Introduction of joint resolution by District 2 Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas, District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor, District 1 Councilmember Dan Kalb, and City Councilmember At-Large Rebecca Kaplan in support of State Assembly Bill 392, which just passed out of the State Public Safety Committee on April 9.

Confirmed speakers include Cat Brooks, Anti Police-Terror Project; Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, Love Not Blood Campaign; Attorney John Burris; Attorney Dan Siegel, APTP; and Jose Pavon of CURYJ.

The Oakland City Council Rules Committee meets right after this press conference at 10:45. This proposed resolution will be brought before that committee.

APTP is also looking into introducing a similar control on OPD’s use of force as a city ordinance.

“AB 392 is known as the California Act to Save Lives because it seeks to strengthen the rules for police use of force, particularly deadly force. The current legal standard on police use of force was written in 1872 and allows police to shoot and kill an individual whenever it is considered “justified.” According to a fact sheet from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California, the current legal standard not only “fails to include best practices but authorizes deadly force that would violate the U.S. constitution.”

“Furthermore, according to the ACLU, Alliance for Boys and Men of Color with PolicyLink, Anti Police-Terror Project, Black Lives Matter – California, the California Faculty Association, and PICO of California, among others, police kill people at a rate 37% higher in California than the national average, and in 2017, California police officers killed 172 people, half of whom were unarmed. Presently, police kill more people in California than in any other state with three out of four of those people being people of color. Black people are three times more likely to be victims of police violence.”

“The controversy surrounding the recent shooting death of a sleeping homeless man in Oakland illustrates our urgent duty to follow through on amending the Oakland Police Department’s use of force policy and fully supporting our independent Police Commission in doing this necessary work.”

Time to Move Beyond Income – For the first time in history the US was included in the worldwide effort to redefine extreme poverty.

For the first time in history the United States was included in the worldwide effort to redefine extreme poverty. Speakers include: Jessica Bartholow, Western Center on Law and Poverty, Maryann Broxton, US Coordinator MAP Research, Boston, Guillaume Charvon, US Coordinator for the MAP research/NY Leadership Team and the St. Mary’s Center Senior Advocates for Hope and Justice.

Feature documentary film, directed by Michael M. Conti, produced with Heather Boyle (USA) 70 minutes. “The Unruly Mystic: John Muir” explores the remarkable life and influential works of a patron saint of environmental activism. The film discusses the connection nature and spirituality, using the life and wisdom of John Muir, ecological preservationist and founder of Yosemite National Park, as a catalyst for how being outside in nature affects the lives of everyday people right now. John Muir played many roles in his life: mystic, prophet, author, poet, conservationist, radical, all of which helped him succeed in his role as an advocate for Nature.  As America’s most famous naturalist and conservationist, Muir fought to protect the wild places he loved, places we can still visit today. Muir’s writings have profoundly shaped the ways in which we understand and envision our relationship with the natural world today, and his work has become a personal guide into the natural world for countless individuals. The film interviews noted psychiatrists, therapists, theologians, writers, and every day people and asks them to discuss their relationship with nature, and its transformative effect in their lives.

COURT SUPPORT! needed tmrw, Friday
Union Point camp has a case management hearing
10am
SF Fed Bldg
450 Golden Gate Ave
Room 6
Let's keep up the pressure

— Anti Police-Terror (@APTPaction) April 18, 2019

Key community representatives will come together to discuss urgent immigration issues that are threatening our most vulnerable communities. Drawing on diverse backgrounds, the panelists will share their expertise and perspectives on a range of issue-areas affected by recent anti-immigration policies. Learn how each of us can effectively defend our communities and defy anti-immigration policies and attitudes. Confirmed panelists include Catherine Tactaquin, (Executive Director, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights), Martha Ockenfels-Martinez (Researcher, Human Impact Partners), and Lara Kiswani (Executive Director, Arab Resource & Organizing Center). Moderated by Eddie Yuen.

Co-presented by the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and San Francisco Poster Syndicate.

RSVP Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/defend-defy-a-community-panel-discussion-tickets-59140288194

Berkeley Earth Day is an exciting day of inspiring, life changing fun!

Berkeley Earth Day brings the Bay Area environmental community together to celebrate our vision for a sustainable future. Get inspired and connect with eco-minded comrades and learn how you can further reduce your impact on the planet and have fun doing it! This event features dozens of vendors sharing their eco-friendly products and epic activism. Hear educational and inspirational talks from experts, activists, enjoy delicious sustainable food, films and more! Compassionate Living, a non-profit organization based in the Bay Area, is proud to be the sponsor of this event.

Join us for inspiring speakers, crafts, activism, veggie food, dozens of eco-vendors and much more!  

Berkeley Earth Day is excited to host the Wild & Scenic Film Fest. One of the nation’s premier environmental and adventure film festivals, The Wild & Scenic Film Festival is a collection of films from The South Yuba River Citizens League’s annual film festival which is now in its 16th year. Wild & Scenic focuses on films which speak to the environmental concerns and celebrations of our planet. These Films showcase frontline activism and stunning cinematography. Tickets for the FilmFest are sold separately.

THIS EVENT IS PRESENTED BY

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.

Who stands to benefit from the Green New Deal? What’s at stake?

Join us after the Sierra Club Green New Deal Town Hall to socialize and discuss about how the Green New Deal is the biggest opportunity of our lifetime to invest in the American people, and what that looks like for us.

BART Meeting Agenda Entry:

A. Surveillance Policy: Automated License Plate Readers.*
a. Surveillance Use Policy.
b. Surveillance Impact Report.
Board requested to authorize.

BART will be considering policies for ALPR usage at all BART Stations.  Their proposal is to eventually install these mass surveillance devices at all BART stations across the Bay Area that have parking facilities.

Meeting agenda is here (Item 6)

Proposed policy and impact report are here

More info here

Join us as we toast our progress so far on A PLACE TO BREATHE – a film that tells the stories of immigrant and refugee health care providers and clients in Oakland, CA and Lowell, MA. The film explores culturally responsive integrative models in health care, following individuals and families from Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, Congo, and Cambodia.

Enjoy a special work-in-progress fundraising screening and meet the filmmakers and key players at Street Level Health Project, one of the clinics featured in the film.

Click here to watch a five minute introduction to the film.

Learn how your financial contribution can make a difference in raising awareness, expanding definitions of wellness, and supporting cross-pollination of best practices of culturally responsive, trauma-informed care. We look forward to welcoming you into our community, and hope also that you will utilize your own potential for advocacy whether as patients, providers, or community members.

6:30 pm: Reception*
7:15 pm: Filmmaker’s Introduction
7:30 pm: Work-in-Progress Screening
8:00 pm: Filmmaker Q&A

*Enjoy delicious fresh authentic Mexo-Californio cuisine from Oakland’s own Cocina Del Corazon, while quenching your thirst with wines from Dashe Cellars, and Oakland-brewed Old Kan Beer.

Not able to attend the event? Click here to support the completion of the film and the important work that Street Level Health Project provides to the Bay Area community. Donations are tax deductible.

About the Film:
A PLACE TO BREATHE weaves together immigrant and refugee stories anchored in two public health centers – Street Level Health Project in Oakland, California and Metta Health Center (a refugee-focused branch of Lowell Community Health Center) in Lowell, Massachusetts. Each has its own approach to “Whole Community” health care, which embraces the prominent role that communities play in creating diverse paths to wellbeing. The stories portrayed in our film provide powerful insight into how the current political climate impacts individuals as the uncertainty of immigration policy intersects with the future of healthcare. Yet it is the ways that communities move forward in spite of these threats, and the coping mechanisms that they develop, that are at the center of A PLACE TO BREATHE.

About the Filmmakers:
Michelle Grace Steinberg (Producer/Director) combines her sensibilities as a filmmaker and health care provider in her current film, A PLACE TO BREATHE (release date 2019), presented by her production company, Underexposed Films. Her previous films have aired on national public television, screened in a dozen film festivals internationally, and have been used as university curriculum. Michelle is also a nutritionist and herbalist at Street Level Health Project in Oakland, CA, where she works integratively with medical and mental health practitioners to provide free culturally responsive care to uninsured communities.

Robyn Bykofsky (Producer) is a filmmaker and educator who has spent 20 years teaching media and film production in underrepresented and misrepresented communities. In addition, she has designed sound for independent films that have screened at film festivals around the globe and was staff sound engineer at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Robyn received her BA in audio and video production from San Francisco State University and holds a Masters in Education with a focus in technology from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

About Street Level Health Project:
Street Level Health Project (SLHP) is an Oakland-based community center dedicated to improving the wellbeing of underinsured, uninsured, and recently arrived immigrants in Alameda County. The organization promotes self-sufficiency for marginalized people of color by creating equitable and dignified access to health and employment regardless of socioeconomic or immigration status. SLHP engages community in constructing collective power and leadership in order to advance a more just, inclusive, and empathetic society.

Accessibility: NPML is ADA accessible.

The next monthly potluck and (free!) movie night at the Bobby Bowens Progressive Center will feature The Hemp Revolution:

6:30pm potluck and socializing
7-9:30pm screening and discussion

Join us for the HEMP REVOLUTION, a film that examines the history of hemp’s criminalization and the interests behind it.

A more durable fibre than thirsty cotton for making textiles. A sustainable crop requiring almost no pesticide to thrive, making farming a cleaner process for the environment. A higher quality material than wood pulp for paper making. A non-polluting fuel, providing a cleaner energy production than via petroleum. The medicinal qualities have been used for thousands of years. The list goes on.

America went from a country which produced vast quantities of the non-narcotic crop, to the complete ban on hemp production upon the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Why has a powerful plant that provides so many human needs been much condemned for decades? Grown properly, this can be a great plant to save the planet! Join us and investigate the controversy and confusion between industrial hemp and medical marijuana.

This is a free monthly event at BBPC that falls on the last Thursday each month. Mark your calendar for upcoming films:

May 30 – The One Percent
June 27 – Flow: for Love of Water

POSTPONED. NOT HAPPENING THIS DAY.

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents:

MAX BLUMENTHAL

“The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State

  Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump”

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

“Max Blumenthal has spent the last decade transforming himself into one of the

most vital voices in journalism today, always speaking truth to power

with fearlessness and integrity.”—Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

“The Management of Savagery” excavates the real story behind America’s dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America’s imperial designs. Washington’s secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including  Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the post–Cold War age. Trump’s dealings in the Middle East are likely only to exacerbate the situation.

Blumenthal’s book is a damning indictment of the bipartisan national security    consensus and warning of its present danger to democracy.

“Max Blumenthal audaciously takes in-your-face, on-the-ground journalism into the realm of   geopolitics.” —Juan Cole, author,The New Arabs and Engaging the Muslim World

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in the New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Huffington Postand Salon, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is Senior Editor of AlterNet’s Grayzone Project and the author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which won the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book Award, the New York Time’s bestseller Republican Gomorrah: Inside  the Movement that Shattered the Party, and The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza.      

Host Nora Barrows-Friedman is a journalist, Electronic Intifada Associate Editor, autho of In Our Power: U.S. Students Organize for Justice in Palestine, and frequent KPFA Flashpoints’ guest.