The building unveiled today as the Victor Martinez Community Library was part of a Carnegie Foundation endowment of four libraries given to the city of Oakland between 1916 and 1918. Oakland’s librarian at the time, Charles S. Greene, believed that the city’s people would benefit most from libraries placed within their communities.
Despite this vision, the building was one of seven branch casualties of budget cuts in the late seventies, severing vital library life-lines in poor and working communities. From the early 70s untill the late 80s, this building was a school created during the Chicano Movement called the Emiliano Zapata Street academy. Since then, the “Latin American Branch” library building located at the corner of Miller and 15th st. has mostly sat empty, despite the fact that the next nearest library is miles away, and increasingly difficult to access in a city like Oakland with an increasingly expensive transit system. With its eroding chain link fence and decaying, armored exterior, the building is much more than an eyesore; the unused, but inaccessible, space creates a life-draining dark vacuum of stability that serves at best as a convenient place for the unscrupulous to dump their old mattresses, couches and assorted garbage.
This morning, a group of activists opened this building again for use as a library. Inside is the modest seed for a library and community center—hundreds of books donated by people who envision the rebirth of local, community-owned libraries and social and political centers throughout Oakland. We’ve named the building after recently deceased author, Victor Martinez, who overcame a young life of hard agricultural work to become a successful writer in the Bay Area. His semi-autobiographical novel, Parrot in the Oven, has become a seminal work of the Latino experience. Martinez died last year at 56 of an illness caused by his work in the fields.
If you live in this community, we only ask that you think about how you can use this building. Name it anything you like. Purpose it to any goal that benefits the community—library, social or political neighborhood center. All we ask is that you consider keeping it out of the hands of a city which will only seal the fence and doors again, turning the space back into an aggregator of the city’s trash and a dark hole in the middle of an embattled community. The doors here are open. And there are many others simply waiting to be.
Update: Occupy Oakland announces a community potluck at 6pm local time and poetry/spoken word reading at 7pm at the Library tonight! Community members are requesting gardening supplies, trash pick-up, and other help. Check their Twitter account for more Update, 8/14:Late last night, dozens of Oakland police arrived on scene, confiscated donated books, looked the gates with zip-ties, and boarded up the building to make sure it remains a blighted, decaying building. Thanks for keeping the neighborhood safe, OPD! Community members are meeting to discuss future plans. *Update, 8/15: The Library lives on, now on the sidewalk! Though the inside remains closed, the space continues to be a much-needed community center outdoors. They have requested donations of books, especially children's books which are very popular with the neighbors. There is also a community garden and supplies would be helpful. Hooray community building! Follow them on Twitter for the latest events and ways to get involved at the Library.
Calling on all Occupiers and friends of the Occupy Movement –
At the beginning of September, Charlotte, NC will host the 2012 Democratic National Convention. The Democratic Party has chosen this “Wall Street of the South” as its rallying city despite North Carolina being one of the most anti-union states in the country and despite Charlotte being the home of several corporate criminals, most notably Bank of America, one of the mega-banks most responsible for the 2008 economic meltdown. Charlotte holds the second largest concentration of finance capital in the United States, the East Coast headquarters of Wells Fargo, the new home of human-rights offender Chiquita, and the home of Duke Energy, which recently merged with Progress Energy, making Duke the largest energy monopoly in the country.
These corporate targets alone are reason enough to OCCUPY WALL STREET SOUTH. But early September will also provide the opportunity to OCCUPY THE DNC, to demonstrate to the country and the world that we know corporations own our politicians and ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE.
Both the Democratic and Republican Parties are controlled by moneyed interests and the 1%, and the Occupy Movement will hold both Parties accountable at the RNC in Tampa in August and at the DNC in Charlotte in September. We cannot allow this two-party system and its corporate puppeteers to determine our country’s destiny. While we recognize the historical significance of President Obama’s election, we will not sit idly by as the Administration favors corporations and the 1%, tramples civil liberties, and wages tragic wars.
We will continue to hold President Obama’s Administration accountable for refusing to close Guantanamo Bay, for not insisting on true universal healthcare, for deporting our immigrant brothers and sisters in record numbers, for working to expedite approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, for signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for utilizing secret kill lists, for continuing to wage perpetual warfare, for failing to bring to justice those responsible for the economic crisis, and for its documented systematic effort to quash Occupations throughout the country.
We will continue to hold the Democratic Party accountable for pandering to corporate interests, including the military industrial complex which has caused the deaths of millions around the world; for inadequately funding social programs, education, health care, and infrastructure; for encouraging financial fraud by granting amnesties and bailout money and by rehiring financial criminals to the Administration’s Cabinet and to the Treasury Department; for promoting worldwide distrust of and animosity towards the United States through a dangerously expanding imperialistic war economy; and for colluding with the Republican Party to thwart ballot-access to third-party and independent candidates.
We will continue to hold Charlotte’s Democrat-controlled City Council accountable for passing repressive and unconstitutional permanent changes to the Charlotte City Code which restrict free speech and assembly, open wide the door for profiling protesters and the homeless, and evicted the peaceful protest taking place on The People’s Lawn of Old City Hall.
And we will continue to hold WALL STREET SOUTH accountable for abusing and profiting off of the hard work and perseverance of ordinary people — the 99% — and giving nothing in return but layoffs, foreclosures, and demands for corporate welfare.
We want a true democracy. A country by and for the People. Not a country by and for the corporations and the 1%.
We the People of Occupy Charlotte call on all People willing and able to join us here in Charlotte for an OCCUPATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION from September 1st – 6th. There will be many opportunities to take action before and during the Convention. THE MARCH ON WALL STREET SOUTH will take place on Sunday, September 2nd.
If you cannot be with us here in Charlotte, take action in your own community on September 6th when President Obama accepts the nomination. Find the closest Democratic Party campaign office and protest the misdeeds of the Administration, the Democratic Party and the two-party system, and the corporations who control currently control our electoral process and buy our representatives.
When you arrive in Charlotte, please be mindful that Occupy Charlotte is a nonviolent movement. Other Occupations have experienced violent police repression. However, the majority of officers within the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department have treated Occupy Charlotte with respect and vice versa. We hope that this respectful relationship will continue well past the Democratic National Convention, and we appreciate any efforts visitors can make to help us maintain this relationship.
Interested in being involved with the planning, making a donation, or finding out more about Charlotte? Please visit occupyclt.net and occupythednc.us.
OCCUPY THE DNC!
OCCUPY WALL STREET SOUTH!
OCCUPY CHARLOTTE!
Occupy Tampa has stood in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street since its inception, and will function as the host occupation for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL on August 27th – 30th, 2012.
Preparations have included: 1) Securing sleeping arrangements for as many occupiers as we can fit in our current encampment. In order to maximize available space to accommodate as many people as possible, we will (2) remove individual tents and replace them with large canopies to offer shade and protection from the weather. (3) Our liaison with Fire Dog Lake, Sonja Ebron, continues to work with Occupy Tampa by securing items such as sunscreen, bug spray, bandanas, portable water containers, sleeping bags and mats, UV protective shirts and other useful items.
Occupy Tampa has formed a Regional General Assembly to coordinate Occupy groups throughout the bay area, including: Occupy Lakeland, Occupy St. Petersburg, Occupy Bradenton, Occupy USF, Occupy New Port Richey, and Occupy Sarasota. We have tried to plan as much as possible ahead of time, but we want to leave space open to spontaneously produce additional actions by harnessing the number of people that arrive.
Food Not Bombs has called a World Gathering and plans to run feeding operations throughout the duration of the RNC. A week before the Republican National Convention, chapters of Food Not Bombs from every corner of the globe will convene in order to prepare to feed the thousands of protesters flooding into the city. FNB will serve brunch everyday at 10 am, at Voice of Freedom Park, and will also serve dinner before the General Assemblies. We will offer warm-ups at 9 am, including yoga & other light exercises.
We invite everyone to come and take advantage of the preparations we have made, to help ensure that all occupiers and other supporting groups can use this moment of national attention to confront the political status-quo.
We currently occupy a privately-owned, publicly accessible park (fittingly named “Voice of Freedom). The owner has donated the space for use by the Occupy Movement. Facilities include: running water, two port-a-potties, parking, Internet access, and electricity.
from the editors of OccupyWallSt.org: we know times are tough, but if you're able, please click here to contribute. Share everywhere! Love, respect, and solidarity forever! <3
This campaign is for expanding crucial Occupy media efforts (we represent OccupyWallSt.org, Occupied Wall Street Journal, Occupy Together, @OccupyWallSt, OccupyWallSt Facebook page, etc.) as well as supporting direct action organizing. The people behind these crucial projects have been working on daily basis for nearly a year for little or no pay. Our goal is to help support them with living stipends so they can continue working without having to choose between going hungry or promoting social justice. We also believe that with modest compensation, these people will be able to focus and expand their efforts and help bring Occupy back into the public eye.
For this purpose, we've set up a 501c4 not-for-profit corporation known as The Occupy Solidarity Network, Inc. which is capable of both receiving and disbursing funds in a transparent manner that complies with US laws and regulations. This corporation was founded by day one organizers to avoid paying a fiscal sponsor. All resources raised by this campaign support the following proposal.
THE NEED
May 1st, 2012 had been planned for months, with actions that occurred all over the country. Yet, despite over 20K people on the streets both domestically and abroad, the mainstream news coverage was lackluster at best. However, with the website destinations and social media entities that command very large #occupy audiences (@occupywallst=162.8K followers, @occupytogether=36K followers, OccupyWallSt fan page on Facebook=388K fans, OccupyTogether fan page on Facebook=222K fans) we have been able to keep the attention of the public and bring them to the streets with our reach and our message. Engagement continues to grow, despite media reporting of #occupy being over, people keep coming to the destinations and continue to engage with the material presented for reading, livestreamers to take viewers on the web into on the ground political demonstrations, and forums to communicate with each other.
THE VISION
It is integral to build a culture of political engagement in the United States that ties into the international struggle of false austerity imposed by governments controlled by big business. We see our role as that of classic agitation through the sharing of curated information. We see our role as organizers to bring people into the street. We see this effort, as presented, as lasting between two to five years. We have no intention to institutionalize the conversation that #occupy has started. Our goal is to bring as many people into the street as possible until power bends to the will of the people. This can arrive in the form of reformist policies, a new government, or even a society that doesn't need government. Our job is not to determine the outcome, but to amplify the voices and intentions of the #occupy movement.
THE TEAM
The OWS Media team is comprised of individuals who have been promoting the efforts of the #occupy movement since before September 17th. Many of us are day one organizers who are media or NGO workers, unemployed at the time of the occupation call, and built tools immediately to service the movement. In our team are programmers, writers, photographers, graphic designers, movers and shakers who have created some of the most revered media of #occupy which include the We Are the 99 Percent tumblr blog (selected as “MicroBlog of the Year” at the 2012 Shorty Awards by Tumblr founder David Karp), OccupyWallSt.org (Primary source for information on plugging into #occupy), Occupy Together (partnered with Meetup.com to provide a simple platform for organizing demonstrations and outreach efforts), and The Occupied Wall Street Journal (called the “newspaper of record” for #occupy by The New Yorker).
THE HISTORY
OccupyWallst.org was registered and created in July, 2011 shortly after the call from Adbusters. The founder, Justine Tunney, is also a founding member of the NYCGA Internet Working Group (which later became Tech Ops). Prior to September 17th, Justine and the team at occupywallst.org built a forums area, chat, and mapping features that were integral for people coming to #occupywallstreet from outside of New York City. A phone number was created and staffed by five people to answer all of the press calls that came in as well as answering questions about donations and ways to support from afar. OccupyTogether.org was founded early in the #occupy movement. Within 48 hours the site began to go viral reaching over 18k page "likes" in the first week and 1.77 million post views. since then it has continued to assist in organizing efforts by reaching out to communities outside of NYC. The Occupied Wall Street Journal was published in the first three weeks of the Zuccotti Park occupation. The paper became one of the strongest outreach tools and now provides content for several web outlets, including The Nation among others. These three media destinations have been sharing skills, content, and resources since being founded. Decisions are made democratically and responsibilities are shared.
THE PLAN
We need investment to both compensate the people working on this effort and to make the operation sustainable at least through the next two years. We are seeking funding to maximize the email list that we have been building (by purchasing a database/CRM system), to drive fundraising, engagement, and funding of direct actions. We would like to create a worker cooperative of the team members involved in the three teams. We will continue to market and promote the #occupy movement to people in the United States as well as provide a place for organizing. When the #occupywallstreet movement ends, we will divest the remaining financial resources left into community organizations based in the top five actively engaged communities.
If you would like to send a check you can mail it to:
The Occupy Solidarity Network
237 Flatbush Avenue, #156
Brooklyn, NY 11217
If you would like a different method of payment than PayPal:
We are the Invisible Army of Defaulters. We are your neighbors. We are your family, your friends. We are millions. We are everywhere. We are going to bring the system to its knees. We can, because we wield the one power that all the armies of the world can never defeat: The power of refusal. This power has destroyed the mightest empires. The same fate awaits the current system of mafia capitalism in America, an economic system driven by Wall Street CEOs who produce nothing, contribute nothing, who have bought our government and reduced it into a criminal enterprise whose main purpose is to support loan-sharking, gambling, extortion, and the slow reduction of American citizens into debt peons. Every dollar we take from a subprime mortgage speculator, every dollar we save from a collection agency is a tiny piece of our own lives and freedom that we can give back to our communities. To be able to take care of our children, our friends, our families is a value that no accountant can ever measure, that no government, loan administrator, or hedge fund manager can ever have the right to take away from us. We are an army of lovers who cannot be defeated. We are laying the groundwork for another world. Strike debt.
Resist. Insist. Stand together. Build. Never give up. #S17.
