Calendar

9896
Feb
22
Fri
Anti-Black State Violence Across the Americas Symposium
Feb 22 all-day

UC Berkeley is hosting influential scholars and social movement leaders from Brazil and the United States—homes to the two largest Black populations outside the continent of Africa.

Guest Speakers include:
Cat Brooks (Anti Police-Terror Project)
Ericka Huggins (Black Panther Party)
Vilma Reis (Movimento de Mulheres Negras)
Alicia Garza (Black Lives Matter)
Asha Ransby-Sporn (Black Youth Project 100)
Djamila Ribeiro (Movimento de Feministas Negras)
Andreia Beatriz & Hamilton Borges dos Santos (Reaja ou Será Mort@)
Christen Smith (UT Austin)
Tina Sacks, Leigh Raiford & john a. powell (UC Berkeley)
Camila de Moraes and more throughout this three-day symposium!

In 2019, a U.S. congressional session begins with more women and non-white members than ever before amid a contentious executive branch, and Brazil’s far-right president-elect begins his first term despite anti-Black, -LGBTQ, and -woman rhetoric. The symposium on “Anti-Black State Violence in the Americas” will facilitate transnational coalitions, engagement, and learning. Taking place over three days, scholars, scholar-activists, and organizers will discuss the intersecting challenges of addressing anti-black state violence through workshops on topics including: policing and democracy; historical foundations of Black struggle; wellness and healing; sustainability and social movements; cultural media production; education in today’s socio-cultural contexts; pathways to contesting racialized forms of violence, and, many others.

Join us during this dynamic multi-disciplinary symposium as we illuminate cross-cultural understanding, bringing forward the sharp contrast and commonality between South and North America and generating anti-oppression community building across the Americas. All community members welcome!

RSVP for individuals events and workshops: https://goo.gl/forms/par3FykAT2mJtRCe2

All events are wheelchair accessible. Please fill out our Event Registration form so we can accommodate any additional access needs.

We can’t wait for you to join us for this dynamic event!!!

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Feb
23
Sat
Waffles & Zapatismo @ Omni Commons
Feb 23 @ 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Waffles & Zapatismo is a free space for learning about and discussing the history, ideas, values and practices of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, EZLN or Zapatistas. We serve waffles at the start of the class to those who want them.

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RESILIENCY FAIR featuring the REPAIR CAFE @ Berkeley Adult School
Feb 23 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Become more resilient!
Learn about emergency preparedness, renewable energy, personal health & well-being, how to fix things & reduce waste, grow & share food, help our natural habitat thrive, plus so much more at the Resiliency Fair!

Don’t send your broken item to the trash – bring it to the Repair Cafe!  Come to this gathering where community members help each other repair what’s broken.  This event is free and intended to empower us to repair.  It is not a free drop-off repair service.

Calling Volunteers! Are you handy with repair? Or do you enjoy hosting? Join this fun and empowering event! Click here to be a volunteer fixer or host!

What type of items can be fixed?
All kinds of household items including – lamps, clothing, toys, furniture, electronics, appliances and bicycles, jewelry … pretty much anything that can be carried through the door. Bring one or two items you would most like to bring back to life and we’ll help you fix one of them!

A cafe will offer refreshments during the event by MLK Middle School as a fundraising effort for their Washington D.C. trip.

This event is organized by Transition Berkeley, with funding from StopWaste. It is co-sponsored and supported by The Culture of Repair Project, the Berkeley Adult School, the Berkeley Times and the Ecology Center.

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Hands Off Venezuela Rally @ Oscar Grant Plaza
Feb 23 @ 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Join the International Action Center and Spring Action Coalition for a day of action against US intervention in Venezuela.

We will hold a rally at 14th and Broadway in Oakland to protest the Trump administration’s support for the coup against the Maduro government, and the long history of sanctions and threats against the Venezuelan people.

We demand an end to hostile actions against Venezuela!

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Richmond Progressive Alliance Meeting @ Bobby Bowens Progressive Center
Feb 23 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm

RPA membership meeting

Mark your calendars for the next RPA membership meeting!

All RPA members are welcome. Join here. Membership can be renewed online or at the door. Agenda will be emailed prior to the meeting.

65625
Rally to Demand Justice for Willie McCoy @ Taco Bell
Feb 23 @ 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Join us at a rally to demand justice for Willie McCoy, murdered by Vallejo PD. We’ll gather at the Taco Bell where he was murdered. Bring posters, candles, and your voices to support Willie’s family.

If you’re coming from Oakland and either need a ride or have space in your car, please meet us at 12:15 at the APTP office at 1201 Martin Luther King Jr Way.

sm_williemccoy_february23-2019.jpg
65741
Film Screening: “1948: Creation and Catastrophe” @ The Way Christian Center
Feb 23 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Through riveting and moving personal recollections of both Israelis and Palestinians, the film reveals the shocking events of the most pivotal year of the ongoing tragedy. It tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it. This film is your chance to make sense of what is happening in Israel-Palestine today. Co-sponsored by The Way Christian Center, NorCal Sabeel and Jewish Voice For Peace-Bay Area.

Facebook

65717
Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance Meeting @ Omni Commons
Feb 23 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Please be on time, so we can start the meeting early. We’ll be discussing and planning our next direct action for the month of February, and sharing community updates.

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Feb
24
Sun
Visionaries: Indigenous Organizers Protecting Land @ Oakstop
Feb 24 @ 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Come listen to, learn from, and be inspired by the visionaries who have been organizing at the forefront of indigenous peoples’ fights to protect people, the planet and what is sacred — from Ohlone territories in Oakland, to Standing Rock, to Bayou Bridge.

SPEAKERS

Corrina Gould, spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone, co-founder  of Indian People Organizing for Change, and co-founder of the Native-women-led Sogorea Te Land Trust.. In 2011 she helped lead a 109-day occupation of the Sogorea Te sacred site in Vallejo.

Mark k. Tilsen is an Oglala Lakota Poet Educator from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He served as direct action trainer and police liaison at Standing Rock. He recently spent six months at L’eau est La Vie Camp helping fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.

Wahleah Johns, a tribal member of the Navajo Nation, is  founder and director of Native Renewables, a dynamic company focusing on solar energy in Native American communities. For 15 years she has been working on campaigns around water protection, environmental justice, and community economic development.

Childcare will be available (please RSVP to childcare@collectiveliberation.org by Tuesday the 19th)
We will be providing projected live transcription (CART)
This event is fully wheelchair accessible.
We will be livestreaming this event from the Facebook event page.
Please email us at accessibility@collectiveliberation.org by Tuesday, Feb 19th, to request language translation or with other access needs.
This will be a reduced-scent space and there will be a fragrance-free seating area.

The event will also be live-streamed on Facebook.
Hosted by the Catalyst Project.

 

Info/RSVP

65650
Bay Area Poor People’s Campaign Steering Committee Meeting @ Omni Commons
Feb 24 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

The Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC) focuses on fighting the four pillars of evil: poverty, systemic racism, the war economy and environmental devastation, and on shifting the moral narrative. PPC supporters in the Bay Area have come together to form the Bay Area PPC Steering Committee and hope you can join this effort and share this information with others who may be interested.

In the PPC, people directly impacted by the 4 pillars of evil are
central in our work.

We look forward to your participation as we move forward to build the PPC campaign here in the Bay Area and help grow this exciting new movement.

Let us break bread together! Bring a snack to share if you can!

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Occupy Oakland General Assembly @ Oscar Grant Plaza
Feb 24 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

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.

ooGAOO 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

62637
TANC General Assembly @ Omni Commons
Feb 24 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
This month we’re continuing to try out a new day/time for our assembly: Sunday afternoon!

For this February assembly, we’ll be preparing to protest: TANC is planning a rally for sometime in the next couple months. We’ll also be brainstorming a longer-term project to work with the public housing. We’ll also be checking up on other projects, including tenant councils.

Let’s get organized against the Bay Area housing market!

Our general assemblies are open and free for anyone to join. We’ll be discussing ongoing projects: tenant organizing, houseless organizing, public housing organizing and more. Rent is too high, and we’ve got to organize and fight against marketized housing. Come through and let’s get organized against the housing market!

– – – – – – – – – – – –

We are a group of Bay Area tenants who are fed up with rising rents, evictions, and harassment at the hands of landlords. We are fed up with our neighbors having no option but to live unsheltered and at constant risk of police harassment. We want to stop landlords, developers, and cops from looting our communities.

A council is a group of tenants who work together to wield collective power against a shared landlord in order to improve their conditions. While, in general, councils may organize for more affordable, habitable, and safer housing, the issues that a council decides to organize around is ultimately dictated by its members. Councils can be powerful because they can directly apply their collective pressure on their landlord without the permission of city hall or other third parties.

TANC will help organize councils and bring them together as a network. While councils interface directly with their landlord, they can find support from other councils who rent from different landlords. We will assist in getting the word out to tenants and researching landlords. Neighbors will get to know each other during dinners, BBQs, and other events that TANC will support. We will compile complaints that are common across councils and aid in seeking their resolution. Councils will discuss and demand timely repairs, and support tenants threatened with eviction. Ultimately, the point is to reconfigure power dynamics of landlords and tenants in the Bay Area.

65700
Free Dinner and a Movie Discussion Night – Oakland Greens @ It's Your Move Games
Feb 24 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
The Oakland Greens 2019 FREE Dinner and a Movie discussion series.

As usual, the doors at the It’s Your Move Games and Hobbies store will open at 6:30 p.m., a free dinner will be provided at 7 p.m., and the movie will start promptly at 7:30 p.m.
65437
Feb
25
Mon
Oakland Teachers Strike
Feb 25 all-day

65756
Bree Newsome: Tearing Hatred from the Sky @ Soda Activity Center
Feb 25 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

PRESENTED by:
The Roy E. and Patricia Disney Forum and Communication Department, President James Donahue, the Committee on Inclusive Excellence, CILSA and the Black Lives Matter Subcommittee.

This is the signature event of 44 Days Honoring Black History.

Bree Newsome is a noted artist, community organizer, and advocate for racial justice. Newsome gained national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and removed a Confederate battle flag that was originally raised in 1961 as a white supremacist statement of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and lunch counter sit-ins occurring at the time.

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

Admission: FREE

65697
War With Russia? @ first Congregational Church of Berkeley
Feb 25 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents

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

 “The most controversial Russia expert in America.”— The Chronicle Review

War With Russia? is an alternative narrative of Donald Trump’s US and Putin’s Russia, from America’s most prominent Russian scholar. America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from  Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen — the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia— gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.  War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves.

 

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. His other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience; Sovieticus; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives. Cohen is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel.

 

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation, as well as a frequent commentator on US and international politics for ABC, MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.  She writes a weekly column for The Washington Post.  She is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama.  She has received numerous awards for public service from various groups–the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s  “Voices of Peace” award and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s “Justice in Action” award. In 2010, she received the Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award. In 2013, she received American Rights at Work’s Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award; the Center for Community Change’s Champion in Activism Award. In 2015, she received the Progressive Congress Leadership Award on behalf of her work “creating pathways of success on behalf of progressive causes.

KPFA benefit

65749
Feb
26
Tue
Urban Shield Fate to be Decided at Alameda County Board of Sups @ Alameda County Administration Building, 5th Floor
Feb 26 @ 10:00 am – 4:30 pm

POLICE REFORM:  Alameda County Urban Shield/UASI Task Force   

For six years, Bay Area activists have pushed to repurpose Homeland Security disaster preparedness funds away from the hyper-militarized training exercise Urban Shield. Finally the Alameda Board of Supervisors agreed and convened a task force to end “Urban Shield as we know it”.  The  task force has provided dozens of recommendations to do exactly that.

There is lots of pushback and lots more coming, according to the SF Chronicle, which announced the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is “primed for battle“.  But this is our taxpayer money to protect us and help us recover from disasters like catastrophic wildfires. We get a say in how it is spent.

You can view some of the proposed recommendations here and here. The recommendations follow years of problems with racial profilingright wing vigilantes, and environmental abuse. Your physical presence on the 26th is important, but you can also use this easy action alert to tell the Supervisors not to buckle to the pressure and really change Urban Shield. Now:

Easy Action Alert

65755
POLICE REFORM: Urban Shield Fate to be Decided at Alameda County Board of Sups @ Alameda County Administration Building, 5th Floor
Feb 26 @ 10:45 am – 11:00 am

Take action right now.
Take Action

POLICE REFORM:  Alameda County Urban Shield/UASI Task Force   

For six years, Bay Area activists have pushed to repurpose Homeland Security disaster preparedness funds away from the hyper-militarized training exercise Urban Shield. Finally the Alameda Board of Supervisors agreed and convened a task force to end “Urban Shield as we know it”.  The  task force has provided dozens of recommendations to do exactly that.

There is lots of pushback and lots more coming, according to the SF Chronicle, which announced the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is “primed for battle.  But this is our taxpayer money to protect us and help us recover from disasters like catastrophic wildfires. We get a say in how it is spent.

You can view some of the proposed recommendations here and here. The recommendations follow years of problems with racial profilingright wing vigilantes, and environmental abuse. Your physical presence on the 26th is important (look out for an event invite), but you can also use this easy action alert to tell the Supervisors not to buckle to the pressure and really change Urban Shield. Now:

After 5 years, Urban Shield may end on February 26 …. with your help

Since 2013, the Bay Area has been trying to transform Urban Shield from a highly militarized SWAT competition and weapons expo into a community-focused safety and resilence exercise

And now we are almost there.

The second Alameda County task force has completed its work and issued a long and thorough list of recommendations that include ending the weapons expo that features spying and crowd control gadgets, ending the violent SWAT competition to focus on training other first responders, and.directing $5 million in new funding to health and social services.

But we need to make the adoption of these recommendations by the Supervisors a reality – and that means countering the Sheriff’s Department pressure with our own.

Take action right now.
Take Action

Write to the Board of Supervisors with this easy one-click action from our friends at Media Alliance and share it with others.

And join us at the Alameda Administration Building on February 26 at 10:45am to end Urban Shield.

Board of Supervisors – Alameda County
Alameda County Administration Building
1221 Oak Street, 5th Floor
Oakland

Tuesday  February 26  10:45AM Meeting Start

More Info About Urban Shield

2018 Urban Shield Promo Video

2018  Notes From The Last Urban Shield As We Know It 

2017 Urban Shield Community Report Card from the Stop Urban Shield Coalition

2017 ICE At Urban Shield Photo Gallery

Oakland Privacy Recommendations to Task Force

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How to Make the Oakland Police Commission Effective? @ West Oakland Library
Feb 26 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

65759
Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System @ Samuel Merritt University
Feb 26 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Dr. Tina Sacks discusses her book “Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System”.

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