Calendar
Heather La Mastro, a school teacher in Berkeley, recently traveled to occupied Palestine. She visited several refugee camps, hospitals and pediatric mental health care programs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip administered by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). Heather will share her stories meeting Palestinian people, especially her students’ Palestinian pen pals in Gaza.
She will be joined by Priscilla Wathington, the Managing Editor for Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), an independent, local Palestinian child rights organization based in Ramallah. Priscilla will speak about the most pressing human rights concerns facing Palestinian children living in the Gaza Strip at this juncture and the grave number of child fatalities at the hands of Israeli forces that DCIP documented in 2018.
Organized by ISM-NorCal https://ism-norcal.org/
Come to a discussion with activists in the fight for decent education in Oakland about what we can do to stand up to these attacks.
https://revolutionaryworkers.org/
RSVP: bit.ly/feedthehood9
DONATE: bit.ly/feedthehood
Join The East Oakland Collective for their large scale community service opportunity to prepare and distribute 3,000 lunches and hygiene kits to our unhoused brothers and sisters across Oakland. This Feed the Hood is paying respect and homage to the Black Panther Party, who fed, clothed and provided resources to the community without government assistance.
<< At-A-Glance Agenda for Feed the Hood >>
7 AM: Volunteers arrive. Volunteer breakfast.
7 AM – 9 AM: Prepare bag lunches and hygiene kits
9 AM – 9:30 AM: Program and instruction
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM: Load caravans
9:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Caravans head out to distribute bag lunches and hygiene kits across Oakland and parts of Berkeley.
**Event is family friendly (kids of all ages welcome to attend with their parent(s) or guardian).
**Coffee/tea and continental breakfast will be served for volunteers.
**Venue is wheelchair accessible.
PARKING: School parking lot prioritized for those participating in the caravan distributions, then overflow on first come basis. Parking available in the neighborhood.
For questions, large donations and group volunteer opportunities contact us at feedthehood@eastoaklandcollective.com.
Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to healing.
The Bahá’í community of Oakland is organizing this gathering for the community to connect, share prayers, writings and poems from all spiritual traditions, reflect and recharge and build coalitions interested in healing.
Come share prayers, quotes, poems, and favorite passages from your scriptures with us. Simple breakfast will be served.
Doors open: 10:00 AM
Refreshments served: 10:00-10:30 AM
Prayers: 10:30-11:30 AM
Discussion and socializing: 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
“Thy name is my healing, O my God, and remembrance of Thee is my remedy. Nearness to Thee is my hope, and love for Thee is my companion. Thy mercy to me is my healing and my succor in both this world and the world to come. Thou, verily, art the All-Bountiful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” ~ Bahá’u’lláh
“Remember the saying: ‘Of all pilgrimages the greatest is to relieve the sorrow-laden heart.'” ~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Meet living treasure Edythe Boone and enjoy the new installation of her works in Fellowship Hall. This bold muralist, activist, and educator tackles poverty, racism, and inequality—with a paintbrush. She makes murals with all who share her yearning for community. (Note that the reception takes place after the regular 2nd Sunday potluck, which starts around noon.)
As a special treat, we’ll be screening the fascinating, award-winning documentary by Marlene “Mo” Morris, “A New Color: The Art of Being Edythe Boone.”
We demand:
No U.S. Coup!
– No troops
– No sanctions
– Return Venezuelan money to the legitimate Maduro government
– No proxy interventions (i.e. through Colombia or Brazil)
Recognize the elected Maduro Bolivarian government
No recognition of the self-imposed, rogue Guaidò “government”.
We invite other organizations to endorse. Please message with your endorsement, and we’ll add you to the listed endorsers.
Our forum this month will focus on the likely teachers strike in Oakland and the battle against school closures and charters linked to a privatization agenda locally and nationally. This comes on the wake of a very successful strike by teachers in Los Angeles and an educator upsurge spreading elsewhere.
Our presenters will be Mike Hutchinson, long time education activist, school board candidate, and leader of OPEN (Oakland Public Education Network) and Becca Rozo-Marsh, a leader of the Oakland Education Association and co-chair of that union’s community outreach committee.
Mike Hutchinson was born and raised in Oakland and is a proud graduate of the Oakland Public Schools. After working in our schools for 20 years, in 2012 he became a public education advocate. Since then he has been working to save and fix public education in Oakland by any means necessary. He is currently working to build the organization he co-founded, OPEN: the Oakland Public Education Network, which is a founding member of the Journey For Justice national alliance, and the west coast anchor organization for the #WeChoose national campaign.
Becca Rozo-Marsh is a classroom teacher at Coliseum College Prep Academy and a member of the Oakland Education Association’s Executive Board. In 2016 she was one of the recipients of the Teacher for Social Justice award given by the San Francisco based group Teachers 4 Social Justice.
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 6:45 pm; council meetings are always open to anyone who is interested.
PLANET PEOPLE PEACE
before profit!
https://www.justice4chinedu.com/
East Bay Booksellers invites you to The Diesel Readers Book Group’s discussion of Radio Free Vermont byBill McKibben, on Monday February 11th at 7pm.
As the host of Radio Free Vermont–“underground, underpowered, and underfoot”–seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an “undisclosed and double-secret location.” With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law.
In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that’s become more popular than ever–seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of ‘Ethan Allen Day’ and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben’s fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.
Vandana Shiva and Vijaya Nagarajan
Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and alter-globalization author. Currently based in Delhi, she has authored more than twenty books, including Who Really Feeds the World? Water Wars, and Biopiracy. She is one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin) and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the alter-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, as evidenced by her interview in the book Vedic Ecology. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain’s Socialist Party’s think tank. She is also a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993, an honor known as an “Alternative Nobel Prize.” Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one of India’s leading physicists.
Vijaya Nagarajan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology/Religious Studies and in the Program of Environmental Studies at the University of San Francisco. She writes about Hinduism, gender, ritual, ecology and the commons. Recently her work has centered around spiritual autobiographies of place, especially around immigration and motherhood. She has been active in the American Academy of Religion and in environmental movements in the United States. She is the author of Feeding a Thousand Souls which documents the history of the tradition of the kolam. Every day millions of Tamil women in southeast India wake up before dawn to create the kōlam, a ritual design made of rice flour, on the thresholds of homes. This thousand year-old ritual welcomes and honors the goddesses Lakshmi and Bhudevi. Braiding Tamil women’s voices and the author’s own stories, Feeding a Thousand Souls offers different knowledge traditions––beauty, history, gender, literature, religion, anthropology, mathematics, and ecology.
In cooperation with KPFA.
*** Location change: Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center, UC Berkeley ***
Please join us for a special lecture series with celebrated author and scholar Marion Nestle.
Food Politics 2019: Food Policy in the Trump Era
What’s happening under the Trump administration to policies aimed at solving problems of undernutrition, obesity, and the effects of food production on the environment?
Introduction by Michael Pollan, John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism.
This is the first lecture in a series of three special events:
February 12, 2019: https://bit.ly/2ANX9nh
Food Politics 2019: Nutrition Science Under Siege
Nutrition science is under attack from statisticians and the food industry. Who stands to gain and what might be lost?
February 19, 2019: https://bit.ly/2slNtLK
Food Politics 2019: An Agenda for the Food Movement
Recent government policy changes are eroding programs aimed at feeding the hungry, curbing obesity, and protecting the environment. What can consumers and citizens do?
About Marion Nestle
Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, emerita, at New York University. She holds a doctorate in Molecular Biology and an MPH in Public Health Nutrition, both from UC Berkeley. She is the author of ten books, among them the prize-winning Food Politics; What to Eat; Why Calories Count; Eat, Drink, Vote; and Soda Politics. Her most recent book, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, was published in 2018. From 2008 to 2013, she wrote a monthly Food Matters column for the San Francisco Chronicle. She blogs almost daily at www.foodpolitics.com, and her twitter account, @marionnestle, has been ranked by Science Magazine, Time Magazine, and The Guardian as among the top ten in health and science.
RSVP: https://bit.ly/2SLZupJ
This series is presented in partnership with Berkeley Journalism, the Berkeley Food Institute, the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship.
#MedicareForAll is supported by the people, but we cannot get it passed without @SpeakerPelosi’s support.
Join us on Tuesday, 2/12 from 6pm-8pm at the Women’s Building (3543 18th Street) as we team up with the Nurse’s Union to call on Pelosi to embrace Medicare for All! pic.twitter.com/2lug001X4K
— SF Berniecrats-Our Revolution (@sfberniecrats) January 21, 2019
The charges are as follows:
Felarca: felony assault with great bodily injury, misdemeanor riot and misdemeanor inciting riot
Williams: felony assault with a deadly weapon, misdemeanor riot
Paz: misdemeanor assault, misdemeanor riot
This is a gross miscarriage of justice. The prosecutor’s case at the evidentiary hearing relied heavily on unauthenticated video and a single witness, the CHP officer, Ayres. His testimony made crystal clear the selective nature and bias of his “investigation” into the protest on June 26, 2016. He was loathe to even characterize the Traditionalist Workers Party as a Nazi or fascist organization. The prosecutor admitted that his “victims” and his witnesses were less than ideal from his point of view, and that his evidence against me for felony charge was lousy. Yet Judge Bulware Eurie refused to drop the charges, sanctioning the Sacramento District Attorney witchhunt in an effort to scapegoat and make examples out of us. We cannot let them succeed.
The defense team plans on bringing another motion to dismiss to stop this case from going to trial. As my attorneys wrote, “If the prosecution of Felarca, Paz, and Williams proceeds, then Donald Trump will have already achieved one of his central aims: the substitution of authoritarianism for constitutional due process rights and democratic norms. A policy of naked state discrimination and persecution of racial minorities and left-wing political activists would be a fact and reality.'”
Thank you everyone for the support you’ve given us thus far. Coming to Sacramento, raising your voices at pickets, your unions and organizations, it has meant the world to us. We are committed to standing up and fighting this out, because we know that we’re fighting not only for ourselves, but for generations to come. Now that this judge has ruled to maintain the charges, in the course of the next several weeks, it’s urgent that we redouble our education and outreach efforts for the defense campaign. Here are some useful media links on the case. A list of labor support and other organizations is below, too. If I missed any, my apologies, and let me know as soon as possible so I can modify the list. Please continue to reach out to organizations or unions that you work with. I’ve attached a sample resolution you can bring to your organization. All support is welcome.
In Solidarity,
Yvette Felarca
Sacramento 3 Defendant
BAMN National Organizer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Court Support Needed for the Next Hearing (Arraignment): Wed. Feb. 13 at 8:30 am at the Sacramento Courthouse, 651 i-St. Dept. 63.
2. Useful webpage on the case with with links to defense motions and exhibits: bamn.com/defendyvettefelarca
3. Media Coverage of the Case:
A. The Guardian Jan. 25, 2019: How a California officer protected neo-Nazis and targeted their victims
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/25/california-police-neo-nazis-antifa-protest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
B. Sacramento News and Review article on evidentiary preliminary hearing Jan. 4, 2019:
https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/exhibits-lies-videotape/content?oid=27528610
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C. The Guardian: exclusive interview after Felarca’s July 19, 2017 arrest:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/25/yvette-felarca-trump-protest-charges-activism
D. NY Daily News:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/middle-school-teacher-arrested-punching-neo-nazi-article-1.3418200
E. Huffington Post:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yvette-felarca-neo-nazi-fascism_us_59949dece4b0d0d2cc83d266
F. The Young Turks Youtube Story: Police Teaming Up with Neo-Nazi’s Now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoZuKMbjDBE&feature=youtu.be
G. Video: Vice Deezus and Mero Stand With Middle School Teacher Yvette Felarca
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/ywwwqy/desus-and-mero-defend-a-teacher-who-was-arrested-for-punching-a-neo-nazi
H. Uneditted TV interviews on June 26, 2016 after the anti-fascist protest in Sacramento:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dd1YoDULg
I. KTVU Interview defending shut down of alt-right Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopolous at UC Berkeley, Feb. 3, 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPrRLyFTzSU&t=2s
We will be joined by Cooperation Jackson Co-Founder and Executive Director, Kali Akuno. The program will feature a presentation about the innovative work of Cooperation Jackson, and will focus in particular on their two primary initiatives for 2019: Revitalizing a former Grocery Plaza and exhibiting their first digitally fabricated homes on their Ewing Street Eco-Village Pilot Project.
For those who don’t know, Cooperation Jackson is an emerging network of worker cooperatives and supporting solidarity economy institutions and practices based in Jackson, Mississippi. For more information on Cooperation Jackson visit www.CooperationJackson.org.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a huge upsurge in activism within the technology community. From the walkouts at Google to labor organizing at Amazon, tech workers are starting to see a connection between their work and social issues. Engineer, activist, and entrepreneur Leigh Honeywell has been at the forefront of tech activism for many years. We’ll be talking to her about the new tech activism, and the politics of a life lived online.
Honeywell founded two hackerspaces (HackLabTO in Toronto, and the Seattle Attic Community Workshop in Seattle), created the widely-circulated Never Again pledge, and now heads her own company, Tall Poppy, where she helps companies protect their employees from online harassment. The thread that runs throughout her work is using technology to create more privacy and safety for people online. She’ll discuss the growing resistance to the practices of corporations that profile users, or sell their data, and the rise of services that protect people from digital harassment.
Honeywell was previously a Technology Fellow at the ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, and also worked at Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Symantec. Leigh has a Bachelors of Science from the University of Toronto where she majored in Computer Science and Equity Studies.
She’ll be in conversation with Ars Technica contributors Annalee Newitz and Cyrus Farivar.
Ars Technica Live takes place on the second Wednesday of every month at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland (3629 MLK Way—they have the best tater tots you’ve ever eaten).
Doors open at 7pm, and the live filming is from 7:30pm to 8:20-ish (be sure to get there early if you want a seat). Stick around afterward for informal discussion, beer, and snacks. Can’t make it out to Oakland? Never fear! Episodes will be posted to Ars Technica two weeks after the live events.
When Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and The Progressive Labor Party (PL) splintered in June 1969, a majority of the delegates supported the program of its Worker-Student Alliance caucus. These candid accounts by WSA activists bring to life their struggles to end the Vietnam War and achieve social justice-and evaluate both WSA’s successes and its failure to achieve its promise.
The contributors in this book were mostly members of WSA, whose formation was initiated by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party. Here they recount and evaluate their participation in the struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s, from trips to revolutionary Cuba defying the US travel ban to student strikes, labor and community alliances, and campaigns against the war and racism across the country, from Columbia and Harvard, Texas and Iowa, to San Francisco State and UC Berkeley.
With editor John Levin.
- ALAMEDA COUNTY Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee meeting
- ENTIRE AGENDA HERE
- -FIRE DRONES- Several years back, Alameda County residents , because of privacy concerns, opposed a plan by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department to use “small unmanned aerial systems” AKA drones to fight crime. Ultimately the drones were purchased and a policy for its use was crafted by residents and law enforcement. Now, the Alameda County Fire Department wants its own policy to use drones to fight fires. The early stages of a policy comes before the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ Public Protection Committee on Thursday morning. Over the past year, Alameda County Fire has used the Sheriff’s drones to access blazes on several occasions in the county. Alameda County Sheriff’s drones were also used recently to aid in recent Northern California wildfires. The Fire Department hopes to have a policy is placed by October of this year.