Join us to urge the California Assembly to stop the delay and pass SB 562 – guaranteed healthcare for all Californians.
Very Slight Time & Location Change for Tomorrow's Sacramento Protest
Meet 11:30 a.m. South Capitol Steps – Move #SB562 Forward! pic.twitter.com/1EAox9qlls— Healthy CA (@4HealthyCA) June 27, 2017
Rally today at Alameda Co. BOS Budget meeting 12:30-1:30pm to demand the promised jobs for formerly incarcerated people.#JobsForJustice https://t.co/PpNlKp9uCM
— LSPC (@LSPC_) June 28, 2017
Volunteer with us!
The Prisoners Literature Project is based in Berkeley, California, and we’re always looking for volunteers to help answer letters, send out books, learn more about the prison system, and assist in other ways.
We currently meet on Sundays from 2-5pm and on Wednesdays from 6:30-9:30pm at the Grassroots House. This is located at 2022 Blake St. (at Milvia), Berkeley, CA 94704. (Map – there’s plenty of local parking, and the office is walkable in 11-15 minutes from downtown Berkeley BART or Ashby BART – also, AC Transit bus #18 stops nearby.)
(Please note that we can’t accept prisoner book requests at this address. Book requests from U.S. prisoners must be mailed to PLP; c/o Bound Together Books, 1369 Haight St, San Francisco, CA 94117.)
We welcome helpers of any age and experience at our volunteer sessions (here’s what they look like!), and are also very happy to host students looking for community service. You should read a lot, have neat legible handwriting, and be able to follow the rules to get books into prisons. We don’t make the rules, but we do have to follow them!
Bringing more than four people? Please contact us first so we can better accommodate your group. (BTW, we maintain ‘call for volunteer’ listings on VolunteerMatch.org, on Idealist.org, and on AllForGood.org, so you might have seen us there!)
Other ways to help?
If you can’t make it in-person to our volunteer sessions, we’d still love your help. In particular, we’re looking for donations — both one-time and recurring — to help pay for postage on the hundreds of book packages we send out monthly.
Other things we’d love help with include: fundraising efforts, publicity, and contacting publishers and distributors to get multiple copies of our most sought-after books. We need to keep building our reserves — and further reduce our request backlog.
Got more ideas? Come to a meeting and share them with us!
Full address with RSVP
Hear a presentation of the research described in the new book by environmentalist and business leader Paul Hawken. The book, Drawdown, describes 100 solutions to the climate crisis and ranks them according to the researchers’ criteria.
Chad Frischman, research director for Project Drawdown, will present the research and lead a discussion after a potluck dinner at an event hosted by the group Climate Compassion in Berkeley on June 28.
Full address with RSVP
Community power, led by folx from the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) and supported by many in the ReFund Coalition, prevented the Council from passing a “crumbs off the table” budget on Monday.
Now it’s our chance to make sure all the hard work that each one of you has put into lifting up issues that are core to so many Oaklanders is reflected in the budget that the Council is set to pass this evening.
Here’s what you can do to hold Councilmembers accountable to passing a community budget!
1. Join us TODAY from 1-3pm for a “call-in” and social media action using the suggested script attached to this email! We are encouraging everyone to please call or ping/@ on social media the following Councilmembers:
· Councilmember Dan Kalb
· Councilmember Noel Gallo
· Councilmember Campbell-Washington
· Councilmember Abel Guillen
2. If you cannot call, please send a brief message to the Councilmembers on Facebook or twitter using #Refundoakland. Please send a personalized message calling on them to support a community budget, NOT the budget being presented by the Council President & Mayor
· @NoelGallo5
· @annieforoakland
· @DanKalb
· @Abel_Guillen
Please note:Phone messages get backed up. Emails require sorting. If you sign up and register your comments through E-comments 24-7 your message gets delivered DIRECTLY to ENTIRE council with just 1 post.
https://oakland.granicusideas.com/widget/meetings/2704-special-concurrent-meeting-of-the-oakland-redevelopment-successor-agency-slash-city-council-on-2017-06-29-4-00-pm
3. Join us today for the final Budget Hearing beginning @ 4pm and share your testimony about why you want to see Oakland pass a Community Budget!
After the special budget meeting on Monday, June 26th, was shut down by #DefundOPD and the people, another budget meeting has been called for the 29th.
CM’s reconvene meeting after protest ends, just to adjourn. Special meeting rescheduled for Thursday #oakmtg
— Gabrielle Canon (@GabrielleCanon) June 27, 2017
Organizers stressing folks need to be at City Hall 5 PM Thursday. #oakmtg
— Oak City Mtg notes (@OakMtgNotes) June 27, 2017
Please join us this Thursday for an emergency general meeting to discuss strategies for convincing Oakland city council members to fund the public bank feasibility study.
Last Tuesday, Oakland city council members voted to delay the vote on the public bank feasibility study to their next full council meeting, which would be on July 18th, 2017. Save the date, as we will need to show up in force again. Council members decided to delay the vote to see if they could find other entities help defray the costs of the feasibility study.
If you are interested in seeing their discussion and our testimony during the meeting, click the following link: http://oakland.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=2350 – our item starts at 2:45:20
Since 2001, representatives from Cuba’s nationwide central labor organization Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC) were granted U.S. visas to visit our cities.
Victor Manuel Lemagne, is the 55 year old Secretary-General of Cuba’s Health and Tourism union where he has served since 2011. As the leader of that nation-wide union he is also a member of the CTC Secretariat (executive committee). Lemagne is also a delegate to Cuba’s National Assembly (Parliament). He is Vice President of the International hotel and tourism union for the Americas and Caribbean affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions.
Mr. Lamagne will be in both Northern and Southern California. This community-labor event in Berkeley, on the 29th of June, will be a unique and special opportunity to hear directly from a Cuban union leader.
Initiated by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity
Endorsers: Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10 Treasurer- Retired, Task Force on the Americas, Global Exchange, SOL Economics, Richmond Regla Friendship Committee, Workers World Party, Socialist Workers Party, International Action Center, Freedom Archieves, College of Ethnic Studies, Latina/o Studies Dept, SFSU-Cuba Educational Project, Clinica Martin Boro, Marcha Patriotica Colombia – California Chapter
In 1942, the U.S. government rounded up more than 110,000 Japanese Americans on the west coast and forced them into concentration camps. Three young men defied this and served jail time. This film is of their fight to overturn their sentences 40 years later.
Today with a fascist regime in power, there is an urgent need to learn from this history and to commit ourselves to act to stop what the U.S. did to the Japanese from happening again to anyone. Never again! Part of the film series,”America Was Never Great.”
Demo against SFPD police brutality of young SF queers following Pride:
FRIDAY JUNE 30TH, 2PM, MISSION POLICE STATION, 630 VALENCIA ST. #ftp pic.twitter.com/wlpRf0GgOR— AntiDisplacementCoup (@AsterZephyrIsis) June 29, 2017
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office has a long history of working with ICE – they federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws. They have notified ICE about arrests of undocumented people.
People have been picked up and then caught up by ICE even if the charges have been dropped.
They also sponsor Urban Shield, a yearly gun fair for police departments, which trains police in terror tactics against urban populations.
We’ll meet in front of Adult school at 4:45 pm. or just come in if you’re later. RSVP, carpooling, questions, to help organize, contact Heather MacLeod above.
1 mile from Hayward BART station, if you want to avoid rush hour traffic & get your exercise for the day!!
will present readings by Susan Griffin,
Rafael Jesús Gonzalez,
Dennis Bernstein
and Shanga Labossiere,
followed by open mic
at wheelchair accessible St. John’s Presbyterian Church
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (http://haitiemergencyrelief.org/) gives concrete aid to Haiti’s democratic movement and grassroots community groups organizing to meet Haitians’ needs directly.
RSVP, carpooling, questions, to help organize: Amy Carlson amycarlson77@gmail.com or (918)896-9577 (text is best)
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Interfaith Vigils to Support Immigrant Detainees
1st Saturdays of every month.
We invite you to join our vigils each month as we gather to pray and bear witness to the pain, suffering, and separation of immigrant detainees, and to call for real and immediate immigration reform. We invite you to join us to pray, sing, and act for just immigration solutions. Please bring a noisemaker for our sacred Moment of Noise– where we let the detainees know that we have not forgotten them.
Why we vigil at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond
We do this to stand in solidarity with the (150-300) people being held here for deportation and thousands in the other 250 detention centers across the country. We know that many have not been convicted of any “crime”, but are charged with a civil immigration offense. We know that detained here and facing deportation are asylum seekers, green card holders, and long term residents. Often the chief breadwinner is taken away, putting children and families in economic jeopardy. We know that ICE’s implementation of our immigration laws makes communities insecure. THEREFORE…
We come here each month, to call attention to our government’s wasteful spending of resources, deporting 315, 943 in FY 2014 (865 people a day), while failing to address root causes of migration. We seek to stop this system of detention and deportation and change our nation’s policies.
We know that all the deportees held here have families, most came not just for a better life, but to survive and support families. Many have fled terrible violence and now face it here, in another form. And now, the children have come, many to reunite with families already here…. and even they, face expedited deportation processes.
We do this to give moral and spiritual support to the families whose loved ones are being held here. We know their trauma can be deep and their lives filled with fear. We seek to give practical advice and counsel on legal, medical, food and housing issues and to be a friendly face. And we also do this to provide opportunity for people directly impacted by our detention and deportation policies to share their truth – to give their testimony so that they know, they are not alone.
We pray together for a just and fair immigration policy closer to what our Statue of Liberty proclaims “Mother of Exiles … Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
We pray, knowing that all our faith traditions call upon us to welcome strangers and aliens, for they are our sisters and brothers and our families, like them, we were once strangers and aliens in this land.
For more information about immigration detention, go to: Detention Watch Network, CIVIC.
| WALLS asks the question: How can a nation of immigrants declare war on immigration? The answer: FEAR!L. Mary Jones (Velina Brown) knows all about fear. As a top agent for I.C.E. – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – she knows how to stoke fear to keep her country safe. Fear of people like Bahdoon Samakab (Rotimi Agbabiaka), a Somali refugee escaping oppression, fear of Cliodhna Aghabullogue (Lizzie Calogero), an Irish woman yearning to be American, and fear of Zaniyah Nahuatl (Marilet Martinez), whose family comes from… here. As a foreigner in a land her people have worked for thousands of years suddenly Zaniyah is a criminal, an illegal, a “bad hombre.” What part of herself will this American give up to pass as “American?” Will she? Can she? Should she? Can someone leave part of themselves behind without losing their mind? And is it better or worse that she crossed the border to find Agent L. Mary Jones – the woman she loves? |
The Peace and Freedom Party presents
After a reading of the 1852 speech of Frederick Douglas to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, NY, we will discuss two of the political institutions bequeathed us by the slaveowners: the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate.
This is part of our on-going Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every month. Doors open at 2 pm and the program will start promptly at 2:30 pm. The forum will end by 4:30 pm, but folks can stay and talk as long as you like. Speaker’s affiliations are listed for identification only. The opinions expressed do not reflect the official views of the Peace and Freedom Party.
The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and
anti-war movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.
Revolution Books invites readers young & old to join us for an afternoon of storytelling & discussion with Sarah Cronin featuring five wonderful books for children.
Featured speaker: Sarah Cronin – Youth Educator and Freelance Journalist for TheAntiMedia.org
YOU’RE INVITED!
Resistance Summer Community Cookout in Berkeley
Resistance Summer is here!
Since November, Americans of all political stripes have been relentless in peaceful resistance to the divisive and dangerous policies of the Trump administration and its enablers in Congress, in state governments, and in corporate America. And with the Senate actively working to pass Trumpcare within weeks and the Supreme Court upholding parts of the Muslim ban, there is still much work ahead of us.
But we know that taking the time to acknowledge all we have accomplished together and to connect with one another is what will sustain our movement and keep the resistance strong for weeks and months to come. That’s why we’re kicking off Resistance Summer with almost 500 community cookouts in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Come share food, stories, ideas, and opinions with fellow progressives and discuss actions we can take, in our own communities during the recess and the weeks ahead, to stop the GOP’s attempt to rip away life-saving health care from tens of millions of Americans.
Will you join a Resistance Summer community cookout near you this weekend?
YES, I’LL BE THERE!
| WALLS asks the question: How can a nation of immigrants declare war on immigration? The answer: FEAR!L. Mary Jones (Velina Brown) knows all about fear. As a top agent for I.C.E. – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – she knows how to stoke fear to keep her country safe. Fear of people like Bahdoon Samakab (Rotimi Agbabiaka), a Somali refugee escaping oppression, fear of Cliodhna Aghabullogue (Lizzie Calogero), an Irish woman yearning to be American, and fear of Zaniyah Nahuatl (Marilet Martinez), whose family comes from… here. As a foreigner in a land her people have worked for thousands of years suddenly Zaniyah is a criminal, an illegal, a “bad hombre.” What part of herself will this American give up to pass as “American?” Will she? Can she? Should she? Can someone leave part of themselves behind without losing their mind? And is it better or worse that she crossed the border to find Agent L. Mary Jones – the woman she loves? |