Calendar

What is North Korea’s goal in attaining nuclear strike capability; how does it seek to shape the balance of power in NE Asia; and how might it engage, as a nuclear state, in nuclear disarmament dialogs?  Paul Liem will discuss the origins of North Korea’s nuclear strategy; the present state of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and how it might resolve, for better or worse.  He will also share some observations about North Korean society and take questions and answers.

Paul Liem has been active on Korean peace and reunification issues for four decades and has visited North Korea in four different decades. In the 1970s he was a writer for The Korea Bulletin and editor of The Korea Commentary, both newsletters covering current events in North and South Korea. In the 1980s Mr. Liem assisted in sending delegations of progressive religious leaders, including members of the National Council of Churches, to North Korea. In the 1990s he served as advisor to the Berkeley Annual Reunification Symposia Series that hosted guest speakers from North and South Korea from 1991 to 1997. In 1992 Liem and other Korean American activists and artists organized a Korea American Arts Festival at the Oakland Museum among other venues, and in 2004 he served on the Korean American Centennial Committee that curated a multi-media oral history exhibit with the Oakland Museum celebrating 100 years of Korean immigration to the U.S. Liem is currently Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Korea Policy Institute (kpolicy.org) and a member of HOBAK (Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans), a dynamic and creative collective of Korean American activists working on peace and social justice issues in the Bay Area since 2009.

Breakout Groups
We were thrilled by your enthusiasm in Breakout Groups at Green Sundays a few months ago. To grow that energy, we’re trying Breakout Groups at the beginning of the County Council meetings after the 15 minute refreshment break that follows our Green Sunday programs. Which group will you roll with?
1. ELECTIONS (including endorsements, campaigning, ballot drives, voter guide)
2. More CONVERSATION re North Korea, AND Green Party ORIENTATION
3. OUTREACH (recruiting, social events, networking with other groups)
4. TECH (website, social media, newsletter, recording/broadcasting our events)
5. OPERATIONS (including Green Sunday plans, fundraising, working with state and national Green Party)

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SPONSOR: Green Sundays are a series of free programs & discussions sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and are held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party of Alameda County follows at 7:45 pm; council meetings are always open to anyone who is interested. Please visit our website: https://acgreens. wordpress.com/

Express your green ideas and “like” us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/greenpartyofalamedacounty/

Participation and/or donations appreciated!  https://acgreens.wordpress.com/donate/

What is North Korea’s goal in attaining nuclear strike capability; how does it seek to shape the balance of power in NE Asia; and how might it engage, as a nuclear state, in nuclear disarmament dialogs?  Paul Liem will discuss the origins of North Korea’s nuclear strategy; the present state of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and how it might resolve, for better or worse.  He will also share some observations about North Korean society and take questions and answers.

National Bird follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret U.S. drone war. At the center of the film are three U.S. military veterans. Plagued by guilt over participating in the killing of faceless people in foreign countries, they decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible consequences.

Their stories take dramatic turns, leading one of the protagonists to Afghanistan where she learns about a horrendous incident. But her journey also gives hope for peace and redemption. National Bird gives rare insight into the U.S. drone program through the eyes of veterans and survivors, connecting their stories as never seen before in a documentary. Its images haunt the audience and bring a faraway issue close to home.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/186277306

We will be joined afterward for Q&A with Ines Hofmann Kanna, a co-producer on the film, and Lisa, one of the film’s subjects.

Please note that our screening time has changed for the winter: doors open at the Omni 6pm, film starts at 6:30pm.  Complimentary popcorn as always!

Join Indians of All Tribes Co-Founder Dr. LaNada War Jack on Alcatraz Island for the 48th Anniversary of the Alcatraz Occupation!

We have limited tickets for each boat leaving from Pier 33 starting at 9 am Please RSVP and we will give further instructions and coordination on the ferry.

Opening Ceremony by Ann Marie Sayers of Indian Canyon Nation

Morning Panel “Why We Took The Rock”

Film: End of the Line with Pearl Means www.endofthelinefilm.com

Afternoon Panel “Legacies of the Occupation”

The program will conclude with an honoring Indigenous Women’s Dance Dancing Earth & Eva Lopez Feat Desirae Harp & Kanyon Sayers-Roods

Join Indians of All Tribes Coalition for Part 2 of #IndigenizeTheBay events from Nov 20-23, 2017. We are looking to make this happen in a good way, including this visit to Alcatraz Island on the 20th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llVm4F84PpE

https://www.facebook.com/events/2109012252659572?%3Fti=ia

The Communist Caucus is an organizing group within the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. We’re currently working on tenant organizing in Oakland and Berkeley. Every 3rd Monday of the month is our New Members working meeting; the 2nd and 4th Monday meetings are regular meetings.

See our official caucus statement.

Sign up for our email list or to get involved

Over the past 10 years, the Alameda County jail population has decreased by half—so why is the sheriff’s budget increasing?

Under the sheriff’s “watch” there have been increasing deaths in the jails, abuse of people by sheriff’s deputies, and support of white supremacists from his department. Yet his budget continues to grow.

Meanwhile, people in power aren’t investing in the resources our communities really need—like jobs, healthcare, housing, education, and more.

Turn up with us before the Board of Supervisors meeting to tell county officials we demand transparency and accountability from the sheriff now! If the sheriff has nothing to hide, it’s time for audit.

Hosted by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the Justice Reinvestment Coalition.

Want to find out the answer to this question? Turn up with us at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting on 11/21 at 9:30 am: https://t.co/g48JeE0jEX #SheriffAudit #AllEyesOnTheSheriff pic.twitter.com/Z4V4y1jzGu

— Ella Baker Center (@ellabakercenter) November 15, 2017

Serving seniors, low-income families and homeless residents.

RSVP & MORE INFO
Last year, Oakland developer Phil Tagami tried to build a coal transport terminal in our town. But workers, youth, and community members came together to win an historic ban on coal. Now Tagami is suing in Federal Court to try to force the City of Oakland to accept his dirty coal terminal. We’re fighting back.

Last month, two hundred of us went to Phil Tagami’s house in the hills. This month, we go to Tagami’s Rotunda Building in downtown to launch a boycott of his swanky event space. Every dollar spent at the Rotunda Building is a dollar that Phil Tagami can use to try to force toxic coal dust on working class black and brown communities in Oakland.

After a raucous practice picket, we will enjoy a community meal prepared by the youth of Abundant Beginnings — a reminder that we can hold celebrations in community, not just in the decadent digs of developers. Please note: this is not a “Thanksgiving” meal. We reject the genocidal roots of Thanksgiving and stand with indigenous peoples fighting for land, water, air, and sovereignty.

Join us for an art party to support the action on Saturday, Nov. 18th from 2-4PM. Location TBA.

#DeCOALonizeOakland #BoycottTheRotunda #DroptheLawsuit #TrynaBreathe #Youth4CleanAir #Workers4CleanAir

Climate Workers | brooke@movementgeneration.org | www.climateworkers.org

The Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers is pleased to invite you to hear civil rights attorney Ann Fagan Ginger on The Civil Rights of the Homeless Music and a holiday party follows her talk.

Ann Fagan Ginger is a lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the founder and the Executive Director Emerita of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute and was legal counsel for the students at the University of California at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement in the 1960’s. She is an expert in human rights law and peace law under the regulations of the Unites Nations, and has argued an won before the U.S. Supreme Court.
All Welcome, Wheelchair Accessible.

Bay Area Women in Black holds their annual “Black Friday” march and vigil. Holiday shoppers learn how their buying choices and actions can help to eliminate illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. The action begins on Friday, November 24th, at 11:45am at the Powell Street BART Station, at 899 Market Street in San Francisco. A march to the vigil in Union Square follows.

Please join us in sharing a bounty of Thanksgiving fare. Bring (safely preserved) leftovers*, a special dish you want to share* – or just your good appetite! Whether you have a dish to share* or not, we invite you to join us as we break bread in the spirit of loving community. If you can, please help us set up tables and chairs before, and put them away afterward. In between, join in the bounty provided by members and friends. Members, friends, neighbors, and the wider community are welcome!

*If you bring a dish, please also bring a printed list of all ingredients so those with allergies, interactions and dietary restrictions can enjoy the dishes they can eat and avoid those they can’t eat.

We trust you’ve recovered from holiday feasting because tomorrow, Sunday November 26 between 1 and 3 PM, Indivisible East Bay is having a Friendsgiving potluck in lieu of our monthly All Member meeting.

Please join us. Bring your friends and a dish to share! RSVP and map here. Free.

What else is IEB up to? Here’s this week’s newsletter, and our Giving Thanks article.
Image copyright NPR

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

Special guest speaker at our next meeting

On Monday, November 27th, at 5:30pm, FPBO will host a special guest speaker. Longtime Native/Chicano activist Roberto Mendoza will compare and contrast capitalist values and indigenous values. His one-hour talk will be followed by a short business meeting.

Roberto’s career as an activist began with the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in 1969. He has been involved in the Pit River struggle and in Los Siete de la Raza; he was co-chair of the San Francisco chapter of the American Indian Movement and a leader in the bioregional movement, Green Party USA, Detroit Summer, the Center for Vision and Policy in Maine, Idle No More Central Oklahoma and the Green Corn Movement of Oklahoma. He is the author of Look! A Nation is Coming: Native Americans and the Second American Revolution.

Roberto is also a muralist and filmmaker whose latest film project is Out of the Shadows, a film about how homeless people and undocumented people live in the shadows. He is currently developing a seminar on the differences between indigenous and capitalist values and how the revolution will be indigenized.

Folks are asking what they can do with other parents, teachers and students at their schools to stop the District from cutting $5.6 million from school site budgets. Here are the THREE things we ALL need to do:

• 1) Email the Board members and tell them to #ChopFromTheTop & #NoCutsToSchools: http://bit.ly/EmailOUSDBoard;
• 2) Come to the Board meeting on November 27 at 5:30pm at KDOL Studios/Met West 314 East 10th St;
• 3) Keep reporting the cuts and their impacts to us using this form: http://bit.ly/OUSDCuts2017. #J4OS #JusticeForOaklandStudents

“Three Strikes and You’re Out” that’s the no-nonsense message California voters sent to repeat felons when the nation’s toughest sentencing law passed by a landslide in 1994. Designed to keep repeat offenders off the streets, “Three Strikes” won largely because of a frenzied media campaign led by two fathers of murdered children, Mike Reynolds and Marc Klaas. What began as an alliance forged by grief became a bitter rivalry as Klaas and Reynolds found themselves on opposite sides of a controversial battle.

The film tells the story behind the passage of “Three Strikes” and poses profoundly important questions about our political process, the role of the media, and our reliance on prisons to address problems of crime in our society. Written, produced, and directed by Michael J. Moore, the documentary follows an extraordinary sequence of events – from murders to manhunts to win-at-all-cost political campaigns  focusing on two ffathers united by tragedy but driven apart by conflicting ideas of social justice.

Through revealing archival news footage and candid interviews with Reynolds, Klaas, and other key players in the battle over “Three Strikes,” including judges, legal analysts, and state officials, The Legacy illuminates both sides of this issue and reveals how criminal justice policy is debated and promoted in today’s media-saturated political climate. Despite the predictions of prison alternative advocates, (who pointed to the state’s already overcrowded prisons, and argued that creating new facilities would plunge California taxpayers deeply into debt for decades to come), politicians on all sides scrambled to climb on board the tough-on-crime bandwagon. The “Three Strikes” victory put California at the forefront of a national trend of prison growth. By June 1998, one in five California inmates were sentenced under Three Strikes. Ninety percent of those sentenced actually had only one prior “strike” and were sentenced for nonviolent crimes in 81% of those cases.

Growing awareness of America’s failed experiment with mass incarceration has prompted changes at the state and federal level; but America maintains its distinction as the world leader in its use of incarceration, including more than 1.3 million people held in state prisons around the country.  Since the majority of people in prison are sentenced at the state level rather than the federal level, we must understand the policies and the day-to-day practices that contribute to this statistic.

Two years after it was signed into law, California’s controversial “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law has resulted in an imprisonment rate for African Americans that is more than 13 times that of whites. The underlying motive for this law, with its primary target being black men from 18-24 years old, brings our focus to the systemic racism, and devastation of black communities, practiced in the United States.

“If one were writing a law to deliberately target blacks, one could scarcely have done it more effectively than ‘Three Strikes,’ ” said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Center On Juvenile and Criminal Justice in SF. “It can truly be said that ‘Three Strikes’ is California’s apartheid.”

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-05/news/mn-43270_1_african-american-men

http://www.lao.ca.gov/2005/3_strikes/3_strikes_102005.htm

http://www.pbs.org/pov/thelegacy/

http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html