Calendar

Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in the East Bay DSA Labor Committee, and learn how you can get involved!

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
$15 door

“This extraordinary history of resistance counters the myth of Indigenous disappearance and insignificance while calling into question the very notion that resistance itself is impossible in a world saturated by capital and atrophying inequality. This is a radical Indigenous history in its finest form.”  —Audra Simpson, author of Mohawk Interruptus

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan – “Mni Wiconi” – Water is Life – was about more than just a pipeline. Water protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that even after the encampment was gone their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan Dams, the American Indian Movement and the campaign for Indigenous Rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on personal observations from the encampments and from his own growing up as a citizen of Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making this book a work of authentic history, a personal story, and a stirring manifesto for native liberation.

“This book is a jewel—history and analysis that reads like the best poetry—certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.”

—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author ofAn Indigenous People’s History of the United States

Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, and a co-founder of The Red Nation, an organization dedicated to native liberation. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She is the author of many books, including Outlaw Woman, a memoir of her time in an armed underground group, Red Dirt: Growing up Okie, and Blood On the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War,and the recent, widely acclaimed An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. 

KPFA benefit

RSVP FOR LOCATION.

East Bay Community Energy’s Local Development Business Plan is the Green New Deal for the East Bay. While our National leaders are scrambling to get a policy together, we have the opportunity to build energy solutions that center justice at home, in the East Bay.

On Monday, April 1 at 7pm (details tbd by EBCE), East Bay Community Energy’s Community Advisory Committee (CAC) will be having a special study session on the Early Actions for Local Development. Join us at this study session to speak to the Community Advisory Committee about our priorities.

You might recall that Local Clean Energy Alliance hosted two in-depth workshops in 2018. In July, we created curriculum on the Local Development Business Plan and in November we created and presented curriculum on the Early Actions for Local Development highlighted in the business plan. The format at the Community Advisory Committee will not be like ours, but much of the material might be familiar. This will be both an opportunity to review the material and advocate for the pieces that most benefit our most vulnerable communities, including:

Energy Efficiency
Community Innovation Grant
Community Net Energy Metering
Community Shared Solar

Now is the time to show the rest of the country what a green new deal looks like — how it can be done, who is at the table, and who sees the benefits – . But it will take your voices and your advocacy to make it happen for real.

Will you join us on April 1?

Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance meeting to discuss plans, outreach, organizing regarding regional homeless communities and organizations.

For more info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/541837129562482/

*WE HATE SANTA RITA JAIL*
A fundraiser for Oakland IWOC
6pm to close

Come share in the hatred of our county jail (and every other jail, prison, and detention center) and support you favorite local abolitionist crew. All proceeds go toward IWOC’s direct material support program for late night releasees from Santa Rita.

Every week we bring a crew of people out to Santa Rita Jail to meet people as they are released. We share pizza, cigarettes, warm clothes, rides to BART with our neighbors who are getting out late at night. This material support and care work is a small but meaningful way to address the harm caused by incarceration in our Bay Area community. We need your help to keep this project going strong. Please spread the word and we hope to see you Friday

Food and drink provided by Tamarack
Short presentation by IWOC Oakland
Vinyl by Left of the Dial

Inside, Outside, All on the Same Side!

Walk through groundbreaking interactive and immersive exhibits. Meet leading civil rights activists. Learn how to reduce prison populations, protect immigrants, and ensure everyone’s constitutional right to vote. Take action.

A family-friendly event for people of all ages. Free + open to all.

RSVP at ACLU100.org

Schedule below (subject to change)

ALL DAY ACTIVITIES:

Art workshops led by Artismobilus, Justice For Our Lives. Screen printing with Lukas WhatWhat and face painting with Miss Naomi Bee.

Network with Bay Area and California non-profits making the change happen, including: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Heyday Books, Initiate Justice, League of Women Voters of the U.S., Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), ACILEP network for immigrant rights, Youth Speaks, Oakland Public Library, Secure Justice, Design Action Collective,
Anti-Recidivism Coalition, TGI Justice Project (TGIJP), and ACCESS Women’s Health Justice.

SATURDAY, MARCH 30

10:00 am–4:00 pm
Qulture Collective vendor village featuring local queer and POC artists and makers

11:45 am–12:45 am
SambaFunk! featuring FUNKTERNAL
A collective of dancers, musicians and drummers spreading JOY and social consciousness through their work.

1:00 pm–1:05 pm
W. Kamau Bell – sociopolitical comedian and host of docu-series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell

1:05 pm–2:00 pm
Act to Save Lives: Panel Discussion on Critical Police Reform
Featuring Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, Uncle Bobby from Love Not Blood Campaign, and James Burch from Anti Police-Terror Project . Moderated by Miguel Quezada from CURYJ

2:00 pm–2:30 pm
Dancing Earth
A collaborative group of intertribal indigenous dance artists

2:30 pm–3:30 pm
Audiopharmacy
Spawned from its roots in hip hop, Audiopharmacy intricately fuses live instrumentation and global musical styles

3:30 pm–4:30 pm
Jonah Melvon featuring adeshamusic
A sibling duo playing music from a new project by Jonah Melvon, Rain Water, and Adesha’s inspiring soul music collection

4:30 pm–5:30 pm
Man Haters: Women, Queers, Comedy
An all-women comedy group based in Oakland, California featuring Irene Tu, Dominique Gelin, Brooke Heinichen and Alexandria Love

6:00 pm–7:00 pm
Hip Hop for Change
A non-profit dedicated to using Hip Hop as a means of positive cultural change

SUNDAY, MARCH 31

11:00 am – 12:00 pm
The Void
Funky jazz soul from Oakland youth

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
West Grand Brass Band
Dixieland brass band tradition combined with modern musical genres and sounds

1:00 pm– 2:00pm
Art as Activism
Panel featuring Gregory Sale, lead artist at the Future IDs Project, Inno Negara who wrote the best-selling A is for Activist, Rob Liu Trujillo illustrator, author, and co-founder of the Trust Your Struggle, and Sabiha Basrai from Design Action Collective. Moderated by Gigi Harney, ACLU of Northern California Creative Strategist.

2:00 pm– 3:00 pm
Book signing with best selling author Inno Nagara

4:00 pm– 5:00 pm
Mission Delirium
An invitation to revel in the sound of earth shaking drums and face-melting brass

You’re Invited to a Breakfast of Waffles & Zapatismo!

Zapatista Autonomy:
Challenging Solidarity & Organizing in the U.S.

* 10:30am Waffles, coffee, getting to know each other
* 11:00 a.m. Pablo Gonzalez presentation with discussion.

On Pablo Gonzalez

Pablo Gonzalez teaches at UC Berkeley. A first generation Chicano scholar-activist/anthropologist, Pablo is immersed in studying the political and cultural resonance of social movements. In particular, the resonance of Indigenous social movements on Chicanas/os and people of color in the U.S.

Gonzalez has a book manuscript, “Autonomy Road: The Cultural Politics of Chicana/o Autonomous Organizing in Los Angeles California,” which describes a 20-year history of solidarity and political organizing between Chicana/o communities in the U.S. and the Zapatista indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico.

The Chiapas Support Committee invites you to join us for a community breakfast and a discussion to deepen our understanding of and relationships with the struggles of Zapatista and Indigenous communities in Mexico and what solidarity looks like in the current political and economic climate. Expressing and organizing solidarity has many race, gender, class facets. How do we speak about Indigenous struggles, how are they linked to our struggles in the U.S., what is the task and responsibility (if any) of U.S.-based social justice movements, anti-racist, environmental justice, racial justice and Indigenous struggles and movements?

We have more questions than answers. The discussion requires we ask the right and critical questions in time and reflect and organize. What are your questions?

Join us in an urgent and intimate dialogue and discussion of what matters most to us in this period of rising capitalist strife and repression.

PLUS HOLD THE DATE:
¡Viva Zapata!
Zapata Across the Borders: Image & Reality
Film Screening & Discussion of the Marlon Brando classic: ¡Viva Zapata!
Also at the Omni
Sat. April 13, 2019, 7 pm
$5-10 donation at the door

For more info:
www.chiapas-support.org

Walk through groundbreaking interactive and immersive exhibits. Meet leading civil rights activists. Learn how to reduce prison populations, protect immigrants, and ensure everyone’s constitutional right to vote. Take action.

A family-friendly event for people of all ages. Free + open to all.

RSVP at ACLU100.org

Schedule below (subject to change)

ALL DAY ACTIVITIES:

Art workshops led by Artismobilus, Justice For Our Lives. Screen printing with Lukas WhatWhat and face painting with Miss Naomi Bee.

Network with Bay Area and California non-profits making the change happen, including: Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Heyday Books, Initiate Justice, League of Women Voters of the U.S., Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), ACILEP network for immigrant rights, Youth Speaks, Oakland Public Library, Secure Justice, Design Action Collective,
Anti-Recidivism Coalition, TGI Justice Project (TGIJP), and ACCESS Women’s Health Justice.

SATURDAY, MARCH 30

10:00 am–4:00 pm
Qulture Collective vendor village featuring local queer and POC artists and makers

11:45 am–12:45 am
SambaFunk! featuring FUNKTERNAL
A collective of dancers, musicians and drummers spreading JOY and social consciousness through their work.

1:00 pm–1:05 pm
W. Kamau Bell – sociopolitical comedian and host of docu-series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell

1:05 pm–2:00 pm
Act to Save Lives: Panel Discussion on Critical Police Reform
Featuring Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, Uncle Bobby from Love Not Blood Campaign, and James Burch from Anti Police-Terror Project . Moderated by Miguel Quezada from CURYJ

2:00 pm–2:30 pm
Dancing Earth
A collaborative group of intertribal indigenous dance artists

2:30 pm–3:30 pm
Audiopharmacy
Spawned from its roots in hip hop, Audiopharmacy intricately fuses live instrumentation and global musical styles

3:30 pm–4:30 pm
Jonah Melvon featuring adeshamusic
A sibling duo playing music from a new project by Jonah Melvon, Rain Water, and Adesha’s inspiring soul music collection

4:30 pm–5:30 pm
Man Haters: Women, Queers, Comedy
An all-women comedy group based in Oakland, California featuring Irene Tu, Dominique Gelin, Brooke Heinichen and Alexandria Love

6:00 pm–7:00 pm
Hip Hop for Change
A non-profit dedicated to using Hip Hop as a means of positive cultural change

SUNDAY, MARCH 31

11:00 am – 12:00 pm
The Void
Funky jazz soul from Oakland youth

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
West Grand Brass Band
Dixieland brass band tradition combined with modern musical genres and sounds

1:00 pm– 2:00pm
Art as Activism
Panel featuring Gregory Sale, lead artist at the Future IDs Project, Inno Negara who wrote the best-selling A is for Activist, Rob Liu Trujillo illustrator, author, and co-founder of the Trust Your Struggle, and Sabiha Basrai from Design Action Collective. Moderated by Gigi Harney, ACLU of Northern California Creative Strategist.

2:00 pm– 3:00 pm
Book signing with best selling author Inno Nagara

4:00 pm– 5:00 pm
Mission Delirium
An invitation to revel in the sound of earth shaking drums and face-melting brass

What skills, tools and approaches are useful in encouraging white people to sustain balanced engagement with anti-racism/racial justice education and work? How can we cultivate resilience (as opposed to white fragility) in ourselves, our communities, and our movements?

White Fragility is defined by Robin DiAngelo as “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation (2011).” What skills, tools and approaches are useful in encouraging white people to sustain balanced engagement with anti-racism/racial justice education and work? How can we cultivate resilience (as opposed to white fragility) in ourselves, our communities, and our movements? Resilience is, in part, defined as:

1. Staying with the conversation

2. Giving and receiving information and feedback from facilitators and peers without becoming highly defensive, reactive, or shut down/dissociated for long period of time

3. Managing the guilt and shame that can arise in learning about the history and current reality of race and racism in the US.

This workshop will explore the role of the body, community, spirituality, intellectual knowledge and other themes that you bring from your experience. We will cover basic information about how the brain and body responds to perceived threats, and explore how to work with this toward greater resilience in moments of challenge.

This workshop is for all experience levels. Participants will be invited to discuss in small groups, move around the space, and hold their bodies in different shapes for 1-2 minutes if available. Content will be presented in both verbal and written formats.

Is industrial civilization compatible with economic democracy, or is democratic socialism impossible in a globalized industrial society?  This presentation will examine the powerful material conditions that have frustrated every effort to replace capitalism with genuine democratic socialism.  Hopefully, this will become the starting point for a discussion about what kinds of energy sources and technologies are most conducive to democratic control.

Strongly suggested background reading:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/30/democratic-socialism-the-impossible-dream/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/01/why-did-socialism-fail/

Craig Collins, Ph.D. is the author of Toxic Loopholes (Cambridge University Press), which examines America’s dysfunctional system of environmental protection. He teaches political science and environmental law at California State University East Bay and was a founding member of the Green Party of California.

His forthcoming books: Marx & Mother Nature and Rising From the Ruins: Catabolic Capitalism & Green Resistance reformulate Marx’s theory of history & social change and examine the emerging struggle to replace catabolic capitalism with a thriving, just, ecologically resilient society.

Panel and Dialog:

Jose Bernal: Senior Organizer Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Serves on the S.F. Reentry Council; advocates for restorative justice policies; spearheaded campaigns to de-privatize reentry services and end gang  injunctions. Graduate of Stanford University’s Project ReMade program, a course aimed at empowering the formerly incarcerated.

Jonathon Simon: directs the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC and teaches about punishment, prisons, and mass incarceration. His books include, Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Society and Created a Culture of Fear (2009) and Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America (2014). Simon believes that invoking human dignity can fuel efforts to change the direction of the carceral state. Listen to his interview on Dignity and The Carceral State: https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-april-4-2018/

Starr King Room-light lunch provided

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.

NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:

occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 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 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)

On every ‘last Sunday’ we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over six years, since October 2011! 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

Welcome & Introductions
Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
Announcements
(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