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A Message From the Berkeley Post Office Defenders
A statement on the raid on the Berkeley Post Office encampment 8/28/13, and an appeal.
On the evening of August 28th, most Berkeley Post Office camp
residents and supporters were in Oakland celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington and protesting against the
murders of Trayvon Martin, Alan Blueford, Oscar Grant and many others
by police and police surrogates. The Berkeley Police Department saw
fit to use this opportunity to raid the encampment and "confiscate
abandoned property" that in fact they knew very well belonged to
protesters, stealing the possessions and sheltering of homeless
Berkeley residents.
Using as a blank check a report released by the City Manager
detailing incidents in and around the camp - some of which took place
blocks away from the Post Office, some of which involved camp
participants as victims, some of which had nothing to do with the
encampment at all, and filled with lies, half-truths and distortions
- twenty BPD officers swept through the camp Wednesday evening.
Just a day before, Berkeley's Mayor Bates was quoted as saying
"They're a bunch of double-dealing sons of bitches." He was not
talking about campers, but about those in the Post Office and the
Postal Regulatory Commission responsible for dismissing his appeal of
the decision to sell the Berkeley Post Office! That the Mayor would
then look the other way while allowing the First and Fourth Amendment
rights of protesters - who could be the only thing standing in the way
of the sale besides a very costly, very uncertain, lawsuit - to be
trampled on by BPD is an encapsulation of just how far down the road
to a police state controlled by the one percent we have come.
This is not just a fight about a single building
and a few jobs! It is a fight for the presevation of half a million
living wage public Postal Service jobs; jobs the privatizers would
like to see become McJobs or be eliminated entirely. It is a fight for
the Public Commons: those who would privatize the Post Office are
scheming to privatize roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, medical care
and your Social Security. If we are not willing to defend the notion
of a public Post Office as guaranteed by our Constitution what will be
giving up next?
Berkeley has a choice. It can defend the democratic will of its own
people - as expressed vociferously in public forums and by its City
Council and its elected representatives - by any and all means
necessary, or it can meekly accede to a bureaucratic process whose end
is now a foregone conclusion.
What say you, people of Berkeley and of the US?
-- The Berkeley Post Office Defenders.
----------
On Saturday August 30th at 11:30 AM a press conference to be followed
by music and a rally will take place at the Berkeley Post Office, 2000
Allston Way. Berkeley Post Officer defenders will discuss the recent
raid by the Berkeley Police and future actions to be taken against the
sale of the Berkeley Post Office and the privatization of our commons.
residents and supporters were in Oakland celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington and protesting against the
murders of Trayvon Martin, Alan Blueford, Oscar Grant and many others
by police and police surrogates. The Berkeley Police Department saw
fit to use this opportunity to raid the encampment and "confiscate
abandoned property" that in fact they knew very well belonged to
protesters, stealing the possessions and sheltering of homeless
Berkeley residents.
Using as a blank check a report released by the City Manager
detailing incidents in and around the camp - some of which took place
blocks away from the Post Office, some of which involved camp
participants as victims, some of which had nothing to do with the
encampment at all, and filled with lies, half-truths and distortions
- twenty BPD officers swept through the camp Wednesday evening.
Just a day before, Berkeley's Mayor Bates was quoted as saying
"They're a bunch of double-dealing sons of bitches." He was not
talking about campers, but about those in the Post Office and the
Postal Regulatory Commission responsible for dismissing his appeal of
the decision to sell the Berkeley Post Office! That the Mayor would
then look the other way while allowing the First and Fourth Amendment
rights of protesters - who could be the only thing standing in the way
of the sale besides a very costly, very uncertain, lawsuit - to be
trampled on by BPD is an encapsulation of just how far down the road
to a police state controlled by the one percent we have come.
This is not just a fight about a single building
and a few jobs! It is a fight for the presevation of half a million
living wage public Postal Service jobs; jobs the privatizers would
like to see become McJobs or be eliminated entirely. It is a fight for
the Public Commons: those who would privatize the Post Office are
scheming to privatize roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, medical care
and your Social Security. If we are not willing to defend the notion
of a public Post Office as guaranteed by our Constitution what will be
giving up next?
Berkeley has a choice. It can defend the democratic will of its own
people - as expressed vociferously in public forums and by its City
Council and its elected representatives - by any and all means
necessary, or it can meekly accede to a bureaucratic process whose end
is now a foregone conclusion.
What say you, people of Berkeley and of the US?
-- The Berkeley Post Office Defenders.
----------
On Saturday August 30th at 11:30 AM a press conference to be followed
by music and a rally will take place at the Berkeley Post Office, 2000
Allston Way. Berkeley Post Officer defenders will discuss the recent
raid by the Berkeley Police and future actions to be taken against the
sale of the Berkeley Post Office and the privatization of our commons.
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
This assault on the Public Commons is also going on in Canada by the Canada Post Corporation trying to take away the CUPW- Canadian Union of Postal Workers Collective Barganing as its core organizing method to improve living and working conditions.
The mail carriers are fighting back in most cities and towns and villages, but the Canada Post executive with support from the Harper Neo-Cons Minority is threatening and firing Public Sector Unions and imposing draconian conditions on the workers to reduce their wages, pensions and hard won conditions that improve work days etc.
It is part and parcel of a sweeping Austerity program that the Monopoly Capitalist system is pushing to cover their expenses as they war aggressively against the ecological organic balances of the planets web-of-life.
This crisis is worldwide and includes assaulting the Royal Mail in the United Kingdom as well as the Unites States. The system is in crisis because they have been making the private profits on pushing pollution for their main motive force by tooling the main means of production with coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy which destroys the planets livability.
The entire working class must Unite to Re-tool the entire industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity.
The system needs changing to a workers state that ends exploitation of the plants, animals, people and ends pollution of the air, land, and water. That too is a worldwide crisis.
Austerity is not protecting the workers in the pubic commons, nor in the communities in which they live. Austerity is failure in all sections of the organized working classes. We need a 'Workers Commonwealth' to full employment with unions that protect members again, and free up the public education, and medicare to society so well-beingness becomes the goal of the whole society.
End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. You yet have a world to win!! Workers of the world unite!! Save the Berkley Post Office, it is part of the peoples cultural heritage!
The mail carriers are fighting back in most cities and towns and villages, but the Canada Post executive with support from the Harper Neo-Cons Minority is threatening and firing Public Sector Unions and imposing draconian conditions on the workers to reduce their wages, pensions and hard won conditions that improve work days etc.
It is part and parcel of a sweeping Austerity program that the Monopoly Capitalist system is pushing to cover their expenses as they war aggressively against the ecological organic balances of the planets web-of-life.
This crisis is worldwide and includes assaulting the Royal Mail in the United Kingdom as well as the Unites States. The system is in crisis because they have been making the private profits on pushing pollution for their main motive force by tooling the main means of production with coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy which destroys the planets livability.
The entire working class must Unite to Re-tool the entire industrial revolution to the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which transforms to electricity.
The system needs changing to a workers state that ends exploitation of the plants, animals, people and ends pollution of the air, land, and water. That too is a worldwide crisis.
Austerity is not protecting the workers in the pubic commons, nor in the communities in which they live. Austerity is failure in all sections of the organized working classes. We need a 'Workers Commonwealth' to full employment with unions that protect members again, and free up the public education, and medicare to society so well-beingness becomes the goal of the whole society.
End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. You yet have a world to win!! Workers of the world unite!! Save the Berkley Post Office, it is part of the peoples cultural heritage!
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