Table of Contents

[Events This Week]
1. Oct. 15th General Assembly and Teach-in 5:30pm at Lower Sproul

2. Liberate the Libraries at UC BERKELEY Oct. 16
3. Other events

[Announcements]

1. Web Committee

2. Signing up to the General Assembly list-server

3. Twitter

[Updates On Recent Events]
1. Liberate the Library Study-in

2. Solidarity Alliance
3. SWAT Worker Caucus

4. Recap on Labor Union Concerns

[Committee Meetings]

1. Committees

2. Meeting times

3. Updates

[Events This Week]

General Assembly

On October 15th at 5:30pm, The General Assembly at UC Berkeley will hold its fifth meeting to: 1) have a teach-in and open discussion on representation and inclusion of under-represented communities within our movement and 2) for essential mobilizing for the Oct. 24th public education.

Sign up for it at the Facebook event:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=153982211898&ref=ts

What is a General Assembly?
A General Assembly is an open meeting where ALL students, workers and UC Berkeley community members are invited to participate and where decisions will be made by vote. 1 person= 1 vote. It is a space for discussion and mobilization. This assembly is envisioned as a sovereign body: it makes decisions to organize, calls for actions, votes resolutions, can call other universities, workplaces and communities to start organizing to fight.

More information at our website:

http://ucsolidarity.org/content/ucb-general-assembly and our Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=154453225867&ref=ts

WHEN: This Thursday, October 15
WHERE: Lower Sproul
TIME: 5:30 pm

Liberate the Libraries at UC BERKELEY Oct. 16

Come reclaim public education before it goes extinct!
Study-in and confront privatization, open our public spaces!

Date: Friday October 16, 2009

INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS!!

Place: at the Education and Psychology Library in Tolman Hall on Northside

Time: Please arrive between 3:30 and 4pm
Text "follow reclaimuc" to 40404 to get updates and news
http://twitter.com/reclaimuc

Agenda:
*The opening teach-in speaker is Laura Nader

*Saturday discussion will be on the issue of representation
 

Other Events

See http://ucsolidarity.org/ in the Events tab on the right for more info:

- Defending the University @ UCSB October 14, 2009 - 2:30pm

- Save Public Education Rally @ Civic Center October 15, 2009 - 12:00pm

[Announcements]

Web Committee

An unofficial web committee has been formed at http://ucsolidarity.org . Elif, Ricardo, Uriel and I have an account and will be maintaining it to keep communications active within and outside the General Assembly. There is an event RSS feed, calendar, and other goodies that will help keep us informed! If anyone else is interested in joining the Web Committee let me know and we can work something out! We're looking for pinpoint persons for each committee so we can coordinate the committees with each other! The website is also a great way to find out what else the other organizations in campus are doing. SWAT, Solidarity Alliance and UC Davis have their own pages there as well. We also have a Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=154453225867&ref=ts . Spread the website and Facebook around as much as possible!

Signing up to the General Assembly list-server

Those who are interested in signing up for the General Assembly list-server can do so at https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list. All you have to do is input the list-server you want to sign-up to. The list-server is thegeneralassembly@ lists.berkeley.edu. Please follow the shared-values that we follow in the General Assembly and respect each other.

Twitter

We also have a twitter account that we will try to keep updated. Twitter is a good way to keep us updated on any quick changes. We're trying on find someone who’s committed to keep it updated so don't rely on it for up-to-date information yet! It's UCBGenAssembly . I also have one that I might update in the meantime: JuanMGarcia1985. Let me know if anyone would like to join the Web Committee and be the Twitter person!

[Updates On Last Weeks Events]

Liberate the Libraries at UC BERKELEY Oct. 9th Update

Fellow “Be the Peace” Committee member Francisco "Pancho" Ramos-Stierle wrote an inspiring email on the Library Study-in. Here’s an excerpt:

Namaste dear beloved brothers and sisters,

May this email find you well and full of courage, understanding and love.

The last nonviolent direct action at the Anthropology library will certainly set the tone for our future acts of civil disobedience: we achieved most of our goals and respected all our agreements.

Our movement is showing solid signs of maturity.

Even in the face of provocation, like when brother Frank Jaques from the police, broke (for a few minutes) our agreement and shared intentions of _no weapons_ inside of the library, our police liaison Be The Peace team remained respectful and active for our movement is about embracing human dignity. For future acts of civil disobedience, I only hope that this incident will serve as a lesson to avoid harming the trust we are building among all parties.

This time the siblings of the administration of the university decided to not enforce the law of men but to follow the law of love. This only encourage us to escalate our movement to open and reclaim more libraries and more public spaces. Even if the administration decides in the future to enforce the law of men, which most of the times is in fragrant disobedience with the law of love, we will be ready to take the consequences of our actions with courage, love, dignity and respect.

Today, I celebrate that, in some degree, the siblings of the administration are inspired, by our actions, to follow the path of harmony with the Universal Love.

Read more at:

http://ucsolidarity.org/content/successful-starting-civil-disobedience

SWAT Worker Caucus Oct. 12th update

The SWAT (Student Worker Action Team) Worker Caucus met Oct 12th at 12pm at the MCC and voted on creating a newsletter that will inform workers, students, and the community on the how the budget cuts have affected workers and students. We will be gathering data and facts to include. SWAT Worker Caucus also voted and approved on creating a campaign that that will address the cuts to workers and the resulting impact of those cuts on both workers and services.

Recap on Labor Union’s Concerns:

SWAT Worker Caucus and the Labor Coalition (LC represents the various campus labor union) met this week and have raised concerns on the layoffs and the budget cuts crisis. Here are some of the concerns raised by the labor unions

CUE: CUE is not accepting the furloughs because the administration is not guaranteeing no layoffs. But concerns are: if CUE does not accept the furlough plan, what are the consequences? How will this affect one's paycheck? Why are unions accepting furloughs?
 

AFSCME: Submitted a petition to the administration on layoffs
- Has been working heavily to outreach to and talk with members, but the university has also been talking to workers

- Is working on a concrete plan to fight the furloughs and the layoffs.

AFT: Will be filing an Unfair Labor Practice in response to the massive layoff notices. Some lecturers want to read the contract and figure out what their demands will be for bargaining, but there is also the possibility that the contract will simply be extended (it is bad time for bargaining right now)
UPTE has also raised some of the same concerns and will likely be endorsing the Oct 24th Conference.
Swat Worker Caucus and the Labor Coalition will be working on creating a timetable/calendar of events and actions.
The Labor Coalition will be writing proposals to send to the Gen. Assembly for the Oct. 24th and how to include workers and unions in the Conference. They will send union member advocates and can provide facilitators for the Oct. 24th workshops/breakouts if needed. More details will be forthcoming.
 

Solidarity Alliance Oct 9th Update

Solidarity Alliance is planning to have an event on Friday, Oct. 30 and is tentatively calling it”WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN”: A JAZZ FUNERAL FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION". More details to be forthcoming. They will be having their weekly meeting this Friday 12pm-1:30pm in Kroeber Hall in the second floor's study lounge. Seehttp://ucsolidarity.org/solidarityalliance for more information about them and room changes.

[Committee Meetings]

Committee Descriptions

· General Assembly Committee – Plans assembly. Handles agenda, facilitators, and room.

· Action Committee – Discusses and plans actions to be voted on by the assembly.

· Oct. 24 Committee – Organizing the Oct 24th Mobilization Conference. Subcommittees include Food and Housing

· Outreach Committee – Outreaches to campus for assembly and Oct. 24th. Subcommittees include On-campus and Off-campus.

· Coordinating Committee – Has representatives from each committee and helps coordinates the committees through updates, concerns and dialogue.

· Critical Representation Committee - Has a critical eye and voice that focuses on bringing awareness to intersectionalities of oppression (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability) within and outside the General Assembly.

· Web Committee* – Updates and consolidates G.A. through the website, Facebook, email and other web methods.

Locations and Times

· Oct 14th Wednesday 6:30 pm, Action Committee Meeting @ 602 Davis Hall

Committee Updates

· On Oct. 12, the Oct 24th Organizing and Off-Campus Outreach met atFree Speech Café at 6pm. The Community College and UC’s subcommittees felt comfortable with their progress so far. The On-campus subcommittee did not report at the meeting. The Housing subcommittee felt more housing is needed. An idea of outreaching to the Co-op was mentioned. The Food subcommittee has received food donations but brought up the point that if it is to feed the estimated Oct. 24th guests (~600), then it will need more. The Food subcommittee person also needs more help. A Finance Committee was proposed in order to be able to receive the donations that other organizations have offered.

· On Oct. 12, the Critical Representation Committee Meeting met atMulticultural Center at 8pm. It discussed the purpose, goal and vision of the committee and after a discussion it decided to meet again to resolve and come to an agreement at another time. Some of its members met on Oct. 12 and made a tentative agenda for the Oct 15. Teach-in. We hope to personalize the movement and politicize its members through telling our personal stories and dialogue.

Hope ya'll enjoyed the newsletter! Let me know if someone has any suggestions for future weekly newsletters atjmg12211985@gmail.com ! ;0

_____________

Juan M Garcia
CUE Secretary
General Assembly/Solidarity Alliance/SWAT member
jmg12211985@gmail.com