Calendar

WOMEN’S MARCH OAKLAND 2019

“The woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole.” – Coretta Scott King

Women’s March Oakland 2019 will flood the streets with a wave of self-identified women and their allies from the East Bay and beyond. At this nonpartisan, peaceful event on the Saturday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we will activate our communities and publicly proclaim our commitment, in Scott King’s words, to “create new homes, new communities, new cities, a new nation. Yea, a new world, which we desperately need!”

RSVP: Ready to march? Register to get updates and give us a more accurate attendance estimate https://www.eventbrite.com/e/womens-march-oakland-2019-tickets-50802485602.

SCHEDULE

10:00 a.m. – Rally at Lake Merritt Amphitheate

11:00 a.m. – March to Frank Ogawa Plaza
We’ll flood 14th Street with a wave of self-identified women and their allies from the East Bay and beyond.

11:30 a.m. – Take action at our Call to Action Alley
We’ll groove with Bay Area performers, learn about organizations doing mighty work, and shop at local and women-owned businesses.

The rally and march starting point will be at Lake Merritt Amphitheater. The march will proceed up 14th Street, ending at Frank Ogawa Plaza with our Call to Action Alley.

Accessibility information for the route: The route is 0.9 miles. It is uphill for the first couple of blocks to Oak Street. There is a slight uphill slope from Oak to Madison. There is a bad curb cut at 14th and Alice on the right, and another one at 14th and Franklin on the right.

Want to volunteer before or during the event? Sign up today: https://womensmarchoakland.org/volunteer

Gear up for the march! Order your T-shirt or hoodie now: https://www.bonfire.com/store/womens-march-oakland/.

While we are part of a national movement, Women’s March Oakland is independently operated and funded. We do not have a shared funding arrangement with Women’s March Bay Area, Women’s March California, or Women’s March.

Women’s March Oakland is run by and for all womxn and their allies with deep roots in Oakland, Alameda County and the East Bay. Our leadership team includes women of color, queer womxn, and women with disabilities who are dedicated to representing this beautiful, diverse region.

HOSTS: The 2019 march is co-hosted by Women’s March Oakland, Black Women Organized for Political Action, and Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center.

The Bay Area Street Medic Collective (BASMC) is a collective of folks active in various Community Defense organizations and projects in the Bay Area.

Our fundamental goals are to offer basic medical skills training and provide access to information, supplies, resources, communication and networking to all members of our communities to take care of ourselves and each other and help to decolonize health care.
This event will be an introduction to who we are as a collective, open discussion on community needs and Q&A, and a two hour workshop on basic patient assessment with demo and practice of hands-on first aid skills.

In honor of the annual “Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy” weekend 2019:

Lead to Life & Permaculture Action Network invite you to the Sogorea Te Land Trust and Planting Justice Nursery in East Oakland for a Permaculture Action Day on Sunday, January 20th!

This is a free, family-friendly event filled with ecologically regenerative hands-on projects, workshops & skill-shares, music, and a community meal. This is the sister event to this past April’s Lead to Life series in Atlanta, Georgia, where 50 guns were melted down into 50 shovels to plant 50 trees in honor of the 50 years since MLK’s assassination.

————————–⥈ ABOUT THE DAY ⥈————————

For this Oakland action day, our partner James Brenner Sculpture is forging a reimagined arsenal of 40 additional shovels, made from weapons collected at Bay Area gun buybacks. Folks from across the East Bay are coming together to use these ceremonial tools to plant trees and build ceremonial space at the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust site at Planting Justice’s East Oakland Nursery, the first piece of land put into this urban, indigenous women-led community land trust. This will be the site of the first ceremonial arbor built on Ohlone Land in 250 years.

The day will be an act of beloved community and grassroots liberation as part of Oakland’s annual weekend to reclaim the radical legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. To honor the vision of Dr. King, the work of people across Oakland, and the indigenous stewardship of these lands, we will work with our hands in the soil to decompose colonialism. We will live into a practice of land reparations through supporting the return of Ohlone ancestral homelands. This day also auspiciously falls on the Jewish holiday of trees, Tu Bishvat!

The following evening, Monday, January 21st, we will reconvene in Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland, where we will finish transforming guns into our last shovels together in a public participatory ceremony following The People’s March to Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy.

SHARE the monday Facebook Event here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/304864520145992/

“Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library”

We are hosting a delegation of comrades from the Chinese Communist Party, all faculty members of Central China Normal University in Wuhan, one of the top ten Universities in China. They are visiting the Bay Area to get to know the problems of U.S. society and politics better. They will also speak at our forum. The delegation includes:
1.  Tang Min, professor, president of School of Politics and International Studies, CCNU, a  famous Chinese expert in the research of Chinese rural governance, national problems.
2. Zhong Detao,  executive vice president of Party School of CCNU, professor of School of Marxism, CCNU, a famous Chinese expert in the research of history of CPC and the political party system of CPC.
3. Zhou Huaping, associate professor, Center for Marxist Parties in Foreign Countries of CCNU, specialized in the research of European communist movement and Italian Communist Parties.
4. Pan Guangwei, doctor, office director of School of Politics and International Studies, CCNU, specialized in the research of the construction of communist party in the universities.
5. Yu Weihai, professor, dean of Center for Marxist Parties in Foreign Countries of CCNU, specializing in the researches of the communist movement and the world communist parties.
They will discuss three topics at least: history and system of CPC, communist movement, Chinese rural governance and national problem. After their talk, our guests will respond to questions and comments from the audience.

Please join us for a special Sunflower Alliance meeting to follow up on our inspiring retreat and make plans for 2019. Old friends and newcomers are equally welcome.  We need your participation and your voice! Come early to hang out and share a potluck lunch.

12:30 PM — potluck lunch
1 – 3 PM — meeting

In this introductory training, we will discuss some of Dr. King’s more influential writings and his lasting connection to modern movements. This community-based conversation will cover the Six Principles of Kingian Nonviolence, Dr. King’s Six Step strategy for developing a nonviolent campaign, and an in-depth read of “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” Please join Cynthia Gutierrez and Mica Stumpf of Women’s March Oakland in a highly interactive exploration of the values and philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 3 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall.  If for some reason the amphitheater is being used otherwise and/or OGP itself is inaccessible, we will meet at Kaiser Park, right next to the statues, on 19th St. between San Pablo and Telegraph.  If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 3:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland.  (Note: we meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months,  once Daylight Savings Time springs forward we tend to assemble at 4 PM).

On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 2 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over five years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally. Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.

At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.

General Assembly Standard Agenda

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (Optional) Discussion Topic

Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.

Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area

San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv

“I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that [they] will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace”

In partnership with the Robby Poblete Foundation and United Playaz, Lead to Life invites you to join us for a live metal alchemy ceremony to transform guns into shovels, and to call in the prophetic future we know is possible. Our ceremony will serve as a conclusion to the Reclaim Radical King march, organized by APTP.

ABOUT THIS CEREMONY
Our metal casting artist James Brenner alongside local East Bay metal artists, will lead us in a live demonstration of making tools from weapons. The guns have been donated by our partners the Robby Poblete Foundation & United Playas, who collected them from volunteer gun buy back days across the Bay Area.

Join us as we gather in prayer, in grief, in praise, and in creative action to reimagine violence and to decompose White Supremacy in our city, our country, and our world.

Community members from the Oakland area who have been directly impacted by gun violence are invited to offer disabled weapons into the fire to be transformed. Other community members are invited to gather in solidarity and prayer to bear witness. The shovels we make together will be used in tree planting ceremonies in honor of Earth Day, April 2019, where we will plant 50 trees at sites impacted by violence, and sacred sites across Oakland.

This ceremony sustains a prayer cast in Atlanta, GA in April 2018 where we transformed 50 guns into 50 shovels to plant 50 trees to honor the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. You can watch our short film to learn about the beauty that took place in ATL: https://vimeo.com/278336825.

The ceremony is free and open to all! Tax-deductible donations of $15 – $50, though not required, are humbly appreciated to support our ongoing work to reimagine violence.

CALLING ALL ACCOMPLICES: We are seeking volunteers to support us for our Guns to Shovels Ceremony on January 21st. We’re looking for folks with audio-visual expertise, folks who can help with ceremonial support, community safety, set up and clean up, metal artist support, and more. If you’re committed to our vision for a people’s regeneration, we invite you to join our beloved community. Sign up by following this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11-Zs9638z2Ai-eot1BEw0X_8CWAIFJ7KJGLbAXJZmaQ/edit?ts=5c269c09#gid=0.

You can RVSP on our eventbrite page, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lead-to-life-reclaim-radical-king-weekend-tickets-54007880023.

Last week, over 150 heavily armed police officers came with guns and chainsaws to cut down our trees and trash our homes. Six people – community members and students – were violently awoken and handcuffed at 5 am, on charges of “illegal camping” – because they had put up tents and tarps as shelter from the rain. All of their belongings were seized or trashed.

We reject the UC’s claim that this is about sick trees. This is about razing one of Berkeley’s few public spaces to turn it into privatized, luxury dorms. Some trees were supposedly removed because they were “too close to other trees”. Others were completely removed over health issues that are normally solved by removing a branch. The only thing “wrong” with those trees was that they stood in the way of the construction equipment the UC intends to bring in.

They came in the dark of night, during break, when they knew most students would be away from Berkeley, to make it look like students didn’t care. Join us in the park at 11:30 for a rally, and then march to campus, to show the UC that the park belongs to the People, not militarized cops and not private corporations!

POSTPONED:

“Because the consultants did not finish a draft of the UASI Ad hoc Committee report, tomorrow’s meeting has been postponed until next week. Probably to Jan. 30, 3 – 5 pm (pending confirmation of committee members).”

Thursday’s 1/10/19 meeting was not the final task force meeting after all. They will meet again on Monday January 14 from 3 to 8pm and then again on January 22 from 9-11am.

As of 1/14, the Task Force completed its votes on recommendations. This meeting on the 23rd will be pro forma to put the recommendations into final form to forward to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

=====

Meeting of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ Ad Hoc Committee on Urban Area Security Initiative, charged with reconstituting and rethinking Urban Shield.

The committee was established by the Board of Supervisors in March 2018 in response to sustained community concerns about Urban Shield, which is funded in part by UASI grants from the Department of Homeland Security, and coordinated by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

The Board of Supervisors decided in March, 2018 that 2018 would be the last year the county would approve Urban Shield, as currently constituted, and asked the Ad Hoc Committee to make recommendations to the Board on the UASI-funded emergency preparedness training and exercise in 2019 and beyond.

More information.

Agendas and materials for each meeting are posted at http://www.acgov.org/board/calendarcom.htm

TIME FOR TENANT AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
Fed up with rising rents? Already displaced?
Working together makes the difference!

Featured Speaker: Vanessa Riles is Interfaith and Community Organizer for East Bay Housing Organizations.
She will talk about the spring Community Leadership Academy and her earlier experiences as a leader and
community organizer of the Oakland Justice/East 12th Coalition. They won a 2-year campaign, turned around city
policies in 2017, and saved public land for local affordable housing instead of subsidizing a for-profit developer.

Talk, Q&A,and discussion are followed by social time and light refreshments. Join us!

Gray Panthers supports more tenant and senior organizing in Berkeley. We will have applications on hand, but you can also download it at www.ebho.org. Deadline is January 31st.
Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers
510-842-6224 * Graypanthersberk@aol.com

Education and Action Forum
Every 4th Wednesday of the month, 1:30pm at the South
Berkeley Senior Center
All Ages Welcome, Free and Wheelchair Accessible

This presentation is for anyone interested in learning more about how Restorative Justice can change the criminal justice system and stop the school to prison pipeline.

Join in the discussion to create deeper Restorative Practices on a state, county and local level.

RSVP to gamaliel.genesisca@gmail.com

January 2019 Privacy Lab – Data Privacy Compliance Under the Law: Addressing corporate compliance with evolving US/Int’l. privacy laws.

JOINT WALK‐IN CLINICS with Public Defender and EBCLC

*Please bring your statewide CA DOJ RAP sheet
if you have it or we can give information at clinic*

We may be able to help with:
 Dismissal of Conviction – PC 1203.4
 Felony Reduction / Prop 47 and 64 Relief
 Early Termination of Probation
 Certificate of Rehabilitation
 Sealing Arrest Record – Factual Innocence
 Juvenile Record Sealing
 Post-Conviction Relief for Immigrants and
Survivors of Human Trafficking
 Employment denials due to criminal background
reports
 Occupational Licensing Denials(DSS, Security
Guard)
 Voting Rights, Jury Service Rights

As DPW continually confiscates property at the behest of the city govt, the BOS appears poised to enact SB-1045, a dangerous bill meant to conserve homeless folks with a prior history of 5150 holds in mental institutions without their consent. The city puts these efforts into attacking the poor while the Bayview is still without even a full service shelter after decades of broken promises. The people of SF demand housing and appropriate services.
Join the Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance in exposing these actions of the city of SF, Oakland and Berkeley. Let’s come together and fight back!

This Rally will create an opportunity for folks to speak on their experiences being harrassed by the Department of Public Works, The police and their local city Government. The scheduled speakers will include Gwendolyn Westbrook (CEO of the United Council of Human services), representatives of the United Front Against Displacement, Berkeley Friends on Wheels, Neither Here nor There.

However, this event is open to all to participate!

The topic for the meeting is Looking to 2019. We’ll be having some speakers who will give us an overview of some of the issues that we’ll be addressing in this coming year. The Agenda for the meeting is attached.

These include:

a. Looking toward 2019/2020; The View from Indivisible Berkeley ­ Daron Sharps
b. Update on Urban Shield and Audit the Sheriff ­ John Lindsay Poland, AFSC
c. The Oakland Teacher’s Strike ­“ Jeremy Wolff, Chair of Political Involvement Committee of OEA
d. An Environmental Agenda for California ­ Judy Pope, 350 East Bay (document attached to the agenda)e. The Green New Deal ­ Isaac Silk and others, Representatives of the Sunrise Movement

Potluck at 6PM — Meeting at 6:45PM (Please bring something to share)

ALSO  1/27/19 @ 12:30 pm @ 474 24th Street, Oakland

When Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet warrior from Montana, started asking questions about missing money from government-managed Indian Trust accounts, she never imagined that one day she would be taking on the U.S. government. But what she discovered as the Treasurer of her tribe was a trail of fraud and corruption leading all the way from Montana to Washington DC. 100 Years is the story of her 30-year fight for justice for 300,000 Native Americans whose mineral- rich lands were grossly mismanaged by the United States government. In 1996, Cobell filed the largest class action lawsuit ever filed against the federal government. For fifteen long years, and through three Presidential administrations, Elouise Cobell’s unrelenting spirit never quit. This is the compelling true story of how she prevailed and made history.

As a direct result of Cobell’s work, in 2009, President Obama announced the $3.4 billion Cobell Settlement. In 2010, Congress approved the Settlement and in June of 2011 the District Court of D.C. gave it final approval. Settlement checks began to go out to the beneficiaries in 2012. In addition to these payments, a $60 million Cobell Scholarship was established. Following the Settlement, the Obama Administration continued to buy back land from interested landowners, paying fair market price for the land. The purchased land has been returned to the Tribes to manage. With the finalization of the Cobell Settlement, now is the perfect time to tell the story of 100 YEARS: ONE WOMAN’S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE.

In Piedmont, 6:30 Reception, 7:00 film showing. 8:30 community discussion
In Oakland 12:30 showing, then discussion

Free; no need to RSVP.

When she was a young lawyer, Kholoud Al-Faqih walked into the office of Palestine’s Chief Justice and announced she wanted to join the bench. He laughed at her. But just a few years later, Kholoud became the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s Shari’a (Islamic law) courts.

WINNER of the Best Bay Area Documentary Feature at the 2018 San Francisco Film Festival, Official Selection of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival – also featured on PBS Independent Lens. Directed by Erika Cohn.

“[Judge Kholoud] emerges as someone who’s no threat to religious law, but who’s a real problem for patriarchy.”-New York Times

Watch the trailer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5VNYkwjG30

“In its engaging fashion it strikes one inspirational note after another as it follows an ambitious, tough-minded and cheerful social revolutionary.”–The Hollywood Reporter

“The film showcases Faqih’s tireless fight for justice for women…”–The Guardian

Benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, wheelchair accessible