Calendar

Message From Hiroshima will be released by Cinema Libre Studio on August 4, 2015. However, in light of the upcoming 70th Anniversary of the atomic bombing, Cinema Libre has made the film available in advance to be shown by select non-profit organizations, including American Friends Service Committee.

Synopsis: Narrated by George Takei, Message From Hiroshima provides an inside look at life and culture in the city before the first atomic bomb was deployed. Today, where the Hon and Motoyasu rivers meet, stands the Peace Memorial Park – the former location of the Nakajima district, which once was home to thousands of people and hundreds of businesses. When the atomic bomb was detonated 2,000 feet above Hiroshima’s city center on August 6, 1945, all of that vanished. Seventy years later, director Masaaki Tanabe makes it his mission to revive the memory of what once was by interviewing hibakusha (survivors) and former residents. These heart-wrenching testimonials, along with computer-generated recreations of restaurants, shoe stores, cinemas, and the famous Industrial Promotion Hall, takes us deep into the hustle and bustle of a lost culture and people.

View Trailer: Message From Hiroshima Trailer
52 min. | Japanese, with English subtitles and English narration

Visit the film’s Official Website: http://www.cinemalibrestudio.com/message-from-hiroshima/

Visit the film’s Facebook Page: http://www.facebook/messagefromhiroshima

Attend the 8 am 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing witness at Livermore Labs on August 8th

Lake Merritt is the arena for “Knock Out Oil” on August 1st. Save the date for lively, family-friendly, anti-fracking street theater on the occasion of the statewide Clean Not Extreme Day of Action.

August 1st marks a pivotal moment in the fight to stop fracking and other forms of extreme oil extraction in California. For years, Governor Jerry Brown has refused to even consider ending these toxic practices before the results of an independent scientific study were released. That California Council on Science and Technology report has just come out, and it confirms what we already knew: that fracking and other forms of extreme extraction are indeed dangerous. (Read a recent LA Times editorial citing the study as grounds for a moratorium.)
A state-commissioned environmental impact report (EIR) was also released last week. It found that impacts to air quality, public safety and climate from extreme oil production methods are “significant and unavoidable.”

Fracking, moreover, is an environmental justice issue. It overwhelmingly occurs close to schools that serve predominately Latino populations. More than sixty percent of the 61,612 California children who attend school within one mile of a stimulated well are Latino. Statewide, Latino students are over eighteen percent more likely to attend a school within a mile and a half of a stimulated well than non-Latino students. This is why one Kern County family recently sued Governor Brown in a lawsuit brought by the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, claiming that the new fracking regulations put in place do not protect the health of Latino public school children.

Governor Jerry Brown has run out of excuses.

Sunflower Alliance, in partnership with a statewide alliance of fracktivists, strongly urges you to sign this timely petition to Governor Brown. He needs to hear the voices of the millions of Californians who want an end to fracking and other forms of dangerous extraction NOW.

Take a few seconds to sign the petition to ban fracking and other extreme extraction methods in California. And then come out to Lake Merritt on Saturday, August 1st, to “Knock Out Oil.”

WHEN
August 01, 2015 at 12pm – 3pm
WHERE
Lake Merritt

Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to survivors and victims of violence and police terror in Oakland.

On Sunday August 9th, this will also be one year since the brutal murder of Mike Brown, a black teen, by a police officer in Ferguson. Around the country, events to commemorate Mike Brown and other victims of police terror are scheduled.

We are 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.

In April, it was two years since we started holding these prayer meetings at the Baha’i Center. Come share prayers, quotes, poems, and favorite passages from your scriptures with us. We will serve a simple breakfast.

Folks are spread all over creation, many of us are meetinged out for the week, see you next week at the Omni at 2PM.

Special Ed

The BFUU is embracing the call from our Unitarian Universalists Association to engage in a program about the widening gap in well-being and incomes in the United States. This segment of our related series of study groups will focus on police militarization, its impact on our communities, its relationship to the widening gaps in our society and economy, and what we can do about it. Our guest speaker will be Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb; who will inform us of the latest developments and give us contact information for community involvement.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of UUs
Wheelchair accessible.

Join Slow Food East Bay and Transition Berkeley for an evening delving into the prickly world of fish, fishing and the health of the oceans. We’ll start at 6pm with a potluck dinner (true to Slow Food USA local and sustainable values!) then see the amazing new film about salmon and the northwest, The Breach, at 7. (http://www.thebreachfilm.com)
The evening comes to a point with a short panel of local fisher(wo)men, fish mongers and others involved with keeping this huge part of our ecosystem healthy and in balance and Q&A with local folks involved in the worlds of fishing and the oceans. How can we both support those that make their livelihood from the ocean and the fish populations? How can we be educated and inquisitive consumers of seafood, asking the right questions about sourcing, distribution and health? Join us in the conversation to try to find answers to these questions and more.
Representatives from Slow Food will also talk about the political & gastronomic history of the Slow Food movement, explain the ‘Good Clean & Fair For All’ mission, and announce current projects and opportunities for involvement. For more For more info: info [at] transitionberkeley.com
website: http://www.transitionberkeley.com

This event is co-sponsored by Transition Berkeley, Slow Food East Bay, and BFUU’s Social Justice Ctee.
Wheelchair accessible.

August 8-10: Mark the Anniversary of the Police Murder of Mike Brown and the Heroic Uprising that Followed:
It Was – AND IS – Right to Rebel!!

On August 9, it will be one year since a Ferguson, Missouri, cop, Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown for walking in the middle of the day on a sleepy street. Mike Brown was unarmed, running away, and had his hands up when he was shot multiple times and then his body was left lying dead in the street for four-and-a-half hours.

This brutal murder was met with outrage. For days and then weeks people took to the streets with defiance, rage, and righteous rebellion. People insisted on their rights and defended those rights in the street. Without the rebellion, this terrible state-done murder would just be another rerun of the same old, all-too-familiar story, the same murderous stuff that happens to Black and Latino youths over and over again. Very few people would have shared the grief of his parents for the terrible loss of this young man, at the very beginning of his life. The defiance and righteous rebellion challenged people all over the country to get off the sidelines and stand with those refusing to take this any longer.

It is important that on the weekend of August 8-10, the anniversary of the murder of Michael Brown, people stand firmly and publicly manifest that the verdict rendered by the people, that those who took to the streets of Ferguson in righteous and defiant rebellion and protest night after night, was true – Mike Brown did not have to die. It was right for the people of Ferguson to rebel and people everywhere are proud of them for rising up. On– Mike Brown should not have been murdered by the police.

HANDS UP! DON’T SHOOT! Fuck the DOJ! The struggle in Ferguson opened a crack in the coffin where America has buried alive whole sections of Black and Latino youths and the struggle over the last year has widened the crack further. WE WILL NOT GO BACK.

In Cleveland, Ohio, a delegation of the Party for Socialism and Liberation joined 1000 other attendees at the first ever Movement for Black Lives National Convening. The activists met and engaged with others who are part of the resurgence of the struggle against racist police terror. Then, shortly after the conference ended, a stunning indictment was handed down in Cincinnati, charging a police officer with murder in the death of a Black motorist. This indictment is clearly a result of a powerful country-wide movement. The thousand people gathered in Cleveland said clearly, “Black Lives Matter!”

Join us for presentation, video and discussion of the next steps of this important struggle.

Featured Speaker: Jamier Sale

Tata Vision presents a night of live performances from multi-talented youth from the bay area! Don’t sleep.

Omni Commons is throwing a work party. We welcome volunteers who’d like to work on: – rehanging doors, putting on closers & panic bars – learning how electricity works – laying ethernet cable – fixing other small things around the building All skill levels welcome. We will feed & teach you. If you can, RSVP to volunteers@omnicommons.org. Otherwise, just show up! 

A door is blown off its hinges! Into a blasted room of scarred walls and shattered windows, armed with M-16’s, America’s bravest duck and dodge for cover, finally training their deadly gunsights on… an old black man watching TV on his couch? This isn’t Baghdad or Kandahar – its home, and for ex-Black Panther Malcolm Haywood it’s just another wrong door police raid in the War on Drugs. So of course Malcolm is horrified when the grandson he’s tried to protect, Nathaniel, returns from serving in Afghanistan only to find another war zone at home – and one where young Black men like Nathaniel are in the crosshairs! Meanwhile the Mayor and the Police Chief – one desperate for votes, the other desperate to fund his militarized police force – ramp up the fear (and their shiny new tank) to fight the newest, drug threat to America… worse than weed, meth, coke, crack, or crank, it’s… SNORF!! And, of course, the SNORF trade is centered in the.. darkest… part of town…

Are the police out of control? What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? Is Malcolm’s neighbor Lluis (an undocumented immigrant,) actually a SNORF-lord? And can Malcolm convince his grandson that it is safer to re-up and fight overseas than to try to survive here at home, in Freedomland?

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

“Dangerous Circumstances:”
The CFR Proposes a New Grand Strategy Towards China

“…preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century.”
Background: The CFR and its Grand Strategy China Report: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the think tank of monopoly-finance capital, Wall Street’s think tank. It is also a membership organization: the ultimate networking, socializing, strategic planning and consensus forming institution of the dominant sector of the U.S. capitalist class. The CFR’s activities help unite the capitalist class to become not just a class in itself, but also a class for itself. It is the world’s most powerful private organization, the “high command” body of the American plutocracy. The Council has an almost century long history of forming study groups to plan America’s overall “grand” strategic policies. It sets the agenda for debate, builds consensus among both the powerful and attentive publics, then inserts its own network of people into public office to implement its favored doctrines in the real world. One of its latest efforts, a study group on U.S. grand strategy toward China, completed its work and issued a report– approved by the CFR board of directors–entitled Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, in March of 2015. This report used the term “dangerous circumstances” to describe the growing tensions between the world’s most powerful two nations.
Laurence H. Shoup will outline the CFR’s worldview, their critique of current U.S. policy toward China, their view of China’s grand strategy, what they think U.S. grand strategy should be, a critique of this CFR report, and the eco-socialist revolution that we now need.
Laurence H. Shoup is author of Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics 1976-2014 (forthcoming, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015).

Sunday, August 9, 2015 – 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
6501 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland (just North of Alcatraz Ave.)

Seating is limited, so plan to come early. We start promptly.
FREE – but hat will be passed for donations to NPML

About Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
A weekly discussion series inspired by our respect for the work of Karl Marx and our belief that his work will remain as important for the class struggles of the future as they have been for the past.

For info or to subscribe to our weekly announcements,
Call Gene Ruyle at 510-332-3865 or email: cuyleruyle [at] mac.com
For our full schedule, go to icssmarx.org
https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2015/07/27/icss-fly-2015-08-09-cfr-china-1.pdf

Across the country, on this day, many will take time to pause in remembrance of Mike Brown and the movement his murder sparked in Ferguson and across the country.

Join us in Oscar Grant Plaza as we take time to remember Mike Brown and all of our fallen.

Bring items for an altar, bring poems and songs to share. Bring your passion and commitment to continue the struggle to end police terror in our communities.

We invite you to join us on Sunday, August 9th at the Omni Commons. We are assembling a Volunteer Design & Facilitation Team that will plan and steward a collective visioning and planning process with all of Omni Commons. This future process, which we are calling BECOMING OMNI COMMONS, will seek to:

* expand and transform our collective sense of possibility
* clarify our shared values
* examine our cultures, narratives and processes
* create priorities to move towards more sustainable and supportive ways of being together and being in the world
* design an action-calendar for our visioning and planning process

A plan for BECOMING OMNI COMMONS will be presented to the Omni Commons delegates council (our governance body) and actualized as soon as possible.

The details:
Who: You! Anyone interested in joining our Volunteer Design & Facilitation Team (described above)
What: A fun four-hour facilitated, preparatory meeting, followed by DINNER!
Where: Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA 94609 (and possibly on-line if you cannot be physically present)
When: Sunday Aug 9th 2pm-6pm (you must arrive on-time and stay for the entire session)
Why:
Given our present circumstances:
* We are in a serious financial pickle right now.
* We have an opportunity to potentially buy the building very soon.
* We are struggling with interpersonal conflict, overwork, and burnout.
* We have never had the opportunity to engage in a visioning process since moving into 4799 Shattuck a year ago.
We need to:
* Reform our processes to be inclusive of as many perspectives as possible.
* Align our work and our organizing with our ideals and our politics.
* Provide a safe platform for constructive criticism and reflection.
* Invest openness, patience and respect for the diversity of perspectives and experiences of all of those who have been involved or impacted by Omni Commons in some way or another.
How: If you’d like to join the team and can attend the meeting, RSVP to becoming@lists.omnicommons.org and share any important requests or dietary needs.

RSVP to becoming@lists.omnicommons.org

If you cannot make it and would like to participate, please fill out this survey by August 2nd: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BXGHX2N

Love and solidarity,
Laura Turiano, Yar Cohen, Sarah Pritchard, Julio Rios, Dusty Mabry, Matt Senate, Joe Liesner, Libbie Cohn

“The Fresh Juice Party rose to stardom nearly a year and a half ago when they roasted President Obama, with a song in support of Bradley Manning, at one of his fundraisers in San Francisco. The protest elicited a high-profile response including one from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show.” ”

Come learn about continuing developments in the battle save the Berkeley Post Office and the Postal Service from privatization, support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.

The postal service wanted to sell the post office to Hudson-Mcdonald, a local developer. The City of Berkeley sued the post office to stop the sale. Hudson-Mcdonald backed out of the deal in early December.

Federal Judge William Alsup decided to dismiss the lawsuit in April because the Postal Service says it is not currently selling the building.  But we’re not fooled. The Postal Service could “find” a buyer at any moment. Fortunately, the Judge ordered the Postal Service to provide 42 days notice before any sale, so that the lawsuit could be refiled.

Check out the Community Garden at the Post Office.

In the latest developments, Berkeley has Declared War on Its Homeless, and an ordinance criminalizing the homeless came before the City Council on June 30th (see here and here) but was tabled until September.

Also check out our website and the Save the Berkeley Post Office website, and First they Came for the Homeless Facebook for updates.

BPOD is an offshoot of Strike Debt Bay Area, which itself is an offshoot of Occupy Oakland and a chapter of the national Strike Debt movement, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.