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Volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members welcome!

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Last month we were honored to host partners, community members and impacted family members for a beautiful weekend dedicated to healing at The People’s House.

Special thanks to impacted families for trusting us to be part of their healing journeys, and to our healers who created such a warm, calm, and peaceful space.

Our aim is to offer healing services at The People’s House every 3rd weekend of each month, which is coming up in just over a week.

We invite volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members, and local Black, Indigenous and other people of color to join us at our upcoming healing portal at The People’s House! **This April we are also appreciating our local librarians with an hour of healing dedicated to them.**

A healing portal is an intentional space meant to interrupt state violence and make room for healing, community care, and wellness. We’ll be offering healing services including acupuncture, massage, reiki, auricular therapy, talk therapy, and more!

Note: Masks are required indoors at The People’s House. The space is wheelchair accessible. Children are welcome to receive services with parent or guardian present.

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.

For our March, April and May meetings we are reading Debt: The First 5000 Years  by David Graeber (Warwick, Amazon).

For  our March meeting we’ll be reading the first five chapters.
For  the  April  meeting  we  are  reading  chapters  6 through  9.
For our May meeting will are reading the remainder of the book.

Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.

So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong.

We are still fighting these battles today.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More, and Cannibal Capitalism.

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

Ann Garrison will discuss US foreign policy and struggles for self-determination in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the African Great Lakes Region. She spent the spring of 2022 in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Our sppeaker is Ann Garrison, a Contributing Editor to Black Agenda Report, and a contributor to The Grayzone, Counterpunch, the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, LA Progressive, and Pacifica Radio.  In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region.
Ann has invited an Eritrean scholar, Elias Amare, to join her.

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Since we won in City Council last year, we’ve been hard at work making sure the City of Oakland uses public land for public good. As a result of that hard work, we are currently in an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to build a people’s proposal on the E. 12th remainder parcel.

It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, and though the work isn’t over, there is a lot to celebrate. So we thought we’d invite you to come join us to do that. RSVP here for a reminder.

We will be gathering on Sunday, April 16th for a celebration! We’ll bring refreshments and good vibes; you bring a friend, neighbor, or family member and your best ideas for the E. 12th parcel. In addition to celebrating our victories, we’ll do some updating to the visioning work we did together in 2015.

RSVP here for a reminder about this event.

Please share this invitation with people you know in the neighborhood! Everyone is welcome.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 18 marks 3 years since San Leandro PD officer Jason Fletcher murdered Steven Taylor while he was having a mental health crisis. Since his death, his grandma Addie Kitchen has been leading the community efforts for justice.

The next court date against Fletcher is on May 12. Join the family and community of Steven Taylor tomorrow at the future site of the Steven Taylor Pavilion (San Leandro Marina) to celebrate life, justice, and community healing.

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Alameda County has a new District Attorney, Pamela Price. She ran on a reformist platform, and one of her first acts as DA was to reopen eight cases of police abuse in Alameda County. Unfortunately Erik Salgado’s case was not one of the cases that was reopened.

22-year-old Erik Salgado was murdered when plain-clothed California Highway Patrol officers in an unmarked vehicle shot 40 bullets into a car in East Oakland on June 6, 2020. Erik Salgado’s girlfriend, Brianna Colombo, was also in the car and injured. The lives of the officers were not endangered in any way when they recklessly opened fire in a residential area, on the same block as Elmhurst Middle School.

Please join the family of Erik Salgado by adding your name to the petition calling on DA Price to reopen the investigation into the murder of Erik Salgado by CHP!

Erik had his whole life ahead of him and had so much to learn and grow. There’s not a day that goes by that his loss hasn’t been felt in the life of his daughter Liliana, Erik’s parents, siblings, and the whole family. Price has said that her tenure is “the start of the reckoning Alameda County has asked for holding people accountable for their misconduct.” That reckoning cannot happen without Justice for Erik.

 
The loss of socialism is not as permanent as it appears and until capitalism’s inherent contradictions are resolved, its resurgence is not as improbable as Dugin suggests.  Until then, we as Marxists should not dismiss those who have picked up the mantle of anti-imperialism since the demise of the former Soviet Union, no matter which political form it takes shape.  By denouncing Dugin as a “fascist” and treating his work as unworthy of serious consideration, one is only showing that he is right to say that Marxism has become irrelevant in today’s world and Western capitalism is here to stay. The challenge has been issued, it remains to be seen whether we are up to it.

Speaker will be Max Parry, an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com

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Join @afrosocialistSF at one of our first Slow Book Clubs on 4/23 at 2 pm at 1916 McAllister. We will be covering Chapters 1 and 2 of Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson, and intend to cover approx 1 chapter per month over the next 12 months. Register: https://t.co/eK2fGezO1N pic.twitter.com/B4tPsXf0bL

— DSA San Francisco (@DSA_SF) April 7, 2023

Join crime victims, survivors and community members who will be rallying in support of our Drum Major for Justice, Pamela Price on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland.

In case you missed it, SFGate exposed the Bay Area media members’ thirst for a recall in Alameda County. ABC7 News and the Berkeley Scanner are clearly on a mission to undermine Pamela’s vision for justice for our community. But we are not going to stand still or silent for these attacks.

In case you missed Pamela’s interview with KRON4’s Haaziq Madyun, here’s the KRON4 Live Link.

Also, here is Pamela’s interview with NBC7 Christine Ni, here’s the NBC7 Live Link.

Please share these interviews and the expose about the media members’ thirst for recall with your family and friends to help spread the truth about what is really going on! And join us this Sunday at the Alameda County Courthouse!

WE NEED YOU to keep us winning, to secure our Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) for E12th which will be voted  at Oakland City Council’s CED meeting.

We hear there may be turnout to throw curve balls at our project, so we’d love your voices of support. Our project is committed to the diversity that won this campaign as outlined in the ENA from the BIPOC neighbors who most risk displacement to those we want to hire to build this housing. We want council members of the CED to: pass the E12th ENA for 100% affordable housing, support deeply affordable housing that the Peoples Proposal delivers, and keep Public Land for Public Good.

HERE’S THE ORDER OF IMPORTANCE FOR TURN OUT. Will you take action (at least email)?!

1. Public comment in person at CED meeting 4/25 Tue 1:30pm. City Hall (1 Frank Ogawa Plaza). Fill out a speaker card with the City Clerk, for item #6 on E12th.
2. Public comment by zoom or phone at CED meeting 4/25 Tue 1:30pm, for item #6 on E12th. Submit an Electronic Speaker Card to speak via zoom or phone by emailing CityClerk@OaklandCa.Gov to get on stack before the item comes up. Speaker card link: https://www.oaklandca.gov/services/fill-out-a-speaker-card
3. Email City Council by tomorrow morning to support our E12th ENA at council@oaklandca.gov. Here’s a sample message:

Subject: Support E12th Peoples Proposal ENA

Dear Oakland City Council and members of CED,

I’m a supporter of the E12th community’s campaign for public land for public good, and the Peoples Proposal for 100% affordable housing on our city’s public land on E12th St. Please vote yes on the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement to build the Peoples Proposal for deeply affordable housing. Thank you! (your name)

We appreciate you for taking action. Let’s keep winning!
– Mari Rose, Dunya & the E12th Revival crew

RSVP

While as Democratic Socialists, we all agree on the need to go beyond Social Democracy, we will be reading a few articles about the successes and limitations of social democratic movements around the world and discussing what we can learn from them and incorporate into our actions as Democratic Socialists.

** Note that this will mostly be a discussion with a very light presentation at the start, so to get the most out of it please read the readings ahead of time. **

Articles: TBD

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 Dr. Bart Ostro, Dr. Heather Kuiper, and Dr. Nicholas Spada will share results of their new research comparing particulate emissions from trains in Richmond. The scientists documented significantly more PM 2.5 pollution from trains containing coal than from empty coal trains, passenger trains, and other freight trains, as NCIO reported late last month.

These scientists will explain their findings and answer our questions in a Zoom-based community meeting. After their report and dialogue with us, Oakland and Richmond residents will meet in separate breakout rooms to discuss next steps for our campaigns, including how we can use this new information to alert our neighbors to the dangers of coal traffic in our communities.

To get the Zoom link for the Town Hall, please RSVP here.

~No Coal in Oakland

The City of Hayward and Chabot Community College District are convening people from community colleges, municipalities, and nonprofits to “foster greater collaboration, improve our collective capacity to receive funding, and increase the effectiveness of our response to the climate crisis.”  The emphasis is on making sure that colleges, local governments, and nonprofits work collaboratively on climate action with an emphasis on social justice.

The interactive event will bring people from all these sectors to share tools and start planning future collaboration.  Students from community colleges will also share their research and perspectives.

Info/register here

Lunch provided.

Oakland Community Townhall on MARCO.

Register in advance: https://t.co/SbvOpkNXRu pic.twitter.com/08SdpPLRVe

— The Black Elle Woods (@BlkElleWoods888) April 28, 2023

The world working class and unions of the world are facing a major global struggle as the crisis of capitalism drives towards dictatorship and world war. Steve Zeltzer will look at the declining US imperialist empire and the intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry and the growing move towards a world war that threaten workers and people of the world.

He will also look at the increasing attacks on the unions and the escalation of attacks on the working class to pay for the crisis.

This also takes place in the midst of the frenzied development of AI and the likely loss of hundreds of millions of jobs as not only the skilled manual worker but writers, doctors, architects, software engineers, and attorneys face loss of jobs. It also plays a key role in the military-industrial complex and preparation for war.

This is also combined with the global climate crisis, which is threatening the lives and jobs of workers and people worldwide.

This presentation will look at the global attacks on unions, how they are fighting back, and what is required for unions and the working class not only to defend their jobs and livelihood but to go on the offensive on a global scale.  The internet, which is a tool for greater profits by the capitalist class, can also be a tool for internationalism and the development and advance of a new world working class that fights for power and resolves this historic struggle for survival not only of the working class but humanity.

This is also the first time in history that the world working class can be linked up simultaneously in not only organizing but using these tools in the fight for power.

Our speaker, Steve Zeltzer,  is a member of CWA NewGuild Pacific Media Workers Guild and founder of LaborNet, Labortech, and Laborfest. He is a member of the United Front Committee For A Labor Party and a producer of WorkWeek on KPOO.com and with Pacifica Radio Network where he is a producer of Covid, Race, and Democracy

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From the Polk Award–winning investigative duo comes a critical look at the systematic corruption and brutality within the Oakland Police Department, and the more than two-decades-long saga of attempted reforms and explosive scandals.

No municipality has been under court oversight to reform its police department as long as the city of Oakland. It is, quite simply, the edge case in American law enforcement.

The Riders Come Out at Night is the culmination of over twenty-one years of fearless reporting. Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham shine a light on the jackbooted police culture, lack of political will, and misguided leadership that have conspired to stymie meaningful reform. The authors trace the history of Oakland since its inception through the lens of the city’s police department, through the Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, and the Civil Rights struggle, the Black Panthers and crack eras, to Oakland’s present-day revival.

Readers will be introduced to a group of sadistic cops known as “The Riders,” whose disregard for the oath they took to protect and serve is on full, tragic, infuriating display. They will also meet Keith Batt, a wide-eyed rookie cop turned whistleblower, who was unwittingly partnered with the leader of the Riders. Other compelling characters include Jim Chanin and John Burris, two civil rights attorneys determined to see reform through, in spite of all obstacles. And Oakland’s deep history of law enforcement corruption, reactionary politics, and social movement organizing is retold through historical figures like Black Panther Huey Newton, drug kingpin Felix Mitchell, district attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, and Mayor Jerry Brown.

This event is being co-sponsored by the National Lawyer’s Guild.

In the 14th century, William of Baskerville (Sean Connery), and his apprentice, Adso of Melk (Christian Slater), travel to an abbey where a suspicious death has occurred. William begins investigating what he believes to be murder. The church leaders call forth Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), William’s nemesis, to find the truth.

The Oakland Greens Free Movie discussion series is a virtual community building event held on Zoom. A relaxed fun space organized by The Oakland Greens to discuss solutions to local issues that hurt us and many others. Registration is required for this FREE event. Tickets thru Eventbrite, here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oakland-greens-april-2023-free-dinner-movie-discussion-series-tickets-491381765087?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch