Calendar

Oakland Rally To Demand 1,000 Ca-OSHA Inspectors, PPE & Health and Safety On The Job

Stop The Murders and Pandemic In Our Workplaces NOW!

Workers and trade unionists will speak about about the failure of the the California Cal-OSHA to protect workers on the job.

There are less than 200 inspectors in California for 18 million workers. In fact there are more Fish and Game inspectors than OSHA inspectors.

In Los Angeles over 700 longshoreman are infected and 12 have died. At Foster Farms in the Central Valley 13 workers have died and workers face a lack of PPE and masks to protect their lives and those of their families. Farmworkers in California are being treated as disposable workers.

This is over a year after the pandemic has ripped through California workplaces.

Healthcare workers at Highland Hospital, San Francisco General, Kaiser, Sutter and UC are still fighting against reusing PPE masks and gowns and Cal-OSHA is unable to do regular physical inspections even after complaints. Healthcare workers are dying as a result of the failure to have proper protection for them and their patients.

Plants like billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla in Fremont has no Cal-OSHA inspections to enforce the law and other workers at Amazon, UBER and even public transit agencies are not getting regular inspections because of the virtual collapse of Cal-OSHA. Governor Newsom earlier this year instituted a freeze on hiring. Although this has recently been lifted this we are seeing the death agony of this critical agency in the middle of a deadly and historic pandemic. Apparently profits are above lives for the worker of California Cal-OSHA has become a ghost agency when workers need it the most.

For more Information:
committeeforlaborparty(at)gmail.com
Sponsored by
United Public Workers For Action upwa.info
United Front Committee For A Labor Party UFCLP
https://foramasslaborparty.wordpress.com

Register here

We may not know what is coming next, but we can prepare for it anyway. Direct Action has historically been the most effective way to change the world, and we built a workshop to teach folks how it has worked, and how we can plan and execute strategic, effective, and engaging actions.

Do you want to learn effective techniques to intervene in an unjust world?
Do you want to plan effective and powerful direct actions?

East Bay DSA’s Direct Action Working Group is excited to teach our 3rd Direct Action Training! The training will take place on Zoom from 2 pm-4 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Attending both days is highly recommended. This training will cover the same ground as the previous Direct Action training which was very well received.

As racist violence, unemployment, evictions, and climate chaos keep increasing, we need to expand our capacity to leverage our collective power. This training series will introduce creative ways to escalate ongoing campaigns, participate in mass uprisings, and keep each other safe in our confrontations with capital and the state.

The training is 4 hours spread across two days. Please attend both days.

Direct Action Part 1: Sat Feb 20 10am-noon
•History and examples of Direct Action getting the goods
•Team Roles, Action Design
•De-Escalation
•Basic First Aid
•Affinity Groups & Decision-Making
•Know Your Rights
•Action Planning Breakout Groups

Direct Action Part 2: Sun Feb 21 10am-noon
•Gear/equipment
•Messaging
•Security Culture
•Action Planning Breakout Groups
•How to get involved

Green Eco-Socialist Network – 3 part series with David Cobb, Meleiza Figueroa, David Bond, Chey Bell!

Join us for a deep dive into Eco-Socialism, and learn how the capitalist status quo deprives us of our human rights and aspirations. The first presentation in this 3-part series is an introduction to Eco-Socialism vs. Capitalism including a discussion of what Eco-Socialism may mean to you.
The world we need and deserve is not only possible, it is an imperative. We and our children will not survive the status quo.

Event is FREE – advance registration required: https://rebrand.ly/GreenEcoSocialism.

Here’s the Facebook event page.

Event opens with Comedian Chey Bell !

The two following presentations in the series will build on the first event and will be held on Feb. 20th and April 10th, 2021. Presentations will focus on Eco-Socialist platforms and programs and institutions being built around the country to shift away from capitalist systems and into a just, sustainable future.

2020 showed us how corporate America tripled their riches while we scrambled to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads. It’s time to break up big corporations! The Green Party platform and our Green New Deal seek to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power. We believe private ownership of production and state ownership of production are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices. We seek democratic decision making in communities and workplaces in balance with nature. This decentralized system is knows as co-ops, communalism, or ecological socialism (eco-socialism).

Please join the Ecosocialist Network for this kick ass kick off with California Greens: Cooperation Humboldt co-founder David Cobb, 2016 press director for Stein/Baraka presidential campaign & UC Berkeley PhD candidate Meleiza Figueroa, and David Bond of Los Angeles who was Kenneth Mejia’s campaign manager.  Cobb is an attorney who was the 2004 Green Party candidate for U.S. President.
This is sure to be a riveting panel, with kick ass comedy, to boot, to kick off the series!

Register here

We may not know what is coming next, but we can prepare for it anyway. Direct Action has historically been the most effective way to change the world, and we built a workshop to teach folks how it has worked, and how we can plan and execute strategic, effective, and engaging actions.

Do you want to learn effective techniques to intervene in an unjust world?
Do you want to plan effective and powerful direct actions?

East Bay DSA’s Direct Action Working Group is excited to teach our 3rd Direct Action Training! The training will take place on Zoom from 2 pm-4 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Attending both days is highly recommended. This training will cover the same ground as the previous Direct Action training which was very well received.

As racist violence, unemployment, evictions, and climate chaos keep increasing, we need to expand our capacity to leverage our collective power. This training series will introduce creative ways to escalate ongoing campaigns, participate in mass uprisings, and keep each other safe in our confrontations with capital and the state.

The training is 4 hours spread across two days. Please attend both days.

Direct Action Part 1: Sat Feb 20 10am-noon
•History and examples of Direct Action getting the goods
•Team Roles, Action Design
•De-Escalation
•Basic First Aid
•Affinity Groups & Decision-Making
•Know Your Rights
•Action Planning Breakout Groups

Direct Action Part 2: Sun Feb 21 10am-noon
•Gear/equipment
•Messaging
•Security Culture
•Action Planning Breakout Groups
•How to get involved

The membership of DSA, the largest socialist organization in the United States, is rapidly growing by the thousands. Democratic Socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush are raising the expectations of millions of people across the United States and bringing them into a political awakening. Millions of working-class Americans are calling for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, and more.

But what is democratic socialism? What does it mean to be a member of DSA? How do socialists look at the crises of police brutality, economic precarity, and COVID-19? And what is the best course of action during the Biden administration?

Let’s get into it!

Join us to discuss what our political moment calls for, meet new people, and get plugged into our fight for democratic control of the things that we need for all of us to live a dignified life.

RSVP here

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89295944917?pwd=UUdJVVk0L2lid1docGJ6ZllrVTJMQT09

Meeting ID: 892 9594 4917

Passcode: intro

One tap mobile

+16699006833,,89295944917#,,,,*286322# US (San Jose)

+13462487799,,89295944917#,,,,*286322# US (Houston)

No More Fukushimas, No Olympic In Japan In the Middle Of Pandemic

Sponsored by No Nukes Action

Thursday March 11, 2021 is the tenth anniversary of the earthquake and meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Fukushima.
The nightmare for the people and refugees of Fukushima and Japan continues. They are struggling to survive.
Despite promises that the melted nuclear rods would be removed they have not been and the recent earthquake has added greater dangers.
Two reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan have begun leaking cooling water following last weekend’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake, indicating that the existing damage to TEPCO’s Unit 1 and 3 reactors has worsened, according to Keisuke Matsuo.
The government is also planning to dump over a million tons of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean despite the opposition of the Fisherman’s co-operative and the people of Japan and Korea.
At the same time the Japanese government under former Japanese prime minister Abe and now Suga continue their denialism mode. They say that they have overcome the nuke plant meltdowns and still want to have the Olympics in Japan this summer in the midst of the greatest world pandemic in over 100 years.
They also have shown their sexist attacks on women when the former head of the Olympics Yoshiro who was also a former prime minister said women speak too much. He was forced to
resign but their reactionary sexism, denialism and racism continues.
Nuclear clean-up workers including workers from overseas and other workers continue to get contaminated with no proper health and safety education and tens of thousands of bags of radioactive waste continue to remain scattered throughout the prefecture with no place to go.
The criminal negligence of having the Olympics under these circumstances with a full blown pandemic and a three leaking nuclear reactors is a sign of insanity and a danger to not only
Japan but the world.
No Nukes Action calls on all those opposed to nuclear plants and weapons, against the in Tokyo and Fukushima Olympics and those opposed to have this event in the middle of a pandemic to join the action.
It it time to remember the families and children who are still suffering from this man-made
disaster and let them know that people in the United States and around the world stand with them.

Physical distancing and masks for all participants at action

COVID-19 is shining a spotlight on the cruelty of the U.S. healthcare system — a system designed to maximize profit, not patients’ well-being. Millions of working-class people have lost their jobs and their health insurance in the pandemic-driven recession. Meanwhile, in California alone, 165 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $175,000,000,000 since March 2020.

In the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world, this is unacceptable. We must make healthcare a human right for all our residents. We must pass Assembly Bill 1400, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act, also known as “CalCare.”

To win “CalCare,” we need a working-class movement to apply pressure on Democratic lawmakers into supporting Assembly Bill 1400. Our first target: California State Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Assembly District 16, one of California’s most wealthy State Assembly districts.

Join us for our first in-person, no-contact, socially-distant Day of Action.

We will begin our Day of Action with a rally from those fighting for healthcare justice, creating a movement to win California Medicare for All, and pass AB 1400 – “CalCare.” Then, we will go throughout Orinda to hang door hangers to send a message to Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan that her constituents support a California Medicare for All system.

Join us in our movement to win California Medicare for All today. RSVP for this event here:

https://actionnetwork.org/events/doorhangers-for-medicare-for-all-in-orinda

Grandmothers for a Green New Deal, a small group of elder women (members of 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations), invite you to a 90-minute, interactive zoom workshop to examine the Green New Deal as a blueprint toward a sustainable future.

Sign up for one of these workshops by clicking on the registration links below

Register for Thursday, March 18, 4-5:30 PM

Register for Friday, March 26; 4-5:30 PM

Register for Thursday, April 1, 4 – 5:30 PM

PLEASE NOTE:

Each presentation is limited to 12 participants so everyone has a chance to share their ideas. Please register early!

The workshop is centered around a 17 minute video,

http://www.vimeo.com/grandmothers4aGND/APathForward

Please watch the video before the workshop.

The video addresses the question: What is the Green New Deal and why does it matter?  It reviews the basics of the threat of climate catastrophe, the need for a radical restructuring of society for racial, gender, and economic justice, and why these things are inseparably connected. All in the voices of grandmothers talking about why this matters to them.

Follow this link to register: https://www.surjbayarea.org/events/spill-the-disabili-tea-a-disability-justice-workshop_2021_03_20

What is Disability Justice? People often express feeling intimidated and ill-equipped to unpack what we’ve been taught about disability, and how to support and advocate for disabled people in our everyday lives. This workshop is a fabulous opportunity for you to dive into the magic of disability justice with SURJ and Alex Locust at the helm.

With “Spill the Disabili-Tea™”, Alex will be facilitating an interactive discussion of disability justice for those committed to elevating their support for disabled folks in their community. Using his lived experience, education, and advocacy know-how, he’ll lead a candid conversation exploring the following questions (and more):

Who is “disabled” and what creates that experience?

What is “disability justice?”

What’s the “right way” to interact with people with disabilities?

How can I do better about those tricky “microaggressions?”

What’s the difference between “access” and “inclusion?”

Is disability a cultural experience and how can that intersect with other cultural identities?

How can I integrate these skills in the community (e.g. Pride celebrations, workplace culture, community gatherings)?

Come join us for an afternoon of real talk, experiential exercises, group work, and lots of laughs as we all Spill the Disabili-Tea™.

Accessibility Information

Spill the Disabili-Tea™ will be held virtually over Zoom and will start promptly at 1pm. We encourage you to join a few minutes before 1 to situate yourself.

Participants will receive an email after RSVP’ing and instructions for joining the meeting in an email sent out the morning before the event.

You may want to check your SPAM/ promotions folder for these emails. If you do not find the email, please email us at accessibility@surjbayarea.org, by the day before the meeting at the latest, so we can provide you the zoom link.

Closed Captioning will be provided. If possible, please let us know you plan to access Closed Captioning by emailing accessibility@surjbayarea.org.

We hope to provide translation into Spanish at this meeting but are still working on it. If you or someone else you know would want translation into Spanish, please reach out to us as soon as possible by emailing: accessibility@surjbayarea.org. We have not yet built capacity for translation to other languages.

ASL INTERPRETATION

ASL interpretation will be provided if requested by 11:00 AM on Thursday March 18th by emailing: accessibility@surjbayarea.org. Please RSVP for the workshop as well.

COST ACCESSIBILITY

This event is sliding scale, meaning pay what you can afford or are comfortable with. The sliding scale is from $20-$80. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, if you are unable to pay please RSVP by emailing accessibility@surjbayarea.org and we will send you the link the day before the event.

Right now the most vulnerable individuals are being exploited on a massive scale and it will only get worse if we don’t take action now. But can we as average citizens really make a difference to help them? The answer is YES. In Direct Action Everywhere’s workshop, you will learn the history of social movements, the groundbreaking new research that shows the power of ordinary people, and the bold plan to nonviolently abolish the most harmful industry on earth that kills billions of animals every year.

Join this Zoom link Sunday at 11am PST: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84012361059
Meeting ID: 840 1236 1059

Please sign up to our email list before you attend this event:
dxe.io/signup

– – –

This interactive workshop was created by DxE co-founder and former Northwestern law professor Wayne Hsiung. After this workshop, you will have the tools to begin taking high impact action with thousands around the world to create historic change by saving billions of lives.

If you’re interested in joining our community for change by becoming a chapter member, this workshop is required. Sign-up to be a chapter member at dxe.io/apply.

As socialists, we believe workers play a particular role under capitalism that makes them central in the fight for socialism. But in recent history in the US, labor and the left have been separated, leaving us vulnerable to capitalism attacks. How do we rebuild a fighting labor movement that can meaningfully challenge capital? Enter the Rank & File Strategy.

What is the Rank & File Strategy? How should socialists engage with it? How is it different from just “socialists taking rank & file jobs”? Join the East Bay DSA Political Education Committee for a discussion of these questions and more.

We are thrilled to feature two vital contributors to the labor movement, Jane Slaughter and John Pearson! Jane Slaughter is a journalist with a storied history in the US labor movement. She is a co-founder of Labor Notes, a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979. She authored Concessions and How To Beat Them and co-authored the indispensable workplace organizing handbook Secrets of a Successful Organizer. John Pearson, RN, is a rank-and-file ER nurse at Highland Hospital and Alameda Health System Chapter President for SEIU Local 1021. He was instrumental in the East Bay’s historic, and victorious, healthcare worker strike in 2020.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84395261436?pwd=emI1K0h6VC9UUk9ObWZiMzhrM0FmQT09

Meeting ID: 843 9526 1436

Passcode: school

One tap mobile

+16699006833,,84395261436#,,,,*401830# US (San Jose)

+12532158782,,84395261436#,,,,*401830# US (Tacoma)

Brockhurst St. and nearby neighbors are walking for community safety. Join us in the parking lot at St. Mary’s Center and we’ll pick the route for the day!

We are looking for “hosts” for Wednesdays in April to bring friends & neighbors, and organize the walk. Interested?

Join a virtual training to learn about what’s currently happening with DAPL and how you can take action.  Very soon the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will head to court and share their findings from the environmental impact review of the Dakota Access pipeline and the danger it poses to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.  This April 9th hearing is critical because the court could order the Army Corps of Engineers to shut it down.  We need to stand in solidarity with Indigenous water protectors and allies!  Every single day that passes, the health and safety of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are threatened.

To help people join the fight, 350.org is hosting a special training led by on-the-ground activists and Indigenous leaders.  Attendees will learn how to take actions to stop DAPL, Line 3, and all other fossil fuel projects.

RSVP NOW

Can’t make it?  RSVP and you’ll be sent a recording.

Special guests will provide the latest updates on the fight to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.  These will include a representative from the Tasina Sapa Win Makwa Initiative who is running from the DAPL construction site in Standing Rock to the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota to Washington, D.C.  Runners will arrive in D.C. on April 1 to deliver a clear message to President Biden: Stop the Dakota Access pipeline and all fossil fuel projects.  Other speakers include Dawn Goodwin of the Rise Coalition and Nancy Beaulieu of MN350.

Experienced trainers will also lead sessions where you’ll learn about easy actions you can take to stand in solidarity with the Indigenous runners.  You’ll have the option of choosing one of two training sessions:

• For those with a local Army Corps of Engineers office:  “How to host an action at your local Army Corps of Engineers” led by our friends at Food and Water Watch, Shutdown DC, and the Indigenous Environmental Network.
• For everyone else:  “How to host an action at the office of your local member of Congress” led by the 350 team.

Together, we can hold the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accountable and push President Biden to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline and all fossil fuel projects, but it’s going to take all of us getting involved.

Can you join the fight and attend the virtual training  to hear the latest from Indigenous runners and learn how you can hold a solidarity action?