SEIU 1021 Port Workers are Going on Strike against Unfair Labor Practices engaged in by the Port of Oakland. The Port of Oakland has a $37 million surplus, yet refuses to give workers the proper information that they are required to by law. This is one of the richest Port’s in Oakland, the Federal Government has invested in the expansion of the Port to create good jobs in Oakland
SEIU was there at the General Strike on November 2nd, 2011. SEIU members walked with Occupy Oakland as we shut down the Port on December 12, 2011. Now they have asked for Occupy Oakland’s help!
COMMUNITY PICKET SHUTTLES COURTESY OF THE SEIU WILL BE LEAVING THE WEST OAKLAND BART STARTING AT 5:00 AM !!
— Shuttles will pick people up from West Oakland BART station from 5 AM to 8AM, 12 NOON and again from 4 PM to 6 PM.
— Buses will be picking up from the Union Hall at 100 OAK St. throughout the day.
— Shuttles will return people to West Oakland BART from 7-8 PM. and now the Port is refusing to Bargain.
Stop Unfair Labor Practices at the Port!
Support SEIU 1021 strike!
SEIU is asking for your support!
Please come out on Tuesday, November 21 at the Port of Oakland:
9 AM: SSA Terminal 1717 Middle Harbor, Berth 57-59
12 Noon: Terminal 1 Oakland Airport
5 PM: SSA Terminal 1717 Middle Harbor, Berth 57-59
Jodie Randolph is a small-business owner in Alameda.
Morgan Stanley’s earnings for the last three months were $7.6 billion dollars, or about $2.5 billion per month.
Jodie Randolph is a breast-cancer survivor.
Morgan Stanley is legally a person, but doesn’t have breasts. Instead, it has assets of $311 billion.
Jodie Randolph is in treatment for colon cancer.
Morgan Stanley doesn’t have a colon either. Instead, it takes care of its $311 billion in assets by shedding jobs — about 4500, or 7% of its work force, last
quarter.
Jodie Randolph on the porch of her small house in Alameda, CA
Jodie Randolph and her possessions are about to go out onto the street, because Morgan Stanley has something better to do with her home than let her live there.
Jodie has been fighting to stay in her home for years. Companies affiliated with Morgan Stanley shuttled the loan around from one subsidiary to the other until they foreclosed on her. Morgan Stanley’s tactics have included:
pushing her into a predatory refinance.
Moving her loan around from company to company so she couldn’t get a fix on who to negotiate with
Removing the lawyer for Morgan Stanley who was actually negotiating with Jodie when they were close to reaching a mutually acceptable plan; and
Stunningly, breaking in and changing the locks to her house WHILE SHE WAS AT A CHEMOTHERAPY SESSION
Since lawyers have failed her, Jodie is fighting back the people’s way.
Jodie talks about her fight with Morgan Stanley et al, spanning years and increasing in desperation.
On Monday, Jodie, supported by a delegation of her family, friends, neighbors, the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and other foreclosure activists went to the Bay Area offices of Morgan Stanley to present her demand letter: a reasonable repurchase plan, including principal reduction.
When the truck comes Tuesday morning (yes, Election Day morning!) to take away her furniture and leave her on the street people from all those groups will be on that street to stop that truck.
Here’s how you can help.
If you are in the area and want to participate in the eviction defense tomorrow or on subsequent days:
If you aren’t in the area or want to help from home, please call
John Sheldon
Morgan Stanley Executive Director
San Francisco
415-576-2083
on Tuesday morning and tell him to stop the eviction of Jodie Randolph at
1624 Foley Avenue, Alameda, CA 94501.
Directions to Jodie’s house:
Directions to Jodie Randolph’s home @ 1624 Foley, Alameda, CA.
People can start showing up after 8:00 AM Tuesday, November 6th.
Via BART: Go to FruitVale BART. Walk west to Fruitvale Ave, South (towards Freeway & Bay) on Fruitvale, across the bridge. Street turns into Tilden Ave and bears right. Follow Tilden to Buena Vista Ave, turn right. Two short blocks to Foley. Turn left. 1624 is about half way down the street on your left. About 4/5ths of a mile total.
By bicycle: International towards Fruitvale, right on 29th Ave, across bridge. Street turns into Park St. Follow Park three or four blocks, turn left on Buena Vista Ave. Right on Foley. 1624 is about half way down the street on your left.
By car: Take I880 South to Fruitvale exit. Exit onto Elmwood Ave. Two blocks to the intersection of Fruitvale & Elmwood. Turn right onto Fruitvale, go across bridge. Road turns into Tilden & bears to the right. Follow Tilden a few blocks. Turn right on Buena Vista Ave. One short block, turn left on Foley. 1624 is about half way down the street on your left.
If you really need information, or you really need a ride, the hotline is 510-207-0182. (No ride guarantees, but we might be able to work something out).
If you want to get text alerts subscribe to the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group’s emergency alert system:
Text ‘ooforeclosure’ to 69302.
The most important thing to do is to be there Tuesday to a) stop the eviction and b) organize to make sure the eviction continues to not happen.
One year ago to the day, in the wee hours of the morning of October 25th, 2011, armed thugs invaded the newly-named Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland. Bringing with them tear gas, batons and military style arms, they gassed, beat, dragged and kidnapped people who were doing nothing more or less threatening than sleeping in tents or sitting in the plaza keeping vigil. As one Occupier caught up in the gotterdammerung, Allie123, wrote
At around 4:30 AM the police came from everywhere… A line of police in full riot gear with huge guns pointed their weapons at us… the police tear gassed us… I heard huge explosions… I was the first person taken.
The intent of this action was clear: to strike enough fear into the hearts and minds of the Occupiers that they would vanish into the mist, departing to points unknown, never to bother the good burghers of Oakland again. This was the first attempt at mass violence used by the state against Occupiers. True, there had been kettling and mass arrests in New York, and a few police pepper-spraying a few protesters apparently at random. But there had been as yet no concerted, centrally directed attempt to eradicate by both physical and psychological violence an Occupy site and by projection an entire local movement.
Some seem to have willfully forgotten that the Oakland Commune banner flew over the camp at Frank Ogawa / Oscar Grant Plaza during it’s hey day. Lest this amnesia spread, let’s remember what the Oakland Commune did.
Before it was known as such, and before the first tents were pitched in front of City Hall, the Oakland Commune came together in Mosswood Park because the winds were changing, the spirit of Occupy Wall Street (inspired, at least in part, by what had taken place in the Bay Area not more than two years previous) was spreading to towns across the country, and it was time for Oakland to take part.
At the height of its popularity, the Oakland Commune fed over 1,000 a day at pretty much any hour with no exceptions made. Basic First Aid, mental and emotional support were also provided to anyone who asked, all of these being extended to those abandoned by city, state and national policies that go back at least as far as Reagan.
The Oakland Commune sought to shatter the illusion that we are a wholly united 99%, an idea that weakened the movement with each racist, misogynist and homophobic remark. Instead, it sought, though often admittedly failed, to provide safe spaces for women, queers and people of color. Where it did fail, it tried to rectify through mediation and facilitation.
As much as the Oakland Commune looked to Occupy to bring people together, it also looked to the decades of hard work that the people of Oakland have put into fighting foreclosures, imperial wars, racist police violence and austerity measures that unravel the few remaining public services in this cash-strapped town.
When the first camp fell, the Oakland Commune rallied while the Oakland Unified School District decide to shutter five schools in underserved neighborhoods and Oakland Police shot tear gas into a crowd of thousands, nearly killing Scott Olsen and firing rubber bullets at the people who came to his assistance.
The Oakland Commune fretted over whether the port-a-potties could be serviced before, during and after the November 2nd General Strike. That same day, and also on December 12th, the Oakland Commune came together to shut down the Port of Oakland in protest of Goldman Sachs stranglehold on the city (a stranglehold that the City Council itself would attempt to loosen with a vote to end the debt swap months later).
When the camps were gone, the Oakland Commune dissolved in body and spread to new spaces.
The Oakland Commune traveled with a thousand others to San Quentin to support one of the most successful and least reported successes of Occupy Oakland’s tenure, Occupy for Prisoners, and joined the farmers, professional and otherwise, to Take Back the Tract. The Commune supported the sit-in that occupied one of the aforementioned shuttered schools and helped open the Biblioteca Popular (now run by the community it serves).
The Oakland Commune continues on not only in the form of raucous street parties, but in the form of campaigns against fare hikes that threaten the most precarious of communities, assemblies of workers and the unemployed, in solidarity marches with the victims of police violence from Oakland to Montreal to Anaheim to Lonmin.
For all of these actions to which it lent support, the Oakland Commune sought no credit or claim.
While Occupy Oakland wouldn’t have existed without the Oakland Commune, the Oakland Commune continues on in a new forms. So while a few seem to be fighting hard for the name and brand of Occupy, the Oakland Commune continues to fight for a life worth living.
Three developments in these last few days have given pause to those who believe the Oakland Police will remain, as they have for so many decades, untouchable.
The Oakland Police Department has a sordid history going back at least to the 1960′s when unremitting police brutality spurred on the formation of the Black Panther Party, one of whose principal goals was the protection of African-American neighborhoods from the police.
For decades officers have ruled the streets of Oakland much as an occupying army (1), willfully ignorant of the Bill of Rights, impervious to the political attacks on their power that wax and wane as City administrations come and go, and able to shrug off multiple assaults by civil rights attorneys — which end up costing the taxpayers, but not Oakland’s Police Department, millions of dollars a year in civil rights settlements.
Even when forced to sign onto agreements (‘negotiated settlements’) in 2003 and then 2005 which promised drastic reforms in their policies and procedures, they have been able to effectively ignore those court-approved and monitored settlements through into the current decade. The latest but certainly not the only manifestation of this was their handling of Occupy Oakland, in direct violation of both settlement agreements.
But when your house is invaded by banksters? The Federal government is of no use. Calling Jaime Dimon produces a recording of hysterical laughter. Prayers have not been shown to have any efficacy in stopping the sheriff from tossing your kids out onto the street. Lawyers cost the money you don’t have and usually can’t do much anyway. And even if they want to seek help, people are often ashamed.
What to do?
It’s not for the faint of heart, but those who are angry enough to be willing to fight back on the edge of the law have one last resort — calling Occupy and friends.
“Unruly mobs” of Occupy activists and other home defender groups such as ACCE have formed all across the country, pledging to draw a line in the sidewalk to not allow foreclosures, auctions and evictions by invasive banksters to take place — not without a fight anyway. From Minnesota to Atlanta, from Eugene to Brooklyn, from Detroit to Los Angeles and Anaheim, From San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and Stockton to Maine, auctions have been disrupted, evictions prevented, people organized, and sufficient publicity generated to force banksters into modifying loans they once claimed were impossible to rework and unevict people they thought they had removed.
Workers locked out of the Castlewood Country Club in Pleasanton, California since February 25th, 2010 will be able to return to their jobs — and health care coverage — on October 16th.
After a judge ruled that Castlewood Country Club workers were illegally locked out for more than two years, the employees will be allowed to return Oct. 16.
A month ago a federal judge, finding that Castlewood Country Club had engaged in unfair labor practices and failure to negotiate in good faith, ordered the Castlewood workers reinstated with back pay, giving Castlewood management a month to appeal. Choosing not to appeal, management asked for and was granted additional time to negotiate a settlement with the workers and UNITE HERE, local 2850, the union that represents them. This is the first fruit of that negotiation.
This step, having the lockout end and returning the workers to their jobs under the terms of their old contract, is just the beginning, but it is incredibly important. It means that the worst of it is finally over for dozens of workers who have kept up the struggle for more than two and a half years. From UNITE HERE’s press release:
“Ive been praying for this day to arrive,” said Castlewood janitor Maria Munoz. “I feel really happy now, and thankful to all the people and organizations and churches and bands who have come out to support us. And most of all thankful for my co-workers, who were always out there looking out for each other — I feel lucky that they’ve become like family to me.”
A new contract, and the exact terms of how much back pay will be provided and to whom, are still to be negotiated.
In 2012, Alan Blueford was shot by OPD while trying to escape.
We know this is but one of many incidents in Oakland’s sordid past…
…
In 2007 unarmed Charles Davis was shot in the back and paralyzed…
In 2008 unarmed Jody Woodfox was shot dead while trying to escape…
In 2009 unarmed Oscar Grant was shot dead lying flat on his back…
In 2010 unarmed Derrick Jones was shot dead while trying to escape…
In 2011 unarmed Raheim Brown was assassinated in his car…
…
The next time you read a newspaper article about how an unarmed man was killed by the police “because they thought he had a weapon” or “because he reached for his waistband” think about what you are reading, and recall this quote from a New York District Attorney after his run-in with NYPD:
Read The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, so that you can talk intelligently and persuasively about the problems that revolve around the police and our criminal justice system.
