SURJ Bay Area’s Queer and Trans (QT) Committee is hosting a screening of Pride, which highlights a true story of solidarity across identities for social and economic justice. This even is open to the public. Everybody is welcome to join us for an afternoon of film and snacks!

About the film: “Realising that they share common foes in Margaret Thatcher, the police and the conservative press, London-based gay and lesbian activists lend their support to striking miners in 1984 Wales.“

Tickets: This NOTAFLAF screening is also a fundraiser for SURJ Bay Area. As a chapter, at least 50% of funds raised are sent directly to BIPOC-led partner organizations, and other funds go toward making events like this more accessible. Please choose a ticket price from the sliding scale that is meaningful to you. Our platform doesn’t allow the sale of $0 tickets, so if you’d like to attend the event for free, email queertrans@surjbayarea.org, and we’ll save your spot on our guest list.

The Peace and Freedom Party presents
Black History Is American History

As Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital, “Labor cannot emancipate
itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” Marx
also noted that for ALL workers Black Liberation is “not a
question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first
condition of their own social emancipation.”

Speakers for our forum on Black history will include: Kingdom
speaking on “The Freedom Struggle–Then and Now,” and Steve
Johnson speaking on “Black Teachers Struggle for Justice,”

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 afterwards. The
opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not reflect 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.
www.peaceandfreedom.org

East Bay DSA’s general meetings (GMs) are typically held on the second Sunday of each month. These meetings include deliberation and voting on member-submitted resolutions, member announcements, reports from our committees, and more.

Volunteering at the GM is lively, easy, and low-commitment, and hugely benefits the meetings and thus our internal democracy. If you intend to come and would like to volunteer (!), let us know. Use this form, too, if you have child supervision or accessibility needs, including the need for an ASL interpreter.

With our new regular schedule, member-submitted resolutions will be accepted on a rolling basis. Please email them to resolutions@eastbaydsa.org. The submissions deadline for each meeting is one week after the previous one.

General meetings are run by the Meetings Committee. For questions or comments, or if you are interested in joining the committee, write us at meetings@eastbaydsa.org!

See the agenda

• NEW: Relieving millions in local Medical Debt through pennies-on-the-dollar buyback programs.
• NEW: A book group and seminar focused on Economic Inequality and Economic Theory for the modern age.
• Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions.
• Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
• Money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
• Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
• Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
• Helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
• Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
• Promoting the concept of Basic Income
• Advocating for Postal banking
• Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
• Bring your own debt-related project!

If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com

The Policy Working Group is excited to invite you to our upcoming, SURJ Bay Area Lobby Visit Workshop, part two of our legislative workshop series!

Workshop participants can expect to…

-Learn about lobby visits and how they fit into SURJ’s larger framework
-Practice speaking about policy to a legislative staffer
-Hear about new opportunities to engage in the legislative process with SURJ
-Hear from Essie Justice Group on their 2019 policy priorities

Tickets are sliding scale, $0 – $10. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. This workshop is a fundraiser for Essie Justice Group. Please bring a cash donation that is meaningful for you.

****This is the second workshop of a two part series. Attendance at the first workshop on 1/13/19 is not necessary but may be helpful. All are welcome.

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

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

In alliance with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) we organized the October 23, 2010 labor and community rally for Justice for Oscar Grant. On that day the ILWU shut down the Bay Area ports in solidarity. Our mission is to educate, organize and mobilize people against police and state repression. Sisters and brothers! The Oscar Grant Committee invites you to join us in this vital struggle.

We meet on the 1^st Monday of each month
You can join our discussion list by sending a blank (doesn’t even need a subject) email to

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

The time to strike is approaching and Oakland teachers are calling on Oakland City Council to show where they stand! Are they with the Oakland community or the billionaire privatizers taking over the district? Join teachers as they put pressure on city council members to back their demands for lower class sizes, living wages, student support, and stopping school closures. Oakland teachers and their allies across the East Bay will rally in front of Oakland City Hall before entering the city council meeting where the resolution to support Oakland teachers will be put to a vote.

Meeting at OUSD offices: 4:00 – 4:30 p.m. at 1000 Broadway
March to City Hall: 4:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Rally at City Hall: 5:00 – 5:15 p.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza (Frank H. Ogawa Plaza) in front of Oakland City Hall
Oakland City Council Meeting: 5:30 p.m.

JOIN US TO SUPPORT OAKLAND EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

OEA ASKS OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBERS: _”WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?”_
OAKLAND STUDENTS, PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS ARE EAGER TO
LEARN WHERE YOU STAND IN THE FIGHT TO SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION IN OAKLAND!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5TH, THE OAKLAND CITY COUNCIL WILL CONSIDER
A RESOLUTION TO SUPPORT OEA’S CONTRACT DEMANDS, STAND AGAINST SCHOOL
CLOSURES AND FULLY FUND OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.  YOUR SUPPORT IS NEEDED.
PLEASE JOIN OAKLAND TEACHERS, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO SUPPORT
THIS CRITICAL RESOLUTION AS WE GEAR UP FOR A POTENTIAL STRIKE.

GATHER AT CITY HALL PLAZA FOR A RALLY AT 4:30PM BEFORE WE HEAD INTO THE
COUNCIL MEETING AT 5:30PM.

FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO OEA WEBSITE:
HTTPS://OAKLANDEA.ORG/EVENT/CALL-ON-THE-CITY-COUNCIL-TO-SUPPORT-OAKLAND-TEACHERS/

CR Oakland and Public Health Justice Collective (formerly Occupy Public Health) are excited to invite you to join us for a learning and strategy session for ending the violence of policing in our communities.

Snacks will be provided.

PLEASE RSVP at: https://goo.gl/forms/PE96N1PDg6OvMkpT2

What does the fact that the American Public Health Association (APHA), a network of over 25,000 public health professionals, overwhelmingly adopted a policy statement that identifies the violence of policing as a public health issue? How can we use this statement and its recommendations for decriminalization , divestment from law enforcement, and alternatives to policing to strengthen our campaigns? Join us to learn more about this win and identify how we can use as an organizing tool.

We particularly invite people involved in campaigns against policing and criminalization to join us and to bring folks organizing with you!

Progressives and socialists have sometimes won state power in liberal, democratic regimes, and used it to rein in the worst excesses of capitalism. But, due to their structural power, capitalists exercise disproportionate control over the state, often allowing them to prevent or roll back such reforms.

Please join the Socialist Night School on Tuesday, February 5 for a discussion of the capitalist state and the sorts of reforms possible under capitalism.

Required Readings

See the readings that we’ll be discussing after a brief introduction from our members.

Want to get involved with SURJ Bay Area? Come learn about our current work and activities. SURJ moves white people to act for justice, with passion and accountability, as part of a multi-racial majority.

Oakland teachers are gearing up for a likely strike to win the schools their students deserve! But they need your support to win—and you can help through the Bread for Ed campaign.

Bread for Ed will provide meals at solidarity schools, food trucks at picket lines, and more. There are 37,000 students and around 3,000 members of the Oakland Educators Association in this fight to defend the public school in Oakland. The vast majority of these students depend on free or reduced lunches, so this project is a critical show of solidarity with the Oakland community.

Come to a Bread for Ed organizing meeting to learn more and get involved with this effort to keep Oakland kids fed! You can also donate to the Bread for Ed food fund at: https://donorbox.org/breadfored

The meeting space is on the second floor but accessible by elevator.

Advance tickets: $12: brownpapertickets.com :: T: 800-838-3006
or Pegasus (3 sites), Books Inc (Berkeley), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, East Bay Books Mrs. Dalloway’s
$15 door

For decades one of the most farseeing, outspoken public intellectuals in the United States has been Robert B. Reich. Now he provides us with The Common Good, his sixteenth book, a passionate, clear-eyed manifesto urging the recentering of our national economics and politics on the profound idea of the common good. Responding to the prevailing uproar of divisiveness, cynicism and blind self-interest, Reich makes a powerful case for expanding America’s moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good not only exists, but in fact is the very essence of any functional society or notion. Societies, he asserts, undergo varying virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine It – one of which this country has been experiencing for the past five decades. This can and must be reversed.

First we must weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how as a country we should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth and the meaning of leadership.

This is a heartfelt statement from a major political thinker devoted to saving America’s soul.

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations and has written fifteen books, including The Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism and Locked In the Cabinet. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washingon Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is currently chair of the national governing board of Common Cause.

Kathryn Horsley is a retired public health researcher and civil servant who worked on demographic and reproductive health research in Bolivia, East Africa and the Middle East for 16 years. More recently she worked for Seattle-King County Public Health and Alameda County Public Health Departments on community assessment and mapping of health outcomes regarding infant and maternal mortality, teen pregnancy, etc. Kathryn has done community outreach for KPFA Radio, and over the past three years has co-produced benefit events for KPFA.          

KPFA benefit

The encampment at E 12th & 23rd Ave got eviction notice, happening over a week:
Thursday 1/31
Friday 2/1
Thurs 2/7
Fri 2/8.

We’re asking for folks to come for eviction support at 8 am each day – bringing coffee, breakfast, and doing copwatch/documentation.

— The Village, Oakland (@VillageOakland) January 29, 2019

Hosted by the Ecology Center, StopWaste and City of Berkeley, with the generous support of BayREN.

Why? Our homes and buildings are the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. But thanks to local Community Choice Energy providers, electricity in the Bay Area is clean, and is getting cleaner and greener every year. We can vastly reduce our carbon footprint by getting off natural gas in our homes and electrifying everything. Not only does electrification reduce GHGs, it also makes our homes healthier and safer.

What?

• Watch induction cooktop demos
• Talk with local residents who are electrifying homes and apartments
• Meet local contractors installing all-electric appliances
• See super-efficient heat pump water heaters & space heating/cooling systems
• Learn more at workshops with international electrification expert Sean Armstrong. Limited seating – advance registration required.
• 3:30-5:00pm – Building Professional Workshop (Plumbers, Electricians, Contractors, Architects, HVAC Installers)
• 6:00-7:30pm – Renter & Homeowner Workshop

Agenda:

3. 5:10pm: Open Forum
4. 5:15pm: UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic – introduction and discussion of scope of work, including drafting of Privacy Principles.
5. 5:20pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Exigent Use of Surveillance Technology report, and take possible action.
6. 5:30pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Automated License Plate Reader Anticipated Impact Report – review and take possible action.
7. 6:00pm: Federal Task Force Transparency Ordinance – OPD – presentation of inaugural annual reports (FBI/JTTF, ATF, DEA task forces), and take possible action.
8. 6:30pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Body Worn Camera Anticipated Impact Report – review and take possible action.

How does the dream of a college degree become a reality for low-income students?

Please join us for East Bay Community Conversations
Higher Education and the California Dream: Myth or Reality

These and many other issues facing students desiring a higher education degree in California are critical topics for a two-part series hosted by the KQED Community Advisory Panel.

Hear from and share your thoughts with higher education administrators, faculty, students, and elected officials.

Panelists include:

Dr. Marie Elaine Burns, President, Merritt College
Dr. Jowel Laguerre, Chancellor, Peralta Community College District
Dr. Kimberly Mayfield. Dean of Education, Holy Names University
Dr. Chinyere Oparah, Provost and Dean of Faculty, Mills College
The Honorable Loren Taylor, District 6, Oakland City Councilman
Merritt College Student Representative

Janet Miller Evans, Moderator, KQED Community Action Panel
LaNeice Jones, Host, KQED Community Action Panel

Event details:

Doors Open at 5:00PM

Looking for more: Join us on March 20, 2019 at Mills College for the second part of the conversation. Details here.