Calendar
SURJ Bay Area is excited to invite you to a special event in Oakland, When We Fight We Win: Building Community Power to Dismantle the Prison System, featuring CURB Statewide Coordinators Amber-Rose Howard and Ivette Al, Sandra Johnson, Senior Organizer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children / All of Us or None, and Eric Henderson, Policy Director of Initiate Justice.
These four incredible movement leaders will share insights from recent fights — and victories — in the struggle to dismantle the prison system in California, from repealing sentence enhancements, to shutting down jail expansion plans, to working to restore voting rights to folks on parole. Their stories will highlight the small and big ways you can also contribute to creating a more progressive vision of justice than mass incarceration.
All proceeds from this event will go to LSPC/AOUON, Initiate Justice, and CURB, with specific focus on supporting this year’s Quest for Democracy Day, an annual advocacy and rally day, led by formerly incarcerated people and families with incarcerated loved ones to bring their voices to elected officials in Sacramento.
Showing Up for Racial Justice- SURJ, Bay Area
A Member of Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Recent years have seen important fights – and important wins – in the struggle to dismantle the prison system in California. From repealing sentence enhancements, to shutting down jail expansion plans, to working to restore voting rights to folks on parole.
Come hear from four incredible movement leaders at the frontline of these struggles about victories, strategies, and the importance of campaigns and coalitions in the continuing movement to dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex. Their stories will highlight the small and big ways you can also contribute to creating a more progressive vision of justice than mass incarceration.
Featuring:
Sandra Johnson, Senior Organizer, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC)/ All of Us or None (AOUON)
Eric Henderson, Policy Director, Initiate Justice
Ivette Alé & Amber-Rose Howard, Statewide Coordinators, Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
All proceeds from this event will go to LSPC/AOUON, Initiate Justice, and CURB, with specific focus on supporting this year’s Quest for Democracy Day, an annual advocacy and rally day led by formerly incarcerated people and families with incarcerated loved ones to bring their voices to elected officials in Sacramento. No one turned away for lack of funds.
ASL interpretation available if requested by April 30th by 5pm.
TONY PERROTTET with Steve Wasserman
CUBA LIBRE! Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History
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 Books,
$15 door, This is a KPFA benefit.
The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Celia Sanchez, and the scrappy band of young men and women who followed them. Cuba Libre! is an absorbing look back at a liberation movement that captured the world’s imagination with its spectacular drama, foolhardy bravery, tragedy, and, sometimes, high comedy—and that set the stage for Cold War tensions that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Most people are familiar with the basics of the Cuban Revolution of 1956–1959. It was led by two of the twentieth century’s most charismatic figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Their movement successfully overthrew the island nation’s US–backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and has remained to this day an intense socialist provocation to the massive imperial capitalist country only ninety miles north of Cuba.
Less is remembered about the stirring amateur nature of the movement or the lives of its players. In this wildly entertaining, meticulously researched account, historian and journalist Tony Perrottet unravels the human drama behind history’s most improbable revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught revolutionaries—many of them kids just out of college, literature majors and art students, including a number of extraordinary young women—who defeated 40,000 professional soldiers to overthrow the dictatorship of Batista. Cuba Libre!’s deep dive into the revolution reveals fascinating details. He describes how Fidel’s highly organized lover Celia Sánchez kept the male guerrillas disciplined, and he portrays a few of the North American volunteers who joined the Cuban rebels. He gained access to private letters, diaries, videos, and other documents no other historian has seen. Perrottet has used these as well as countless interviews to describe the years of guerrilla fighting throughout the Sierra Maestra mountains, the final victory march into Havana, the gradual building of a socialist state, and the accompanying Cold War tensions.
“Perrottet takes us far beyond the basic facts of the Cuban Revolution to the juicy details that remind us that history is deeply human.” — Chris Ryan, NY Times bestselling author.
Tony Perrottet, author of five previous books, is a regular guest on the History Channel and a contributing writer at Smithsonian Magazine. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the London Sunday Times.
Steve Wasserman, Executive Director of Heyday Books, was formerly a deputy assistant editor of the LA Times Sunday opinion pages, after which he became editor in chief of New Republic Books. He has also served as editorial director of Times Books and publisher of Hill & Wang..He returned to the LA Times in 1996 to become editor of the book review.
Welcome to our 2019 schedule of literary conversations! These events take place on 10 indoor stages throughout Downtown Berkeley and on the San Francisco Chronicle Stage in the Outdoor Fair. Indoor events are accessed via a $10 Priority Ticket to guarantee your seat (link beside each event below) or with a $15 General Admission Wristband covering all events, all weekend, on a space-available basis. Since some events fill up, we recommend Priority Tickets for your top choices.
A few of the more political talks (scan all the talks and get tickets here):
Us vs. Them: Refugees, Asylum, and the Politics of the Borderlands
Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Jonathan Freedman, Steven Mayers, J.J. Mulligan Sepúlveda, Eileen Truax, moderated by Sara Campos 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
Unfriend: An Insider Reveals How Facebook Uses You and Threatens Democracy
Roger McNamee interviewed by Elizabeth Dwoskin 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
American Prison: Interview with Shane Bauer
Shane Bauer interviewed by John Diaz 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM
Beyond the Bars: Alternatives to Prison and Punishment
Lara Bazelon, Tony Platt, Albert Woodfox, moderated by Rachel Herzing 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM
Writing Climate: Literature of the Anthropocene
Charlie Jane Anders, Cai Emmons, Brenda Shaughnessy, moderated by David Wallace-Wells 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM
FESTIVAL KEYNOTE
Enough Is Enough: Fighting Economic Injustice
Anand Giridharadas, Robert Reich, and Kat Taylor; overture by Isheeta Ganguly; Introduction by Kate Harrison 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
East Bay DSA’s Medicare for All Committee is hosting a lakeside potluck picnic and you’re invited! Whether you have been active in our M4A work or are looking to get more involved, please bring a dish or drinks of your choice and join us!
Accessibility: Parking lot off of Bellevue Ave. Closest AC Transit stop is on Grand Avenue at Perkins Street, served by the NL, 12, and 805. Public restrooms available.
Opening Friday, April 5, please visit DESPERATE HOLDINGS REAL ESTATE & LandMind Spa, an immersive art installation organized by Cassie Thornton of the Feminist Economics Department (the FED). See our full website at http://www.desperateholdings.com.
Installation available for viewing through May 11th.
In 2015 Cassie Thornton, recently displaced from her San Francisco apartment, walked past the Salesforce Tower construction site in downtown San Francisco. Workers were digging 200 ft below, where they found Barbary Coast beams and thick clay-like soil. The foreman offered her and her friend a truckload of this clay, which would otherwise be sent to a toxic dump to be sanitized in Palo Alto. Since then Thornton has reconstituted, blended, and hoarded the precious clay, as liquid real estate. “At times the clay has had a home, even when I haven’t. The clay is beyond property, rent, and all the things that keep us from magic. If all I can do turn land into money, like any real estate agent, that is useless …. If I really had magic powers, what would this clay do?”
In this real estate office, we won’t sell property. Instead we will touch and hold liquid real estate sourced from underneath the financial district of SF as we imagine what it would mean to see land and our creative energies as a commons. The clay we share with our clients in this immersive installation holds the essence of the Bay Area. We are thankful for the millennia of land stewardship, reproductive labor, and revolutionary culture that has made this place so rich. Desperate Holdings is here to create new methods for land distribution which do not evict or destroy the very land and people who create this richness. In an artisanal process we have removed the toxic energy of real estate speculation by hand. For the first time in ages, you can safely touch, hold, or wear real estate as you transform into a future self, a person who holds and cares for land as if it was home.
This pop-up real estate office and spa has agents available to deal with your broken trust, lost hope and longing for a nonexistent stability. Bring your tight little pent up body over here and imagine what it would mean to see land and our creative energies as a commons, and vengeance as creative fuel. Real Estate Agents and Spa Technicians played by local artists, activists and healers, will be offering services and treatments that are meant to unravel fantasies of the good life as it relates to private property ownership on stolen land. These agents will channel their own precarious financial survival to help you heal your broken potential for finding escape, security or shelter.
Join the Peace and Freedom Party’s Alameda County chapter for the monthly Suds, Snacks and Socialism forum All are welcome to discuss the topic of People’s Park.
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of People’s Park, the University is developing a new plan to destroy it. Michael Delacour, Carol Denney, Aidan Hill, and Eddie Monroe will discuss the history of the Park and the continuing struggle to preserve it as a community-run space.
Doors open at 2pm. The program will start promptly at 2:30pm and will wrap up by 4:30pm, but folks can stay and talk as long for as you like. All ages welcome!
The May forum on People’s Park at 50 is co-sponsored by the Oakland Greens, the Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party and Bay Area System Change Not Climate Change. The forum is part of our ongoing Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every month. Our purpose is informed political discussion, and the views expressed are those of the speakers only, not official positions of the Peace and Freedom Party or our fellow co-sponsors.
Democratic socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are calling for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Teachers across the country are striking for public education and winning, and tens of thousands of people across the country are getting involved in the project of building democratic socialism in the US. But what is democratic socialism?
Let’s talk about it.
Since the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign brought democratic socialism back into the mainstream, the Democratic Socialists of America went from about 6,000 members to 60,000 nationwide, making it the largest socialist organization in the US in more than 50 years.
If you’re a new DSA member or just curious about democratic socialism, come out to our What Is Democratic Socialism? picnic and find out how to get involved in DSA’s fight for democratic control of the things that matter on the job and in your community and the things we all need to lead a dignified life.
Did you see the New York Times article everyone is talking about (“When Uber and Airbnb go public, San Francisco will drown in millionaires,” March 7), on how the 2019 IPO boom in the Bay Area is going to make the housing affordability crisis even worse?
Just another reason to join us for a discussion with local author and highly successful housing activist, Randy Shaw!
We will discuss his new book: “Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America” and particularly how it relates to Richmond.
Together we will have a discussion about how to address the challenges Richmond is facing during this ongoing housing crisis, and how to fight racial and economic inequalities in our city. We need solutions to bring more affordable housing to our working- and middle-class communities, and we need local government to encourage and cultivate more inclusive neighborhoods.
This is your time to participate in this conversation. It takes a city to fix our housing crisis!
More info about Randy’s work can be found at https://generationpricedout.com
Big Green Wave Headed West Headed Your Way!
BFUU will share information on the Green New Deal, host a panel of local leaders, and provide time for discussion of local strategies for educating the public and getting politicians to endorse the Green New Deal.
Sponsored by BFUU Social Justice Committee
Welcome to our 2019 schedule of literary conversations! These events take place on 10 indoor stages throughout Downtown Berkeley and on the San Francisco Chronicle Stage in the Outdoor Fair. Indoor events are accessed via a $10 Priority Ticket to guarantee your seat (link beside each event below) or with a $15 General Admission Wristband covering all events, all weekend, on a space-available basis. Since some events fill up, we recommend Priority Tickets for your top choices.
A few of the more political and social justice related talks (scan all the talks and get tickets here):
The Heart of Hate
Bradley Hart, Bill Ong Hing, Arjun Sethi, moderated by Dennis J. Bernstein 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
The Uninhabitable Earth
David Wallace-Wells interviewed by Julian Brave NoiseCat 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
From Captivity to Power: A Remarkable Story of Women Rising Up
Julia Flynn Siler interviewed by Lauren Schiller 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
The Unbreakable Human Spirit: Albert Woodfox on Survival in Solitary
Albert Woodfox interviewed by Shane Bauer 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen called on 17 fellow refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences. The result is The Displaced, a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current headlines, with proceeds to support the International Rescue Committee. Join authors Viet Thanh Nguyen, Joseph Azam, Meron Hadero, and Somdeng Danny Thongsee for a reading and panel discussion. Hosted by Michael Tran.
Today the world faces an enormous refugee crisis: 68.5 million people fleeing persecution and conflict from Myanmar to South Sudan and Syria, a staggering figure more substantial than the flight of Jewish and other Europeans during World War II and beyond anything the world has seen in this generation. As this crisis mounts, today’s U.S. anti-immigrant policies have particularly impacted refugees from Southeast Asian, Muslim, and Latin American countries. New threats of U.S. deportations have risen. Since early October, U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement has rounded up over a hundred Cambodian refugees with deportation orders, making these the largest raids ever to target the Cambodian community. Nearly 2,000 Cambodian refugees are at risk of being unlawfully arrested. It is through presenting the powerful testimony of individuals experiencing refugee life that OACC strives to help shed more light on the challenges facing vulnerable communities living among us.
This program is co-sponsored by Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Eastwind Books Multicultural Services, Asian Health Services, Asian Prisoners Support Committee, and Southeast Asian Resource and Action Center.
Free, RSVP online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/panel-with-author-viet-thanh-nguyen-tickets-58341543126
This is a pre-publication launch for The Battle for People’s Park, due out mid-month from Berkeley’s own Heyday Books. Get an early copy, and meet author Tom Dalzell. Join us, fifty years after, for this “only in Berkeley” event!
In eyewitness testimonies and hundreds of remarkable photographs, The Battle for People’s Park, Berkeley 1969 commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most searing conflicts that closed out the tumultuous 1960s: the Battle for People’s Park. In April 1969, a few Berkeley activists planted the first tree on a University of California-owned, abandoned city block on Telegraph Avenue. Hundreds of people from all over the city helped build the park as an expression of a politics of joy. The University was appalled, and warned that unauthorized use of the land would not be tolerated; and on May 15, which would soon be known as Bloody Thursday, a violent struggle erupted, involving thousands of people. Hundreds were arrested, martial law was declared, and the National Guard was ordered by then-Governor Ronald Reagan to crush the uprising and to occupy the entire city. The police fired shotguns against unarmed students. A military helicopter gassed the campus indiscriminately, causing schoolchildren miles away to vomit. One man died from his wounds. Another was blinded. The vicious overreaction by Reagan helped catapult him into national prominence. Fifty years on, the question still lingers: Who owns the Park?
A 6-week series to help us develop a deeper analysis and to call attention to the kinds of changes needed in the City’s budget and policies.
4/15 – Housing
4/22 – Economy
4/29 – Education
5/6 – Public Health
5/13 – Neighborhood Life
5/20 – Public Safety
The first week’s workshop on the Housing Indicators is the first of a 6-week series to help us develop a deeper analysis and to call attention to the kinds of changes needed in the City’s budget and policies.
Join us for this deeper dive into the Equity Indicators Report for the City of Oakland. Released last year, it clearly shows the effects of white supremacy on our community. Oakland posted a failing score of 33.5 out of a possible 100 across all indicators. This was the lowest score of all cities that participated in this national study.
Carroll Fife, the founder of Black Women & Elected Leadership, the Executive Director of Oakland ACCE, and one of the founding members of Community READY Corps, will join us as a guest speaker to provide some deeper analysis of the report’s findings and point us to actual solutions that will advance racial justice and equity in our housing market.
Healing Justice, explores the causes and consequences of the current North American justice system and its effect on marginalized communities. The film walks back through the history of violence that has led to our current system, bringing into focus the histories of trauma – on a personal, interpersonal, community, and generational level. This powerful documentary addresses the school-to-prison pipeline, the need for comprehensive criminal justice reform, and the importance of healing and restorative practices.
Designed for dialogue, Healing Justice is meant to prompt questions and open conversations, exploring trauma, justice, and healing:
• What is justice, really?
• How do our current structures discount and dehumanize young people of color as well as our poorest and most vulnerable citizens?
• How does trauma impact us personally and interpersonally, as a community and throughout generations?
• How do these histories affect who is perceived as a ‘perpetrator’ and a ‘victim’ of violence?
• Why is healing on both individual and collective levels so important – and so often overlooked – components of justice?
• How can restorative practices, such as restorative justice, be used to shift the way we address crime and violence in our communities to produce safer, healthier, thriving communities for all?
Join us on Tuesday, May 7, 6:30 PM at the New Parkway Theater for a screening of Healing Justice! After-show discussion lead by the filmmaker Shakti Bulter and a participant in the film, Malachi Scott!
You are being watched.
Whether through your phone or your car or your credit card, caught on a CCTV camera or tracked through your online viewing history, government agencies know where you are, and are quietly collecting your most intimate, mundane, and personal information.
Is this even legal?
Habeas Data shows how the explosive growth of surveillance technology has outpaced our understanding of the ethics, mores, and laws of privacy.
Award-winning tech reporter Cyrus Farivar makes the case by taking ten historic court decisions that defined our privacy rights and matching them against the capabilities of modern technology. It’s an approach that combines the charge of a legal thriller with the shock of the daily headlines.
Throughout the history of capitalism, wealthy elites from a handful of countries have managed to impose their dominance across the world, subjecting people, land, and resources in the Global South to intense forms of exploitation. Socialists call this system imperialism, and see it as a central feature of the capitalist global economy. But it’s often difficult to see how exactly imperialism works, who it benefits, or how it manages to maintain control.
Join East Bay DSA on Tuesday, May 7th as we discuss imperialism in the 21st century, its roots in European colonialism, and as we set the stage for a future discussion about tearing it down.
Accessibility: Wheelchair-accessible entrance and restrooms
Required Readings
See the readings that we’ll be discussing after a brief introduction from our members.
Buy Tickets 415.392.4400
CITY ARTS & LECTURES
Anand Giridharadas is the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, which explores the ways in which the global elite’s efforts to “change the world” through philanthropy preserve the status quo and obscure their own role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. His past books include India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking and The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, which has been adapted into a film, to be released in 2019. He is also an editor-at-large for TIME, an on-air political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, as well as a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. He is a former columnist and correspondent for The New York Times, as well as for The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.
Courtney E. Martin is the author of five books, including Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists and The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream. She is also the co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and has collaborated with a wide range of organizations, including TED, The Aspen Institute, and the Obama Foundation. She won the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and holds an honorary doctorate from ArtCenter College of Design.
Some agenda items of interest:
Pawlik Investigation Update
The Commission will discuss CPRA’s recent findings on the Pawlik investigation. Karen
Tom and Joan Saupe will review the process. This is a new item. (Attachment 4)
IX. R-02: Searches of Individuals on Probation and Parole
The Commission will review an amended version of R-02: Searches of Individuals on
Probation or Parole, and will discuss the status of collaboration with OPD.
X. Oakland Black Officers Association (OBOA) Letter
The Commission will discuss allegations in the OBOA letter in the Oakland Post suggesting
disparate and/or racist implications for OPD hiring and discipline practices, and may hear
from a representative on behalf of the OBOA.