Calendar

9896
Mar
6
Wed
Film Showing: What is Democracy? by Astra Taylor at the Grand Lake @ Grand Lake Theater
Mar 6 @ 7:15 pm – 9:15 pm

What is Democracy?

Grand Lake Theater

One Night Only!

Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Main auditorium at 7:15pm

Astra Taylor in person with philosopher Wendy Brown, moderator Anasuya Sengupta and other special guests

Coming at a moment of profound political and social crisis, What Is Democracy? reflects on a word we too often take for granted.

Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey spans millennia and continents: from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its racist past and the growing gap between rich and poor.

Featuring a diverse cast—including celebrated theorists, trauma surgeons, activists, factory workers, asylum seekers, and former prime ministers—this urgent film connects the past and the present, the emotional and the intellectual, the personal and the political, in order to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.

Taylor was active in the Occupy Movement and was the co-editor of Occupy!: An OWS-Inspired Gazette with Sarah Leonard of Dissent magazine and Keith Gessen of n+1.[18] The broadsheet covered Occupy Wall Street in five issues over the course of the first year of the occupation and was later anthologized by Verso Books

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Mar
7
Thu
Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission – Automated License Plate Readers, Etc @ Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 1
Mar 7 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Agenda:

4. 5:15pm: UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic – presentation of draft Privacy Principles; review and take possible action.
5. 5:30pm: Federal Task Force Transparency Ordinance – OPD – presentation of inaugural annual reports (FBI/JTTF, ATF, DEA, US Marshals task forces), review and take possible action.
6. 5:45pm: Presentation by Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maas – use and risks of Automated License Plate Readers
7. 6:00pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – DOT – Automated License Plate Reader Anticipated Impact Report and draft Use Policy – review and take possible action.
8. 6:30pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Automated License Plate Reader Anticipated Impact Report and draft Use Policy – review and take possible action.
9. 6:50pm: Review of Old Business and take possible action

65837
Rodeo Town Hall on Refinery Expansion @ Rodeo Hills Elementary School
Mar 7 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Refinery corridor residents and allies are busy organizing a community forum on Phillips 66’s very dangerous plans to expand tar sands refining at its Rodeo facility.  Increased use of tar sands in the P66 crude slate means vastly increased tanker traffic in the Bay, an increased risk of spills, and increased assaults on community health and our worsening climate.  This town hall is an opportunity to learn about the two linked P66 proposals—the first Environmental Impact Report drops soon—and what we can do to stop them.

Please come out to listen, learn, and offer support to impacted community residents.

Food and beverage provided!

Confirmed speakers:

Andres Soto, Communities for a Better Environment
Pennie Opal Plant [and or Alison Ehara Brown], Idle No More SF Bay
LaDonna Williams, All Positives Possible and Fresh Air Vallejo
Janice Kirsch, MD, 350 Bay Area
Janet Pygeorge, President, Rodeo Citizens Association
Greg Karris, Senior Scientist, Communities for a Better Environment

Sponsored by:

Rodeo Citizens Association, Crockett-Rodeo United to Defend the Environment, Fresh Air Vallejo, Sunflower Alliance, 350 Bay Area, Idle No More SF Bay, Communities for a Better Environment, and Stand.earth.

Watch Online: Visit facebook.com/standearth at 6:00 PM PST on Thursday, March 7th.

RSVP:  action@sunflower-alliance.org

 

 

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Author Event: Positions of the Sun. The Financial Crisis, Neoliberalism, and Counter-Movements. @ Mrs. Dalloways
Mar 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

The mid-2000s financial “crisis,” the spread of neoliberalism, and attempts by activists and artists to counter it.

Lyn Hejinian, with Trisha Low and Noah Warren

Celebrating the publication of Hejinian’s Positions of the Sun.

To reserve your seat, please purchase a copy of Positions of the Sun in advance at Mrs. Dalloway’s or by speaking to one of our booksellers.

Positions of the Sun is a sometimes melancholy, sometimes militant cross-genre experiment, combining elements of (largely non-narrative) fiction, with those of local journalism, and of cultural and literary criticism. Its twenty-six interlocking “essays with characters” (plus a “Coda”) explore the mid-2000s financial “crisis,” the spread of neoliberalism, and attempts by activists and artists to counter it, through the movements and daily lives of a wide-ranging cast of characters located in the Bay Area. In Positions, Hejinian plays the bricoleur, bringing together whatever’s needed in her approach to the subject, whether it’s the paratactic tactics of poetry, scholarship’s critical patchwork, or characters set in time that evokes but frustrates narrative. Positions of the Sun is the second work in Belladonna*’s Germinal Texts Series, which seeks to trace feminist avant-garde histories and the poetic lineages they produce.

Lyn Hejinian teaches at UC Berkeley, where her academic work is addressed principally to modernist, postmodern, and contemporary poetry and poetics, with a particular interest in avant-garde movements and the social practices they entail. She is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry and critical prose, the most recent of which is Positions of the Sun. Her poetic trilogy Tribunal will publish later this year. The recipient of various awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is co-director (with Travis Ortiz) of Atelos, a literary project commissioning and publishing cross-genre work by poets, and co-editor (with Jane Gregory and Claire Marie Stancek) of Nion Editions.

Trisha Low is a poet and performer living in the East Bay. She is the author of The Compleat Purge and the forthcoming Socialist Realism.

Noah Warren is the author of The Destroyer in the Glass, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. A former Stegner Fellow, his work appears in The Paris Review, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, New England Review, PEN America, and elsewhere. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at UC Berkeley.

65734
Green New Deal: A Bold New Solution Or Sustainable Snake Oil for a Green American Empire @ Revolution Books
Mar 7 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Discuss & Debate
The Green New Deal:
A Bold New Solution
Or
Sustainable Snake Oil for a Green American Empire

Read The New Green Deal https://revcom.us/a/581/the-green-new-deal-sustainable-snake-oil-for-a-green-american-empire-en.html

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Speaker: Ahmed Abu Artema, of the Gaza Great March of Return @ St. Johns Presbyterian Church
Mar 7 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

The Middle East Children’s Alliance & The American Friends Service Committee present Palestinian journalist and refugee, Ahmed Abu Artema –one of the original organizers of the Gaza Great March of Return. He will speak about his experience, the future of nonviolent actions in Palestine, and his vision for a just and lasting peace. He advocates for restoration of Palestinian rights, and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, and more.

Ahmed will be joined by Jehad Abusalim, a Chicago-based activist/scholar from Gaza and AFSC Program Associate. This event is part of AFSC’s national speaking tour, “Hashtag to Headlines: How the Gaza Great March of Return Challenged the World”!!

Cosponsored by St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Mission & Justice Committee

Benefit for projects in Gaza

65850
Mar
8
Fri
WOMEN’S STRIKE SPEAK OUT @ Oscar Grant Plaza
Mar 8 @ 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm

International Women’s Strike Speak Out – which protests gender violence, racism & imperialism – takes place  at Oscar Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland.  For details, visit facebook ‘international women’s strike Bay Area’ or email gabrielawomen@gmail.com

65820
Hear German Anti-Coal Direct-Action Activists @ Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics
Mar 8 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Hear climate organizers with the German anti-coal direct action group Ende Gelande discuss their epic campaign to stop the coal mines of the Rhineland region and protect the Hambach Forest.

Brought to you by your friends and comrades at Diablo Rising Tide.

Over the last ten years, a strong and diverse radical climate justice movement has been growing in Germany, founded on principles of frontline struggles, mass mobilization, direct action, and cooperation across organizational and tactical differences.

The last few years saw the emergence of “Ende Gelände” mass mobilizations for civil disobedience; 6,000 people collectively blocked coal infrastructure last fall. Wearing their emblematic white overalls, demonstrators invaded mining pits, danced in front of the diggers, slept on the railways, and provoked pictures that have raised attention globally by exposing the dirty truth behind the official tale of the German energy transition “Energiewende” and making the connection between climate chaos and capitalism.

Info/RSVP

More info on Ende Gelande here

65689
Mar
9
Sat
International Women’s Day Programming on KPFA @ on KPFA radio, 94.1 FM
Mar 9 all-day

Tune in all day for music,culture and her-stories celebrating the courage, creativity and contributions of some of themost vulnerable and some of the most powerful women on the planet.

65825
International Working Women’s Day March & Festival @ Fruitvale Village
Mar 9 @ 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

Members of GABRIELA Oakland and our allies invite you to join us for a Rally, March & Festival to commemorate the 111th International Working Women’s Day anniversary in honor of the first women strikers in 1908. Join us as we RISE, RESIST, and UNITE to build our collective Resistance here and abroad!

Let us take the streets as we RISE up and say NO to violence against women and Trans people and RESIST militarization and state violence!

Let us RISE to protect women, Trans and Gender non-conforming people, and our children!
Let us RESIST economic exploitation of our women!
Let us UNITE for the self-determination of all oppressed people to fight for their basic rights and livelihood!

*Note* This will be a family friendly march and celebration that will be accessible for children, elders, and people with disabilities. We will also be organizing our own community safety/security team.

Please email gabrielaoakland2018@gmail.com or send us a FB message if you or your organization would like to sponsor or endorse the march.

65720
Immigration Emergency: In Defense & Defiance – Opening Reception and Live Printing @ Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Mar 9 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
sm_immigration-emergency-show.jpg San Francisco Poster Syndicate, a poster artists collective based in San Francisco, will silkscreen prints live during the opening reception to celebrate the new OACC exhibition, Immigration Emergency: In Defense & Defiance. More than 30 local artists produce powerful artworks in response to the Muslim Ban, DACA, proposed changes to the Public Charge Rule, Sanctuary Cities, ICE raids and detention, family separations, the fake border emergency and Trump’s wall, the 2020 Census, the revoking of Temporary Protected Status, and the rise of deportations of Southeast Asians.
Co-presented by the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and San Francisco Poster Syndicate.
http://oacc.cc/iddep/
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/opening-reception-of-immigration-emergency-in-defense-defiance-tickets-57429079924
65811
Creativity Unhoused – Opening Reception. Art By and About the Unhoused. @ Expressions Gallery
Mar 9 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

No photo description available.

65797
Mar
10
Sun
Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It @ Solidarity Center
Mar 10 @ 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Join us to talk about this important topic. We will have a couple of short presentations, and then open the floor for discussion.

Among the readings we will refer to are:
– Leon Trotsky’s “FASCISM: What It Is and How To Fight It”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm

– Sweezy on the Rise of Fascism – A synopsis by Fabian Van Onzen, including Paul Sweezy, Georgi Dimitrov, and Samir Amin
https://portside.org/2019-02-23/sweezy-rise-fascism
– George Jackson

Readings not required to attend.
Refreshments will be served.
The space is wheelchair accessible.
No cost, but donations are always welcome.
To get in the building, dial 411, or scroll for Solidarity Center on the intercom at the outside entrance.

65851
Film Screening: “Resistance at Tule Lake” @ Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Mar 10 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
tule_lake-poster-300w.jpg Oakland Asian Cultural Center presents Resistance At Tule Lake, a film that overturns the myth of Japanese Americans as obedient government collaborators during their WWII incarceration. Konrad Aderer’s seminal film reveals the long-marginalized story of Tule Lake Segregation Center, the overcrowded, highly-militarized concentration camp where over 12,000 Japanese Americans were demonized and punished for speaking out against the injustice of their incarceration.

“Resistance at Tule Lake” is a potent piece of history at a time when the United States is once again feeling less than hospitable. — The New York Times.

A panel of 3 distinguished Japanese American community leaders will introduce Tule Lake’s history and its relevance to current times before the screening and entertain questions afterwards.

They are: Hiroshi Hashiwagi (age 97), Tule Lake dissident and playwright whose narration is featured in the film; Chizuko Omori (age 88), producer of the acclaimed film about the incarceration, Rabbit in the Moon, and member of Nikkei Resisters; and John Ota, activist in the campaign for the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and retired attorney.

Please join us for an insightful and inspiring afternoon.

65812
Green Sunday: Shelter Now! Alternatives to the Housing Crisis @ Niebyl Proctor Library
Mar 10 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Shelter Now! Alternatives to the Housing Crisis

The Green Party of Alameda County welcomes Clark Sullivan and Mary Behm-Steinberg to discuss alternative solutions to the housing crisis in the Bay Area. As rental costs increase across the city and climate change devastates Northern California regions, and as the Berkeley City Council recently passed overnight bans against RV dwellers, particularly at the Berkeley Marina — our panelists offer their unique experiences fighting for the rights of unhoused residents and low-income homeowners facing eviction and displacement, and offer next-step solutions on building solidarity against developers and their political interests.

Clark Sullivan is a revolutionary anarchist who has been organizing many successful social movements for nearly a half-century ranging from homelessness, the environment and AIDS to worker’s rights, anti-apartheid and peace. A Renaissance man, who is skilled in many disciplines such as: pharmacology, journalism, information technology and political science, Clark currently mentors young people seeking to radically change the status quo.

Mary Behm-Steinberg is an activist and former candidate for Berkeley City Council (District 1). Her experience ranges from running a small business and tenant as well as worker-oriented housing solutions. As indicated in a Berkeleyside article, Mary argues, “the biggest challenges that Berkeley faces now and in the foreseeable future” is “preserving diversity” while ending “homelessness in the city.”

65828
NOT HAPPENING: Liberated Lens film night: “No Choice” @ Omni Commons
Mar 10 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

No additional information yet.

65754
Party for 31 years of Slingshot newspaper publishing @ Longhaul
Mar 10 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Slingshot turns 31 years old – 1988 – 2019

Meet authors from the last 31 years, learn how you can get involved in Slingshot for the next 31 years, look at a display of back issues.

plus (as always) Vegan chocolate cake, zany free raffle for door prizes, get copies of issue #128 of the paper, maybe snacks, maybe music

sm_31st_flier.jpg
65813
Screening of ‘Sara’ @ Tamarack Oakland
Mar 10 @ 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm

“They cut my breasts in torture, I didn’t even say “ah”,
The prevalent mindset is that if a woman knows justice, to cut her breasts
I am embarrassed to even say “ah” as a militant of a justified cause. ”

Sakine Cansız (Sara)

Sara was born in Dersim in 1958 as the daughter of an Alevi family. She was one of the founding members of the PKK, a political activist and feminist known by the codename “Sara” in the organization. She was among the founders of the PKK and was one of the five people who lived and worked in the organization until 2013, and she was the only woman among the founders of the PKK who continued her activities in the organization. She was imprisoned for twenty years in Diyarbakır No 5 Prison. She was one of the PKK’s representatives for Europe. On January 9, 2013, while with Fidan Dogan (code name Rojbin) and Leyla Şaylemez (codenamed Ronahi), the representatives of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), she was shot in the head by a silenced weapon at the Kurdistan Information Bureau near the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, France.

Cansız, who described her life in her book “My Life Was Always A Struggle”, did not stop at the prisons where she stayed. All her life she has resisted and struggled.

The stories of these women did not end with the massacre of the revolutionary women’s resistance leaders in Paris. Today in Rojava, in Kurdistan and in many parts of the world there are thousands of Saras, Rojbins and Ronahis.

We are not over the fight and will not end; until women and life are free …

Jin Jiyan Azadi

65862
Mar
11
Mon
Public Banking Press Conference @ Old Mint
Mar 11 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am

CA legislators to announce new bill

The fight for socially and environmentally responsible public banking in California is about to level up!

On Monday morning, March 11, state legislators will unveil a new bill to advance public banking in California. The California Public Banking Alliance, of which we are a member, will be holding press conferences in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The call is going out to all Bay Area allies of public banking to show up in force at the San Francisco Mint at 10am Monday. Wear your public banking t-shirt if you’ve got one. We are going up against the powerful forces of Wall Street, the California Bankers Association, and their massive financial arsenal. We can win, but we need your help! Invite your friends and join us at the launch of a new campaign for public banking in California!

65854
Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission – Special Meeting re ALPR Policy @ Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 2
Mar 11 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

A Special Meeting of the PAC has been called  in Hearing Room 2 at City Hall to continue conversation and take action on the Department of Transportation’s Automated License Plate Reader Policy and the Oakland Police Department’s Automated License Plate Reader Policies.

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