On April 11, we hosted a panel on Oakland’s housing crisis that featured representatives from Causa Justa, The Village, Oakland Warehouse Coalition, Safer DIY Spaces, EveryOne Home, East Bay Community Law Center, and City Council representative Rebecca Kaplan.

Some highlights from our panelists:

-More than 3,000 people are living on the streets of Oakland.
-There’s currently over 2 million square feet of unused city-owned land.
-There are more vacant properties in Oakland than unhoused people.
-The majority of unhoused people in Alameda County are not sheltered or in encampments, but on their own.
-The majority of Alameda County’s budget for helping the homeless comes from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—it’s time we examine the local budget to see where we can give more!

Thank you to everyone who came out! If you were inspired and have notes or takes to share, let us know by replying or posting on our FB page.

Our panelists are fighting for our unhoused and at-risk communities in many different ways—and it was clear we need control of the budget to enact the solutions they’ve identified. Are you ready to step up and make a People’s Budget a reality in 2020? Reply to this email and we’ll plug you in to one of our many action groups

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS!

This week’s conversation hour will celebrate the political momentum fueled by the Bernie Sanders campaign. Join us to share what excites you and/or what concerns you about Bernie and help us create an action plan for activists AFTER the Bernie Presidential Campaign. (This Sunday! May 29, 2016. OMNI Commons. 6:30p.m.)

RSVP here!

TEXT BANKING HAPPY HOUR

Join us at Lost and Found TOMORROW for happy hour and a good old fashioned session of text-banking in which we text message our supporters to keep them updated about our campaign! Thursday, May 26. 2040 Telegraph Ave. 6:30 p.m.

MAKE A DONATION!

Although we are all volunteer, we need money to cover meeting/event space, printing and campaign materials, and building our campaign war chest for when we relaunch the signature drive. Make a donation!

Thank you for being a part of this beautiful movement,

-Tia and the CDP Team

Practicing and Balancing Self-Care

Though many of us are familiar with the concept of self-care, the basic definition isn’t necessarily the ideal method. Lovemme Corazón said in an interview with Nia King:

“[T]he term used has been very oppressive, it’s like ‘You need to be out in your community, you need to be doing all your work, and you need to go home and take care of yourself.’ … [C]ommunal care is having a friend cook you dinner, going home and having someone watch a movie with you, going home and talking to someone, or just doing something with someone so that you’re intimately involved with each others’ lives.”

In living out this movement, we don’t want to re-create the exploitative intensity of work-rest-work-promotion-crash.

We imagine with roots in compassion.

Last week, Chelsea presented some key ideas for communal/self-care, and the necessity for sharing practices and building accessible networks of care. We planned out our week. What’s yours? How can we be a part of your world: personal, activist, spiritual, creative, or anything else?

Chill + Connect!

We are getting together tomorrow at OVO Tavern & Eatery at 6 pm to call our supporters to let them know how we can all be a part of the project. Meet us, other supporters, and talk about how we can make things happen for Oakland. RSVP for details.

Choral Calisthenics!

This Sunday, April 17 from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at the Omni Commons, we’ll be tuning in to a different station – learning some basic singing techniques and exercises with the multi-award-winning, talented Victoria. It’s a continuation of our Self-Care series: singing is good for your health!

Cultivate the Cause!

Although we are all volunteer, we need money to cover meeting/event space, printing and campaign materials, and building our campaign war chest for when we relaunch the signature drive. Make a donation!

Choose Community

The Community Democracy Project promotes active citizenship, community learning, and direct democracy by putting the people in charge of the budget. Our voter initiative will change the Oakland City Charter so that we the people decide how our tax money is spent. There will be empowered neighborhood assemblies throughout the city where people can come together to discuss community issues and determine public priorities by directly voting on the city budget.

Before we re-launch the signature gathering campaign, we have set a goal to first establish a core team of 30 committed volunteers. If you are ready to help make democracy real, join us. Contact us directly for more info.

C you soon!

Tim and the CDP Team

Creating a ‘People’s Budget’

The Community Democracy Project is pushing a radical ballot initiative in Oakland that would give citizens the power to decide how to spend taxpayer funds.

By Nick Rahaim

Folks are realizing that in order to hold the government and police accountable to the people, we have to move from being passive spectators and individualized consumers to connecting with each other about our shared reality.

Join us!

We’ll meet at Lake Merritt BART at 11am. There will be a short training and then we’ll break out into small groups and fan out to neighborhoods across Oakland to talk directly with Oakland residents. At 2 we’ll come back together to share our experiences. All are welcome – just come ready to chat it up!

You can also share the event on FB.

To find out about other local actions to #ReclaimMLK, including a jobs and economy march on Monday, check out APTP’s event calendar.

In solidarity,

Shawn and the CDP Team

What? You’re not on the ballot? You don’t get to decide how your city works?

We need to change that.

What is our strategy?

This question concerns all of us who seek a more just and sustainable world.

If we are to move from the politics of reacting to the latest outrage or crisis–and unwittingly letting the forces that oppose us define us–we must answer this question.

What is our strategy?

Too many of us either don’t have an answer to this question, or we answer it in terms that are hopelessly broad–e.g. “build unity” or “raise consciousness”, or underwhelmingly narrow–e.g. “be nice to my neighbors” or “tell my friends about the issue”.

The lack of clear strategy often leads to magical thinking about social change: e.g. “a wise and noble politician will save us”, or, “when everyone is angry and protesting in the streets all at once, then we will have a just society”.

In order to achieve the long-term culture shift we want to see, it is necessary to mobilize people, but it is not enough to mobilize people. We need to create new patterns of participation, embodying new social habits, so that we the people are engaged in an ongoing, values-driven way, rather than in a reactive, crisis-driven way.

Beyond critiquing the old structures that don’t serve us, we need to create new structures that do serve us.

What do these structures look like? How do we build them?

What is our strategy?

CDP represents one answer to this question.

We are getting ourselves mission-ready to launch the petition drive. Over the next few months we aim to have a critical mass of volunteers trained and ready to go, so that once the signature drive starts, we will have what it takes to win.

The people of Oakland–including you–will be in charge of the budget.

It’s time to change the conversation from “Who will you vote for?” to “Vote for Yourself!”

We invite you to join us.

We believe our initiative to deepen democracy and let the people decide the budget is a solution to police brutality and militarization. Imagine if the police and public officials had to come to neighborhood meetings and beg for money? Imagine if they had to justify their budget to the citizens of their city? People could still vote to give them tanks, and armor, and machine guns; but they probably wouldn’t, because most citizens don’t actually want those things in their communities. Moreover, the power paradigm would shift as public servants are forced to treat the communities they are sworn to serve with respect. Government accountability and transparency would no longer be mere buzzwords but would simply be the way things work.

As long as our society remains one in which people are afraid of the government, instead of the government being afraid of the people; as long as we are alienated from each other and from the structures of decision-making, thus leaving democracy “to the professionals”; as long as we continue to fracture ourselves to fight one-off battles against the different heads of the hydra, the forces of fear and greed will continue to dominate our society and our government. This is why we believe our initiative to deepen democracy and let the people decide the budget is a solution to the status quo that maintains this situation. Starting in Oakland, we aim to set a precedent that can be replicated in cities across the state and that can shift the conversation about democracy and people power across the country.

If you would like to get involved in our campaign, you are always welcome at one of our planning meetings. Our next meeting is next Tuesday, September 23 at 6:30pm. RSVP to communitydemocracyproject@gmail.com for location.