded that AETA be struck down as unconstitutional before Judge Ronald Whyte of the United States District Court, Northern District of California in San Jose.
Since early January, dozens and dozens of posts related to justice for Oscar Grant have been published to Indybay — video, audio, photos, and reports such as first hand accounts of protests, court hearings, and more. In order to consolidate the history and latest developments in the movement for justice for Oscar Grant, this feature was created. It centralizes the multitude of related stories and has its own unique web address: www.indybay.org/oscargrant.
Over the July 4th traffic on Interstate 80, “torture victims and detainees” staged a banner display on the University Avenue overpass in Berkeley. World Can’t Wait has demonstrated on this overpass action every 4th of July since 2006. This year the focus was on the torture state forged under Bush – and now being continued and refined by Obama – as witnessed by the thousands who passed the display. The act of civil disobedience slowed northbound traffic along I-80.
On Saturday, June 20, activists gathered at Trader Joe’s in Oakland and San Francisco to demand that the company stop carrying Israeli goods. Protesters removed Israeli products from the shelves in order to show customers which products they should not buy. They also met with the store managers and asked them to notify their headquarters that they no longer wanted to carry Israeli herbs, couscous and cheese. Similar actions were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. The activists were inspired by campaigns to deshelve Israeli products in Wales and France.
The demolition of the Bevatron, a.k.a. Building 51 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), is scheduled to begin in July. The demolition will include the removal of radioactive waste, trucked down University Avenue covered with tarps. According to the LBNL website, 1000-1200 truckloads of the 4700 "may contain hazardous or radioactive material." A press conference will take place on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6:30pm in front of Berkeley City Hall in order to draw attention to this blatant disregard for the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.
After print-runs for the SF and NY Anarchist Book Fairs, a magazine entitled Unfinished Acts: January Rebellions is now available on Indybay in digital format. The magazine is a collective recounting and analysis of events surrounding the shooting of the unarmed, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III by BART police officers in the early hours of 2009 on the Fruitvale station platform.
On May 27th, mayor of Richmond Gayle McLaughlin attended the Chevron Shareholder's meeting, along with delegates representing Nigeria, Burma, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Philippines, and Canada. The delegates introduced to the meeting this year's alternative Chevron annual report: The True Cost of Chevron. The annual report documents the ecological and human damage caused by mismanagement of infrastructure, laborers, and the environment.
The preliminary hearing in the trial of Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant III began on May 18th. Indybay has reports from inside the court room during the entire hearing. Outside the court house, demonstrators have gathered to press for an effective prosecution of Johannes Mehserle. The hearing concluded on June 4th when Judge Clay declared that Mehserle will stand trial for murder. The family of Oscar Grant gratefully acknowledged community activists and supporters who rallied at the court house.
11AM Saturday Nov 7
Children's Samhain
5:30PM Saturday Nov 7
A Room of Their Own
7PM Saturday Nov 7
Gourmet East Bay
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