Check out what we’ve been up to:

•    Oakland’s General Strike On November 2nd, approximately 50,000 people turned out to mass actions held during the Oakland General Strike called by the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza, and supported by dozens of community based organizations, unions, and activist groups. The actions shut down every major bank in downtown Oakland, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase, and then shut down the port, and in the process built solidarity beyond anything we have seen in the SF Bay Area since the days of the movement against the US war on Vietnam.  CJJC brought our folks out in force and bottom-lined the first march of the day which successfully shut down Wells Fargo.

•    Foreclose on Wall Street West Seeing lots of alignment between the critique of Wall Street and our bank accountability campaign work against Wells Fargo, we helped organize the first mobilization on October 12th to “Foreclose Wall Street West”. With hundreds of others, we shut down Wells Fargo’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco, demanding a moratorium on foreclosures, the defense of the rights of tenants in foreclosed properties belonging to Wells Fargo, divestment in the GEO group which runs private prisons to incarcerate immigrants, an end to predatory lending through payday loans, and that Wells Fargo pay their fair share in taxes.

•    Immigrant Rights We have been making major headway in helping to pass the TRUST Act, which would grant local counties the ability to opt in or out of the federally sponsored “Secure Communities” legislation (S-Comm).  In May, CJJC members testified at a hearing on the TRUST Act at the state capitol, helping to pass the bill through the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee.  Later, several African-American members testified on the connections between foreign policy, NAFTA, migration push factors, indigenous rights, and Black-Brown unity at a hearing on the TRUST Act before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, also helping to pass a resolution in support of the bill.  

•    Tenant Rights Clinics During all this excitement, CJJC has continued to provide free tenant counseling and case management, five days a week, to help low-income residents advocate for themselves when they face rent increases, evictions, and harassment.