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OP-ED: Pull the Plug on the Domain Awareness Center

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Oakland City officials, including the City Council, Mayor and staff, cannot justify their support of the Domain Awareness Center by claiming to be ignorant of its risks to our safety and security.

Although 60 percent of Americans oppose the National Security Agency’s spying on our telephone and email communications, Oakland officials are supporting the creation of a full service urban surveillance network that threatens the privacy and security of everyone in the City.

Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center is a facility that will be able to monitor, merge, and permanently store at least the following kinds of data:

1. Photographs and videos generated by a growing network of publicly and privately owned cameras throughout the City.

2. Audio recordings made by Oakland’s “Shot Spotter” system. We have heard that this system’s microphones are so sensitive that they can record conversations in the streets close to system towers.

3. Photographs taken constantly by license plate readers mounted in Oakland police cars.

4. In the future, social media such as Facebook and Twitter and Internet sites.

Internal City communications gathered and published by the East Bay Express confirm that DAC’s targets are suspected terrorists, political and Occupy activists, and labor unions – not violent criminals. The DAC will not make our neighborhoods safer.

< p>< p>Further, the system, funded initially by federal money, will be part of a nationwide network of Fusion Centers, operating as joint efforts by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, state, and local police.

Full development of the DAC will allow law enforcement at all levels to track our movements, reconstruct our activities, and plot our networks of family, friends, and political associates.

The City’s contribution to running the center will be at least $1.5 annually, money that could otherwise be used to operate our parks, fix our streets, or maintain fire stations.

A short history lesson demonstrates why we should all care about the DAC.

During and just after World War I, tens of millions of Americans, including state governors and members of the U.S. Senate, concluded that the war had been fought simply to further the big business, banking, and manufacturing interests of the participant countries.

The pro-war federal government, with a young J. Edgar Hoover leading the effort, began keeping information – on 430,000 index cards – of people classified as subversives – peace activists, unionists, Wobblies, radicals, etc.

In 1919 and 1921, Attorney General Palmer unleashed Hoover to lead raids that led to 5,000 arrests, thousands of deportations, and the end of that movement.

After World War II there was very widespread agreement among Americans that the U.S. and Soviet Union should continue their successful wartime partnership to create a peaceful world where their different systems could compete peacefully for public support.

By 1950 Hoover had dossiers on 450,000 Americans, and a massive red baiting attack was used to justify the Taft-Hartley Act and other attacks on a growing, powerful labor movement, civil rights organizations including even the moderate NAACP, peace groups, and every organization that included communists or so-called fellow travelers among their members or supporters.

The progressive and labor movements in this country have never fully recovered from the attacks and prosecutions of the McCarthy era, even considering the upsurges of the 1960s.

The surveillance tools available to the government today make Hoover’s methods look like child’s play.

If the government could keep track of 450,000 Americans in 1950 by listening to their telephone calls, reading their mail, and following them, think of how many can be tracked using the tools available to the DAC, Fusion Centers, and NSA.

As I have said before, creating a safe and prosperous city requires a commitment to securing social and economic justice for all people in Oakland.

Rather than expensive technology, we need a decentralized police department staffed by officers who will work closely and cooperatively with our communities to protect people’s lives, property and constitutional rights.

As Mayor of Oakland, I will make sure that the DAC is closed and that our city’s police are prohibited from spying on the people of Oakland.

Dan Siegel is a civil rights attorney and a candidate for mayor.

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Remembering George Floyd

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing.

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Mural showing the portrait of George Floyd in Mauerpark in Berlin. To the left of the portrait the lettering "I can't Breathe" was added, on the right side the three hashtags #GeorgeFloyd, #Icantbreathe and #Sayhisname. The mural was completed by Eme Street Art (facebook name) / Eme Free Thinker (signature) on 29 May 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)
Mural showing the portrait of George Floyd in Mauerpark in Berlin. To the left of the portrait the lettering "I can't Breathe" was added, on the right side the three hashtags #GeorgeFloyd, #Icantbreathe and #Sayhisname. The mural was completed by Eme Street Art (facebook name) / Eme Free Thinker (signature) on 29 May 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

By April Ryan
BlackPressUSA Newswire

“The president’s been very clear he has no intentions of pardoning Derek Chauvin, and it’s not a request that we’re looking at,” confirms a senior staffer at the Trump White House. That White House response results from public hope, including from a close Trump ally, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The timing of Greene’s hopes coincides with the Justice Department’s recent decision to end oversight of local police accused of abuse. It also falls on the fifth anniversary of the police-involved death of George Floyd on May 25th. The death sparked national and worldwide outrage and became a transitional moment politically and culturally, although the outcry for laws on police accountability failed.

The death forced then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to focus on deadly police force and accountability. His efforts while president to pass the George Floyd Justice in policing act failed. The death of George Floyd also put a spotlight on the Black community, forcing then-candidate Biden to choose a Black woman running mate. Kamala Harris ultimately became vice president of the United States alongside Joe Biden. Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison prosecuted the cases against the officers involved in the death of Floyd. He remembers,” Trump was in office when George Floyd was killed, and I would blame Trump for creating a negative environment for police-community relations. Remember, it was him who said when the looting starts, the shooting starts, it was him who got rid of all the consent decrees that were in place by the Obama administration.”

In 2025, Police-involved civilian deaths are up by “about 100 to about 11 hundred,” according to Ellison. Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African-American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing. During those minutes on the ground, Floyd cried out for his late mother several times. Police subdued Floyd for an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.

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Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 3, 2025

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Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 21 – 27, 2025

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