Calendar
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.
Join us for a FREE thought-provoking conversation about housing instability in the Bay Area – and to be a part of the solution!
Hosts 10th Mourning Mothers “Walk for Healing”
For Families and Friends of Homicide Victims and those impacted by PTSD”
(San Leandro – May 11, 2019) Hundreds are expected to join 1000 Mothers to Prevent Violence 10th annual “Mourning Mothers Walk for Healing” at the San Leandro Marina Park (Heron);
The Mourning Mothers Walk was started by Lorrain Taylor, founder and executive director of “1000 Mothers to Prevent Violence” to help grieving families dealing with PTSD and to raise awareness to the ongoing impact of violence on the community. Lorrain Taylor found walking the marina to be an alternative to taking prescribed anti-depressants. “Grief is crippling, walking helps ease my pain”, she said.
The Mourning Mothers Walk for Healing will provide an atmosphere of hope, healing and a fun environment for surviving family members and friends of gun violence victims who acutely feel the pain of loss and separation especially during Mother’s Day. “To be alone even with family and friends does not diminish the feelings of desolation, despair and sadness that so many survivors feel; but at least we will be together to support one another”, Taylor said.
The Mourning Mothers Walk for Healing will feature testimonials by homicide victim-survivors; prayer, praise and worship music by Bruce O’Neal band; live contemporary music and entertainment by world renown percussionist, Juan Escovedo, and 11-time Grammy award winner Tony Lindsay of Santana Band. Finally, Taylor, will share her story and songs she wrote and recorded: “Gumbo for my Soul” and “It’s Time to Take a Stand”.
San Leandro Mayor Pauline Cutter will honor 1,000 Mothers to Prevent Violence with a proclamation declaring the May 11th as Mourning Mother’s Day of Healing” for the City of San Leandro. Also, longtime supporters, Pastor Edwin Brown and members of Market St. Seventh Day Adventist Church will be joining us for the 3k Walk for Healing which begins at 9:00 a.m.
There will be raffles, food, face painting art and onsite physical and mental therapy
Lorrain Taylor, DMin., founded 1000 Mothers to Prevent Violence as part of her own healing process following the murders of her twin sons Albade and Obadiah Taylor, 22-year old college students, who were senselessly gunned down on the streets of Oakland by a serial killer while they were repairing a car together on February 8, 2000.
Please RSVP at http://www.1000Mothers.org or call (510) 581-0100 ASAP.
“1000 Mothers to Prevent Violence” is also accepting in kind and financial donations from the broader community. Mailing address: P.O. Box 781, Hayward, CA 94543. All donations are 501 c 3 tax deductible.
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.
Please join us for a talk by Jenny Odell in celebration of her new book How to Do Nothing / Resisting the Attention Economy.
”A galvanizing critique of the forces vying for our attention—and our personal information—that redefines what we think of as productivity, reconnects us with the environment, and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world
Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance.
So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.”
Jenny Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it’s birdwatching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. She created The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a searchable online archive of 200 objects salvaged from the San Francisco dump, each with photographs and painstaking research into its material, corporate, and manufacturing histories. She is compelled by the ways in which attention (or lack thereof) leads to consequential shifts in perception at the level of the everyday.
Odell’s visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, Ever Gold Projects, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D’Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, apexart (NY), East Wing (Dubai), and the Google headquarters. She has been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Palo Alto Art Center, Facebook, and the Internet Archive and has taught internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford since 2013.
Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, SFMOMA’s Open Space, McSweeney’s, The Creative Independent, Sierra Magazine, Topic, and Real Future.
Sun, May 12
Turkey at the cross roads of imperialism
Turkey is struggling to find a new and better position in the world while fascism erodes the economy, human rights, freedom of press and all opposition. New “elections” on March 31 is only a sham as mounting evidence of corruption piles. Turkey has lost on Syria, a quagmire it planned on winning big with the bog guys. As Turkey oscillates between European Union, the USA and Russia, it finds itself more and more irrelevant. Contrary to the big plans of becoming a leader in the Middle East, Turkey has been relegated to a position where it is only trying to find who to follow. Such is the position of those who accept imperialism instead of standing up to it. ICSS member Mehmet Bayram will present and lead our discussion. TENTATIVE
Sun, May 19
¡VIVA MEXICO!
Mexican President Díaz (1876-1880 and 1884-1911) famously commented: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”
Diaz got it at least half right. Mexico has suffered in the shadow of the Colossus of the North, but Mexico is not poor. Mexico is rich in many ways, yet it also has been impoverished. And Mexico has been greatly underappreciated by North Americans. This presentation will emphasize the many poorly known accomplishments of Mexico, while uncovering the role of US imperialism.
Mexico is bucking an international right-wing tide, shifting its government from right to left-of-center with the presidential inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on December 1. Speaking for international capital, The Economist is worried. The other 99% of humanity is hopeful.
Roger Harris will present a PowerPoint-illustrated cautionary history of this trice conquered land. A longtime activist with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, Roger is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas (http://taskforceamericas.org/), a 33-year-old human rights organization, and is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions Against Venezuela (https://tinyurl.com/yd4ptxkx). He last visited Mexico in March.
MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
Sun, May 26, 2019: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Report from Venezuela Delegation
Venezuela is in the cross hairs of imperialism. It has the largest oil reserves in the world, but more than that, Venezuela is determined to use its resources for the benefit of its own people instead of handing them over to transnational corporations or imperialist rulers. In the age of imperialism, these trends are enough to make any country the target of imperialist plunderers. We are under a media barrage of lies, misinformation, and open US propaganda about Venezuela. With this intense muddying of waters it becomes very hard to know and understand the events happening around this Latin American, Bolivarian, country.
In order to observe what is really going on there, recently Bay Area residents Mehmet Bayram, ICSS member and journalist, and Laura Wells, Green Party Congressional Candidate, visited Venezuela with the “End Venezuela Sanctions” delegation. They will present their experience and lead the discussion afterwards.
Sun, June 9, 2019: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee
After 24 years in the USA, 38 years in the (East) German Democratic Republic as a McCarthy-era exile, then nearly 30 years in unified Germany, Victor Grossman, the ex-pat journalist and author examines the rise and fall of a socialist experiment as he observed and participated in it. He tries to clear through a fog of misinformation and distortion regarding it, describing its achievements, its successes as well as its blunders and negative aspects. Its position regarding Nazis and fascism is compared with that in West Germany. Its school system, women’s rights, both models in many ways, cultural questions and other matters are examined from a personal, anecdotal and sometimes humorous perspective.
The book then turns to a broader examination of possible lessons to be learned when searching for solutions to present-day problems: the growing gap between rich and poor, alarmingly malevolent dangers for a crippled environment, the menace of racism and new fascist movements, the almost ignored danger of atomic annihilation – and who is to blame for them. But the book also looks at newly invigorated hopes for a better, a socialist future despite the many barriers to its realization – seen through the prism of a veteran of the “old Left” in the USA, Communist rule and the Cold War in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, and expresses his views on current fears and hopes on both sides of the Atlantic – and the Pacific.
(Copies of Victor’s book will be available for purchase, cash or checks only, NO CREDIT CARDS.
Sun, Jun 16, 2019: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Cuba”s Democracy
Constitutional Referendum and grassroots political processes.
Cuba is always described as a “dictatorship” by the mainstream media and the U.S. government, thus providing a pretext for the economic blockade and talk about regime change. But Sharat G. Lin found a remarkable democratic process in the recent Constitutional Referendum in Cuba and months of nationwide discussions involving millions of voters. (Awaiting confirmation)
~~~~~THE FILM~~~~~~
A feature-length documentary about the history and resurgence of socialism in America.
Socialism: an American Story (socialismmovie.com) features the stories of ordinary Americans across the United States. From a Marine veteran turned socialist legislator, to a teacher on strike, to the son of Cuban immigrants organizing to free deportees, today’s surging interest in socialism manifests across demographics. Through their stories and a historical road trip through the old socialist hub of Wisconsin, we learn what a uniquely American form of socialism might look like.
Two years ago, 13 million Americans voted for a socialist presidential candidate for the first time. Millions more flirted with socialism, feared it, or scratched their heads and moved on. We want to reach people who are unfamiliar with socialist thought but feel its growing influence in their lives. For the first time in decades, there are socialists in both houses of Congress. Americans deserve an opportunity to evaluate socialist ideas without the usual Cold War stigma or fear-mongering.
The word “socialism” can be alienating. “Medicare for All” now enjoys wide majority support even among Republicans, but the socialist project goes beyond healthcare reform. We journey through a vision of America transformed by that project.
~~~~~~Q&A DISCUSSION FEATURING~~~~~~
Yael Bridge is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, recently produced Netflix’s Saving Capitalism.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founder and editor of Jacobin and author of new book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.
Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Vox, Mother Jones, The Week, The Baffler, In These Times, n+1 and elsewhere.
~~~~~~COSPONSORS~~~~~~
Democratic Socialists of America
Young Democratic Socialists of America
Jacobin
Our Revolution
Socialist Alternative
Details
When: May 12, 2019, 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Where: The New Parkway
Join us for part 2 of Marx on the US Civil War! This class was created with the intention of bringing in folks who are unfamiliar with Marx. Come through!
Here is the handout from the previous class: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DpOmmMkhyrzYxNQXIuonwi3To93v2RJnJsRdUArFLNU/edit?usp=sharing
Note: The meeting space is up a flight of stairs.