Liberated Lens is a digital filmmaking collective dedicated to social change, based in Oakland, California. We share resources, skills and knowledge to help each other tell stories that might otherwise remain untold. We make films in a spirit of collaboration and solidarity, share a lending library of film equipment for creative projects, and organize free, at cost or donation-based workshops.

Join us for our weekly meeting and a workshop!

We usually meet in our editing suite (2nd floor in the ballroom, to the left of the stage) and then work on projects. It’s open to all!

Celebrate a Step towards Economic Justice

Winning this in Berkeley strengthens the fight of working families throughout the bay.
Join Berkeley for Working Families as they turn in 150% of the required signatures to put an initiative on the November Berkeley ballot that will:
– Raise Berkeley’s minimum wage to $15 by October 2017
– Raise it further each year by 3% + inflation till it gets in sync with Berkeley’s official “Living Wage” – currently $16.37
– Bring sick leave up to the standards set by Oakland, Emeryville and SF
There is a deepening crisis in Berkeley and the Bay Area. Housing costs are skyrocketing and wages are just too low. Families work and work and still can’t make ends meet. Most new jobs are paying the lowest possible wages. The standards are just too low.

Working families need relief now.

“Dear President Obama,” narrated by actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, is a new film that reveals the true costs of Obama’s energy policy.  Since 2008 under Obama’s watch, the drilling and fracking industries have boomed.  As a result, today more than 20 million people live within a mile of an oil or gas well.  Pro-drillers argued that this new “black gold” rush would create energy independence for the United States.  Meanwhile, development of new renewable energy sources has stalled, and new threats are being posted to our water, environment and health.

Three years in the making, “Dear President Obama” documents the contamination of our environment, shares victims’ stories, exposes the false promises of an economic boom, and focuses on clean-energy solutions.  This important film calls upon the president to change course away from fracking and toward a renewable energy future.  Here in the Bay Area there are two screenings in Berkeley and San Francisco (as part of the Green Film Fest).  The Berkeley screening is free.  The film (running time 105 minutes) is followed by a panel discussion at both screenings.

SF PANEL DISCUSSION WITH: Jon Bowermaster, director/producer, “Dear President Obama“; Kassie Siegel, Senior Counsel, Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity; Mark Schlosberg, National Organizing Director, Food & Water Watch; hosted by Greg Dalton, Climate One.

BERKELEY PANEL DISCUSSION WITH:  Jon Bowermaster, director/producer, “Dear President Obama”; Kassie Siegel, Center for Biological Diversity; Ella Teevan, Food & Water Watch; Kristy Drutman, UC Berkeley Student, Students Against Fracking campaign; hosted by UC Berkeley Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC).

Monday, April 18, 6 pm

FREE

Berkeley Copwatch meets weekly.

Also check out their “mass copwatching” events.

THIS ITEM SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM THE CITY COUNCIL’S AGENDA.

Come to the April 19 meeting of the Oakland City Council to tell them not to hire Environmental Science Associates (ESA) to review evidence about the dangers of shipping coal through Oakland’s bulk terminal.  ESA is not the right choice to evaluate evidence about the health and safety dangers of coal.  No Coal in Oakland will be proposing a better alternative.

ESA is notorious in the Bay Area for writing the Environmental Impact Review that gave the green light to Valero’s crude oil-by-rail project, which is now being contested in Benicia. Many critics, from environmental and community groups to the California’s attorney general, have called that review inadequate because it fails to fully report the many negative impacts the crude-by-rail project would cause. In addition, activists question ESA’s commitment to a fair review of the health and safety dangers of coal, pointing to the fact that the team they propose to do the review doesn’t include a single public health expert. No Coal in Oakland says the city should hire public health experts–not a consulting firm with a vested interest in maintaining a good relationship the fossil-fuel industry — to evaluate evidence about the dangers of coal.

The No Coal in Oakland campaign has been gathering huge support, including a growing grassroots movement of residents, Mayor Libby Schaaf, many local clergy and and labor leaders, newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, and State Senator Loni Hancock, who has introduced four bills in the California legislature restricting coal exports from the state. A recent poll by the Sierra Club showed that 76 percent of Oakland voters oppose exporting coal from Oakland. Thanks to all this support, opponents of coal exports persuaded the city council to pass a moratorium on issuing any permits for the Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal until this question is resolved. And the council has signaled its intention to enact an outright ban on coal exports.

The focus of the campaign is an agreement the city signed with Phil Tagami’s California Capital and Investment Group to build and operate the terminal at the former Oakland Army Base. Tagami said he had no intention to export coal through the terminal. There was never any environmental analysis of the impacts of shipping coal or other fossil fuels through Oakland. Now he says the city has no right to control what commodities go out through the terminal and threatens to sue the city if it tries to block coal exports.

But the agreement specifies that the city can pass regulations to protect the health and safety of the community and workers if there is substantial evidence that not doing so would be dangerous. The No Coal in Oakland campaign and other groups have assembled extensive evidence from health and legal experts — more than enough evidence to justify banning coal on health and safety grounds. But the city wants to make sure it has solid justification as it faces a likely lawsuit.

The move to hire Environmental Science Associates stems from the city’s need to assemble strong evidence for banning coal. But hiring a consultant with a record of supporting fossil fuel developers against environmental concerns is not the way to go. No Coal in Oakland has an alternative proposal for reviewing evidence that will do a better job of providing the legal justification the city needs to act.

The city council was set to approve a contract with ESA on February 16, but before the council meeting, Mayor Libby Schaaf convinced the council members to postpone the contract vote “so that we may further evaluate other, potentially more effective options,” to bar coal shipments through Oakland. “I remain strongly opposed to the transport of coal and crude oil through our city,” Schaaf wrote in a press release that day.

Now a proposed contract with ESA is again on the table for the April 19 city council meeting. Strong public pressure is needed to tell the council to reject the contract with ESA and make sure the investigation of evidence is valid and unbiased. Come help push the No Coal In Oakland campaign over the finish line.

Please sign up to speak or waive time at
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/CityClerk/s/SpeakerCard/SpeakerCard/OAK032373

For Item, enter “coal” or “11.”

Check back for updates at NoCoalinOakland.org or email nocoalinoakland (at) gmail (dot) com

FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement – grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change.

Directed and written by Mark Kitchell, director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep.

Mark Kitchell will be present for Q7A after the film.

doors open at 6:30pm, film starts at 7pm

Homes Not Jails is a consensus-based collective of squatters and squat supporters who believe housing is a human right. Our goal is to open as much vacant housing as possible and to keep it open as long as possible. HNJ is a place to organize mutual aid among squatters and squat supporters and housing rights advocates in the bay. We actively fight to make our space inclusive and safe for everybody and combat oppression in all forms.

Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.

The Anti Police-Terror Project is a project of the ONYX ORGANIZING COMMITTEE that in coalition with other organizations like The Alan Blueford Center For Justice, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Community Ready Corps and Workers World is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.

We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.

Hunger Strike starts Thursday!! Our demands are for Mayor Lee to fire Chief Suhr or step down as Mayor of SF.!! pic.twitter.com/S7DFetupxq

— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) April 16, 2016

 Eat at Cafe Eritrea D’Afrique.
Just stop in for lunch or dinner and tell them you are eating for the Coalition for Police Accountability. 20% of your bill total will go to the CPA.

This Eritrean cafe focuses on bold flavors in traditional stews, vegetable platters & honey wine.
  Phone:     (510) 547-4520
  Hours: 10:00 AM to 11:00 pm
Menu: www.urbanspoon.com

If you can’t make it, you can make a donation at www.coalitionforpoliceaccountability

This funding will be used to print petitions for our Oakland Police Commission ballot measure, flyers, and order more tee shirts, among other needs we have.

Let’s make this a HUUUGE success – we intend to make this a regular feature, with new restaurants each time.

“Occupy The Farm” tells the story of 200 urban farmers who walked onto a publicly owned research farm and planted it with two acres of crops in order to save it from becoming a real estate development. The Village Voice calls the film, “Riveting from the start.” This story took place in the East Bay, and is still unfolding to this day.

The filmmaker and some organizers from Occupy The Farm will do a Q&A following the screening.

Seating capacity is limited to 45. First come, first served.

View Trailer

As part of 8 days of anarchy, homes not jails will be screening films about squatter movements from around the world. This will be followed a panel and discussion about the films and squatting in general.

Donations will support east bay homes not jails and the omni commons.

Urban Shield is a weapons expo and war-like police training that brings together law enforcement agencies from across the country and world to learn how to better repress, criminalize, and militarize our communities.

It is a key player in creating militarized emergency response systems that make police the first responders to everything from climate disasters to uprisings. But as we saw during Katrina, when “public safety” relies on armed emergency management, communities of color, and particularly Black communities, become an “emergency” that need to be controlled and managed with a military response.

Join the Stop Urban Shield Coalition to learn about the fight and how to get involved. Space is wheelchair accessible.

The “Is Climate Change Protest Broken?” panel will include Bay Area activists. The forum will conclude with a question-and-answer session moderated by Michelle Myers of the Sierra Club.

Micah White, one of the founders of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, will participate in the forum on the past and future of environmental protest. White is the author of “The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution,” which contends that reliance on materialism, empiricism and scientism has limited the potential of environmental protest, necessitating a social revolution for individuals, communities and the planet.

Laurel Bookstore welcomes Reverend Billy Talen, spiritual leader and global activist, to speak on Earth Day from his new book The Earth Wants You.

A preacher’s exhortation, an activist’s primer, inspired visions and a call to arms for a wild, creative, Earth-led cultural revolution.

Civic life in the time of climate chaos—floods, fire, drought and superstorms—will require intensive policing and social control. Governing bodies will transform and democracy will fall by the wayside; the banks and the power stations will be heavily defended; whole populations will be incarcerated. While this might seem like dystopian fiction, it’s actually a description of life as it’s lived in much of the world now, and will become the norm unless we can stop it. When the ocean is pouring in through the door, will we find the will to act before we drown?

This book is a call for action as extreme as the weather. It’s meant to radicalize those who didn’t think the climate crisis would require any risky personal commitment. The Earth revolution is upon us, and it must be as wild and as unpredictable as life on Earth itself! Earth-a-lujah!

Reverend Billy and his choir of singing-activists are on the front lines of creative direct action, and here they offer up a distillation of the passion, the inspiration, and the hopes for love and survival that fuel their work. In a mix of essays, polemics, surrealist scenarios and news flashes from the frontlines, Reverend Billy answers the question, “What are we to do?” with a resounding chorus of “Take Action NOW!”

Starting in April, Berkeley Copwatch is kicking off our ongoing *weekly* copwatching shifts! We’ll be out in the streets most Fridays and Saturdays witnessing and documenting police activity and doing outreach. Please join us!

No experience required — any experience welcome. We’ll train you in the essentials for documenting police activity and staying safe in the process.

If you are able to bring a car and be a shift driver, that would be GREAT! Please let us know in the “discussion” section or by sending Berkeley Copwatch a message.

APRIL COPWATCH DATES AND TIMES
(Check this page for updates)

Friday 4/1 – 8pm
Saturday 4/2 – 8pm

Friday 4/8 – 8pm
Sat 4/9 – 8pm

Friday 4/15 – 8pm
Saturday 4/16 – 8pm

Friday 4/22 – 8pm
Saturday 4/23 – 8pm

Friday 4/29 – 8pm
Saturday 4/30 – 8pm

ABOUT OUR MASS COPWATCH SHIFTS
Since October 2015, Berkeley Copwatch has been holding “mass copwatch” events. It’s been fun and very empowering to have up to five cars full of copwatchers patrolling our city and on the scene when police stop people.