Club Jacobin

bibliotecapopular:

Signs of the history of people’s struggles in East Oakland are all around for those who have eyes to see them…

Middle class white residents who once lived in these lowland neighborhoods have fled up to the Oakland hills, leaving this part of town to its multinational working class residents…

In the Chican@/Mexican@ neighborhood around International Blvd and 23rd Avenue, those signs of history can be seen in the building at 1449 Miller Ave.

Read more.

bibliotecapopular:

Greetings to the Seattle People’s Library! Instead of just accepting the city of Seattle’s decision to close all library branches for a week, Seattleites are organizing themselves to meet the needs of their community. They will provide books, kids’ activities, internet access and. We hope that this is the first of many more efforts in Oakland, Seattle, and around this country to resist austerity and meet community needs through grassroots organizing. Best wishes and all support to you, Seattle People’s Library!

Damos la bienvenida a la Biblioteca Popular de Seattle! En lugar de aceptar la decisión de la ciudad de Seattle de cerrar todas las bibliotecas por una semana entera, los ciudadanos de Seattle se están organizando para satisfacer las necesidades de su comunidad. Su proyecto va a distribuir libros, planear actividades para niños y proveer acceso al internet. Esperamos que este sea el primero de muchos esfuerzos más en Oakland, Seattle, y alrededor de este país para resistir la austeridad y satisfacer las necesidades de la comunidad a través de la organización de base. Mandamos nuestros mejores deseos y todo apoyo a todos ustedes de la Biblioteca Popular de Seattle!

Are there unused buildings or vacant spaces in your area which could be put to better use as community spaces? In this age of austerity it’s pretty likely that there are - but they don’t have to be left in that state. The people’s libraries are a reminder that we don’t have to take austerity for granted and we also don’t have to limit our resistance to the narrow confines of the electoral process.

So what could be organized in your neighborhood?

punkpedagogy:

trueloveisafire:

clubjacobin:

trotskyismyhomeboy:

clubjacobin:

No good deed goes unpunished in Oakland.

The mercenary crew known as the Oakland Police Department raided the Victor Martinez People’s Library in the early hours of this morning, evicting the librarians on site and boarding up the building.

When a young man from my neighborhood was murdered a block from his house two months ago the police response was essentially zero. No team of squad cars, no cordoning off the site, no attempt at investigation at all as far as we can tell.

But when people in Oakland try to serve the community and open a public space that’s really public, dozens of cops descend immediately. City workers are woken at midnight and rushed to the site in order to board up the building under cover of darkness.

To borrow a phrase from Noam Chomsky, the people’s library presents the threat of a good example. If people see a community center opened outside of the law, without the intervention of the city or a church — then they might start thinking about what else they could do for themselves and maybe question why the city and the cops have so much power in the first place.

That’s why no good deed will continue to go unpunished in Oakland.

PS to Oaklanders: Meet outside the library (1449 Miller) at 10:00 this morning for a meeting about what to do next.

Did they give a reason for boarding it up?

I wasn’t there at the time, but I think it the stated reason was that the librarians were trespassing. (The building and lot are owned by the city, which is apparently happy to let it sit vacant and use the police to keep the public out of a publicly-owned space.)

Can we drop the illusion that the United States government is “of/by/for the people” now? The police work for the State, and the State uses our money for its own purposes. Look around us.

Bolded for emphasis. I’m sick of people thinking or saying that the police should have been somewhere else “doing their job.” No. Their job is to uphold the power of the state, maintain the status quo which means people dying, and perpetuate disempowerment, dehumanization, etc thru heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and classism.

Also no-one was “serving” the community, this was a building opened maybe or maybe not by people “in the community” but was NOT a service project by outsiders for the community. This project was about community self-determination. If it was charity it wouldn’t be such a huge deal because charity also upholds state power.

Just reblogging this again for the helpful extra commentary. It’s often valuable to point out police hypocrisy and the discrepancy between what they claim to be about vs. what they actually do. But at the end of the day we have to understand that this kind of crackdown is exactly what the police are about. Like I said the other day, their job in Oakland is above all to wall off the violence and and property crime created by the poverty and despair in the expendable neighborhoods of the city (not to stop the violence and crime from occurring, but just to keep it from affecting the rich white folks in Piedmont and the hills). One aspect of that is cracking down hard on any efforts which threaten to unite people across communities or projects where communities could realize some real measure of self-determination, however small. The people’s library represents such a threat so it had to be shut down.

We’re still here though, on day three, recklessly distributing books and starting dangerous conversations with folks in the neighborhood. We’ll even have another potluck tonight at six to keep planning our next steps.

(PS, I’ve used the phrase “serving the community” in posts about the people’s library but I’m using that as a way to get at the same aspect of the library as in the response above. This isn’t charity, it’s a project for community self-determination. Serving the people and the community in the sense of the Black Panther Party or the CCP.)

Signs made by neighborhood kids saying how they feel about the Victor Martinez People’s Library /Biblioteca Popular Víctor Martínez. The library continues operating, just setting up outside the fence and barbed wire for now.

Victor Martinez People’s Library, day 2. Books out on the sidewalk; two or three squad cars sitting in the street all day watching librarians, donors and neighbors. Despite the low-key harrassment, people continue arriving to bring books, and neighbors stop by to chat and to take some books home.

Around the corner, neighborhood kids are working with adults to build garden boxes and start putting in a garden. For now at least it’s just in the little strip of earth by the curb instead of the huge yard behind the library which, like the building itself, is now blocked by chain-link fence and barbed wire.

trotskyismyhomeboy:

clubjacobin:

No good deed goes unpunished in Oakland.

The mercenary crew known as the Oakland Police Department raided the Victor Martinez People’s Library in the early hours of this morning, evicting the librarians on site and boarding up the building.

When a young man from my neighborhood was murdered a block from his house two months ago the police response was essentially zero. No team of squad cars, no cordoning off the site, no attempt at investigation at all as far as we can tell.

But when people in Oakland try to serve the community and open a public space that’s really public, dozens of cops descend immediately. City workers are woken at midnight and rushed to the site in order to board up the building under cover of darkness.

To borrow a phrase from Noam Chomsky, the people’s library presents the threat of a good example. If people see a community center opened outside of the law, without the intervention of the city or a church — then they might start thinking about what else they could do for themselves and maybe question why the city and the cops have so much power in the first place.

That’s why no good deed will continue to go unpunished in Oakland.

PS to Oaklanders: Meet outside the library (1449 Miller) at 10:00 this morning for a meeting about what to do next.

Did they give a reason for boarding it up?

I wasn’t there at the time, but I think it the stated reason was that the librarians were trespassing. (The building and lot are owned by the city, which is apparently happy to let it sit vacant and use the police to keep the public out of a publicly-owned space.)

(via spookysocialist-deleted08oct201)

No good deed goes unpunished in Oakland.

The mercenary crew known as the Oakland Police Department raided the Victor Martinez People’s Library in the early hours of this morning, evicting the librarians on site and boarding up the building.

When a young man from my neighborhood was murdered a block from his house two months ago the police response was essentially zero. No team of squad cars, no cordoning off the site, no attempt at investigation at all as far as we can tell.

But when people in Oakland try to serve the community and open a public space that’s really public, dozens of cops descend immediately. City workers are woken at midnight and rushed to the site in order to board up the building under cover of darkness.

To borrow a phrase from Noam Chomsky, the people’s library presents the threat of a good example. If people see a community center opened outside of the law, without the intervention of the city or a church — then they might start thinking about what else they could do for themselves and maybe question why the city and the cops have so much power in the first place.

That’s why no good deed will continue to go unpunished in Oakland.

PS to Oaklanders: Meet outside the library (1449 Miller) at 10:00 this morning for a meeting about what to do next.

ETA: The people’s library has set back up on the sidewalk outside the same site today. Come down and borrow a book or (better yet!) come talk with us about next steps and what else we can do to keep changing our community for the better, Jean Quan and OPD notwithstanding.

Source for photo: Indybay

Bienvenid@s a tod@s / Everyone is welcome!

Victor Martinez People’s Library / Biblioteca Popular Víctor Martínez

Victor Martinez People’s Library / Biblioteca Popular Víctor Martínez