Encuentro in Fruitvale March 10, 1 pm

What: Encuentro [Convergence]

 When: March 10, 2012 1-4PM

 Where: Corazón del Pueblo, 4814 International Blvd, Oakland

RSVP: decolonizetoliberate@gmail.com OR (510) 969-9745 OR https://www.facebook.com/events/305409626184269/

WHO? An invitation to the people of Oakland who are building and resisting in their communities.
To all those who fight or want to fight for humanity.

What is an encuentro? An Encuentro is a space for people to come together; it is a gathering or an encounter. An Encuentro is not a meeting, a panel or a conference, it is a way of sharing further developed by the Zapatistas as another form of doing politics: from below and to the left.

One of the initial and most important exchanges and dialogues occurred in the summer of 1997 at the Encuentro Chican@-Zapatista. This encuentro was attended by 120 Los Angeles-based artistic youth and several hundred Zapatista representatives. This encuentro had a huge impact on transnational organizing. It’s time for Oakland to converge and contribute!

Why Oakland? We are already a community in resistance. Oakland is a place of ongoing struggle with a rich history of indigenous resistance, the Great Railroad Strike of 1894, the General Strike of 1946, the birth of the Black Panthers and much more. Most recently, Oakland has fought against:

• -gang injunctions, curfews, and the criminalization of youth
• -S-comm and the recent raids on immigrant communities
• -the closure of 5 Oakland schools, most of which are in East Oakland
• -the gentrification of Oakland’s North, West, and Fruitvale districts
• -the recent wave of homophobic hate crimes and suicides of queer youth
• -the unemployment rate in Oakland’s people of color neighborhoods
• -the disproportionate affect that the sub-prime mortgage crisis has had on working families of color

Sadly, these are all struggles that many cities and communities of poor people throughout the world are facing.

According to the 2010 census close to 75% of Oakland’s population is of African, Asian, Latino, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, or of mixed racial decent. Women, men, transgendered and queer people of color, immigrants, and the homeless have a history as the most marginalized groups.

The Invitation: For our first Encuentro, we are inviting your participation so that we can connect our stories of resistance with others across the city and across the world. We have joined our voices with our other compañer@s who have been ignored, forgotten and marginalized by the neoliberal capitalist system throughout history and into the present.

We hope people will share their struggle in whatever way they feel the most comfortable, whether it be verbally, through song, poetry or rhyme, through a video, through artwork or however people can best express their struggle.

Please come enjoy a meal while we share our struggles!!

We will provide yummy healthy food, free childcare and Spanish/English translation.

RSVP is required. Please RSVP (with number of attendees, children, and translation needs) by March 7 to decolonizetoliberate@gmail.com OR (510) 969-9745 OR https://www.facebook.com/events/305409626184269/

Who We Are: Decolonize Oakland is a collective of queer people of color and people of color.

• We decolonize because this land is already occupied.
• We decolonize because communities of color, women of color, and queers of color have been on the front lines of the struggle against male supremacy, heterosexism, capitalism, and colonial exploitation.
• We decolonize because our current system was founded on settler colonialism, genocide, and slavery.
• We decolonize to claim spaces for the self-determination of communities of color in Oakland.
• We decolonize because any movement that doesn’t confront the continuing force of colonization, patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and white supremacy replicates these oppressions.