Calendar

9896
Feb
22
Fri
Strike Ready! Strategy Session for Community Organizations @ Greenlining Institute
Feb 22 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Community organizations: Want to know how to support the Oakland teachers’ strike?

Come learn and strategize around how your organization can help teachers, parents, and students fighting for the public education system all Oakland students deserve. The more that our organizations show up, the more powerful (and quick!) the strike will be.

Hosted by Bay Rising, EBASE, Parent Voices Oakland, Oakland Rising, and the Oakland Education Association.

We stand with Oakland teachers! #StrikeReady #Unite4OaklandKids

65686
Puzzles for Justice @ ACCE
Feb 22 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Love jigsaw puzzles?
Hate white supremacy?
Want to #MoveInSolidarity with #BlackSolidarityWeek?

Join us at the ACCE office in Oakland for two hours of solving puzzles to raise money for the Black Solidarity Fund, a project of Community READY Corps.

We’ll have 2500 pieces worth of puzzles and 2 hours to put together as many pieces as possible. People who want to donate to the drive will pledge a certain amount of money per piece solved*. For example, if a donor pledges to give 2 cents per piece, and we manage to complete 1500 pieces worth of puzzles, that person would donate 1500 * 2 cents = $30.

You can help out by showing up to the event as a participant and helping us solve puzzles, or by pledging to donate.

For donors, sign up to donate here: https://puzzlesforjustice.typeform.com/to/jVMVJO
and we’ll send you the total amount to donate once the event is over and we know how many pieces we managed to solve.

For participants, we’ll have food and snacks and a chance to have fun with fellow justice-minded puzzle solvers.

Solve puzzles! Sign up to donate! Fight racism! Invite your friends!

65604
Feb
23
Sat
RESILIENCY FAIR featuring the REPAIR CAFE @ Berkeley Adult School
Feb 23 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Become more resilient!
Learn about emergency preparedness, renewable energy, personal health & well-being, how to fix things & reduce waste, grow & share food, help our natural habitat thrive, plus so much more at the Resiliency Fair!

Don’t send your broken item to the trash – bring it to the Repair Cafe!  Come to this gathering where community members help each other repair what’s broken.  This event is free and intended to empower us to repair.  It is not a free drop-off repair service.

Calling Volunteers! Are you handy with repair? Or do you enjoy hosting? Join this fun and empowering event! Click here to be a volunteer fixer or host!

What type of items can be fixed?
All kinds of household items including – lamps, clothing, toys, furniture, electronics, appliances and bicycles, jewelry … pretty much anything that can be carried through the door. Bring one or two items you would most like to bring back to life and we’ll help you fix one of them!

A cafe will offer refreshments during the event by MLK Middle School as a fundraising effort for their Washington D.C. trip.

This event is organized by Transition Berkeley, with funding from StopWaste. It is co-sponsored and supported by The Culture of Repair Project, the Berkeley Adult School, the Berkeley Times and the Ecology Center.

65605
Film Screening: “1948: Creation and Catastrophe” @ The Way Christian Center
Feb 23 @ 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Through riveting and moving personal recollections of both Israelis and Palestinians, the film reveals the shocking events of the most pivotal year of the ongoing tragedy. It tells the story of the establishment of Israel as seen through the eyes of the people who lived it. This film is your chance to make sense of what is happening in Israel-Palestine today. Co-sponsored by The Way Christian Center, NorCal Sabeel and Jewish Voice For Peace-Bay Area.

Facebook

65717
Feb
24
Sun
Visionaries: Indigenous Organizers Protecting Land @ Oakstop
Feb 24 @ 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Come listen to, learn from, and be inspired by the visionaries who have been organizing at the forefront of indigenous peoples’ fights to protect people, the planet and what is sacred — from Ohlone territories in Oakland, to Standing Rock, to Bayou Bridge.

SPEAKERS

Corrina Gould, spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone, co-founder  of Indian People Organizing for Change, and co-founder of the Native-women-led Sogorea Te Land Trust.. In 2011 she helped lead a 109-day occupation of the Sogorea Te sacred site in Vallejo.

Mark k. Tilsen is an Oglala Lakota Poet Educator from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He served as direct action trainer and police liaison at Standing Rock. He recently spent six months at L’eau est La Vie Camp helping fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.

Wahleah Johns, a tribal member of the Navajo Nation, is  founder and director of Native Renewables, a dynamic company focusing on solar energy in Native American communities. For 15 years she has been working on campaigns around water protection, environmental justice, and community economic development.

Childcare will be available (please RSVP to childcare@collectiveliberation.org by Tuesday the 19th)
We will be providing projected live transcription (CART)
This event is fully wheelchair accessible.
We will be livestreaming this event from the Facebook event page.
Please email us at accessibility@collectiveliberation.org by Tuesday, Feb 19th, to request language translation or with other access needs.
This will be a reduced-scent space and there will be a fragrance-free seating area.

The event will also be live-streamed on Facebook.
Hosted by the Catalyst Project.

 

Info/RSVP

65650
Free Dinner and a Movie Discussion Night – Oakland Greens @ It's Your Move Games
Feb 24 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
The Oakland Greens 2019 FREE Dinner and a Movie discussion series.

As usual, the doors at the It’s Your Move Games and Hobbies store will open at 6:30 p.m., a free dinner will be provided at 7 p.m., and the movie will start promptly at 7:30 p.m.
65437
Feb
25
Mon
Bree Newsome: Tearing Hatred from the Sky @ Soda Activity Center
Feb 25 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

PRESENTED by:
The Roy E. and Patricia Disney Forum and Communication Department, President James Donahue, the Committee on Inclusive Excellence, CILSA and the Black Lives Matter Subcommittee.

This is the signature event of 44 Days Honoring Black History.

Bree Newsome is a noted artist, community organizer, and advocate for racial justice. Newsome gained national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and removed a Confederate battle flag that was originally raised in 1961 as a white supremacist statement of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and lunch counter sit-ins occurring at the time.

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

Admission: FREE

65697
War With Russia? @ first Congregational Church of Berkeley
Feb 25 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents

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

 “The most controversial Russia expert in America.”— The Chronicle Review

War With Russia? is an alternative narrative of Donald Trump’s US and Putin’s Russia, from America’s most prominent Russian scholar. America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from  Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen — the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia— gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.  War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves.

 

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. His other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience; Sovieticus; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives. Cohen is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel.

 

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation, as well as a frequent commentator on US and international politics for ABC, MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.  She writes a weekly column for The Washington Post.  She is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama.  She has received numerous awards for public service from various groups–the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s  “Voices of Peace” award and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s “Justice in Action” award. In 2010, she received the Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award. In 2013, she received American Rights at Work’s Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award; the Center for Community Change’s Champion in Activism Award. In 2015, she received the Progressive Congress Leadership Award on behalf of her work “creating pathways of success on behalf of progressive causes.

KPFA benefit

65749
Feb
26
Tue
POLICE REFORM: Urban Shield Fate to be Decided at Alameda County Board of Sups @ Alameda County Administration Building, 5th Floor
Feb 26 @ 10:45 am – 11:00 am

Take action right now.
Take Action

POLICE REFORM:  Alameda County Urban Shield/UASI Task Force   

For six years, Bay Area activists have pushed to repurpose Homeland Security disaster preparedness funds away from the hyper-militarized training exercise Urban Shield. Finally the Alameda Board of Supervisors agreed and convened a task force to end “Urban Shield as we know it”.  The  task force has provided dozens of recommendations to do exactly that.

There is lots of pushback and lots more coming, according to the SF Chronicle, which announced the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is “primed for battle.  But this is our taxpayer money to protect us and help us recover from disasters like catastrophic wildfires. We get a say in how it is spent.

You can view some of the proposed recommendations here and here. The recommendations follow years of problems with racial profilingright wing vigilantes, and environmental abuse. Your physical presence on the 26th is important (look out for an event invite), but you can also use this easy action alert to tell the Supervisors not to buckle to the pressure and really change Urban Shield. Now:

After 5 years, Urban Shield may end on February 26 …. with your help

Since 2013, the Bay Area has been trying to transform Urban Shield from a highly militarized SWAT competition and weapons expo into a community-focused safety and resilence exercise

And now we are almost there.

The second Alameda County task force has completed its work and issued a long and thorough list of recommendations that include ending the weapons expo that features spying and crowd control gadgets, ending the violent SWAT competition to focus on training other first responders, and.directing $5 million in new funding to health and social services.

But we need to make the adoption of these recommendations by the Supervisors a reality – and that means countering the Sheriff’s Department pressure with our own.

Take action right now.
Take Action

Write to the Board of Supervisors with this easy one-click action from our friends at Media Alliance and share it with others.

And join us at the Alameda Administration Building on February 26 at 10:45am to end Urban Shield.

Board of Supervisors – Alameda County
Alameda County Administration Building
1221 Oak Street, 5th Floor
Oakland

Tuesday  February 26  10:45AM Meeting Start

More Info About Urban Shield

2018 Urban Shield Promo Video

2018  Notes From The Last Urban Shield As We Know It 

2017 Urban Shield Community Report Card from the Stop Urban Shield Coalition

2017 ICE At Urban Shield Photo Gallery

Oakland Privacy Recommendations to Task Force

65582
How to Make the Oakland Police Commission Effective? @ West Oakland Library
Feb 26 @ 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

65759
Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System @ Samuel Merritt University
Feb 26 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Dr. Tina Sacks discusses her book “Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System”.

65698
Don’t Displace Oakland’s Black Community! @ Oakland City Hall, Oscar Grant Plaza
Feb 26 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

All out for City Council on Tuesday, February 26 to demand written commitment to community benefits for the proposed Mandela hotel.

Development without community benefits = displacement of Oakland’s Black community!

To get involved please contact Pastor David Brazil at 510-508-7104 or david@workingeastbay.org

65688
Deport ICE Berkeley – The Vote @ Berkeley City Council
Feb 26 @ 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm

No photo description available.

The Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance will keep the money of Berkeley’s residents from lining the pockets of companies that collaborate directly with the Trump administration’s lawless and unconstitutional immigration policies.

The contracting ordinance will phase out gradually the use of vendors that supply ICE with information that helps them to better terrorize immigrant communities. Combined with similar actions by other Bay Area cities, the ordinance will send the message that it isn’t good business to separate young children from their parents, violate asylum seekers constitutional rights and lock people up in private immigration detention facilities like Adelanto and Otay Mesa that don’t conform to UN human rights standards.

Berkeley’s money should not be spent on feeding the deportation pipeline when there are alternatives available and the contracting ordinance will make sure as little of our money as possible will be going to ICE data brokers.

The item is the first item on the action calendar and will likely be heard between 7:30pm and 9:00pm on the evening of February 26. The meeting begins at 6:00pm.

DeportICE website.

65721
Feb
27
Wed
Screening of City Rising: The Informal Economy @ UC Berkeley Labor Center
Feb 27 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Join us for a screening of the documentary City Rising: The Informal Economy, which follows four California workers organizing to find pathways for legalization and protection. The documentary follows the lives of a street vendor in Boyle Heights, a truck driver in Long Beach, a farm-working family in Coachella and an organizer in Oakland fighting for jobs for formerly incarcerated people. Featured in the film, Sylvia Allegretto from CWED will join us in discussion after the screening. Food and refreshments will be provided. Space is ADA accessible.

Co-sponsored by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics

65653
Social Housing Happy Hour with DSA @ Albatross Pub
Feb 27 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Enough is enough: The rent is too damn high. East Bay DSA is fighting for bold solutions that don’t depend on the luxury developers or hoping you end up with a friendly landlord.

Come grab a drink, hang out and talk about housing justice with socialists in Berkeley!

 

 

 

65747
The History and Struggle for People’s Park @ MLK Student Union, Stephens Lounge, 3rd floor
Feb 27 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Panel Discussion and Q&A.

Panelists: Jim Chanin, Dan Siegel, Carol Denny, Joe Liesner, Andrea Pritchett

Music by Hali Hammer.

65757
Feb
28
Thu
OAKLAND POLICE COMMISSION: OPD Report on Pawlik Investigation @ City Council Chambers, Oakland City Hall
Feb 28 @ 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm

Chief Anne Kirkpatrick will provide all publicly reportable information on the
investigation and findings in the police involved shooting of Joshua Pawlik on March
11, 2018.

Full agenda for meeting.

65760
Expert Panel Discussion: Homelessness in the Bay Area @ Oakstop
Feb 28 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Join the Junior League of Oakland-East Bay, Alameda Point Collaborative, Beyond Emancipation, Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc., Contra Costa Health Services, Operation Dignity, and BOSS for an expert panel discussion on Homelessness in the Bay Area

The panelists will touch on particularly vulnerable groups like foster youth, veterans, and the mentally ill. They will also discuss the changing face of poverty.

We will examine the state of homelessness and what nonprofit organizations are doing to address it through technology, advocacy, cross-collaboration, outreach, and volunteer work. We will also talk about potential long term, sustainable solutions.

The following experts will participate in the panel:
-Doug Biggs, Executive Director of Alameda Point Collaborative
-Nella Gonçalves, Deputy Director of Beyond Emancipation
-Nikki Beasley, Executive Director of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc.
-Jaime Jenett, Continuum of Care Planning and Policy Manager, -Homeless Program, Contra Costa Health Services
-Katie Derrig, Development Manager of Operation Dignity
-Gina Tomlinson of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS)

Send questions to juniorspac@jloeb.org.

65620
PDA-CA forum on PUBLIC BANKING @ Park Branch Public Library Community Room
Feb 28 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm


PDA-CA forum on PUBLIC BANKING

WHAT’S IN A BANK?   WHY WE NEED PUBLIC BANKS & HOW WILL WE GET THEM SOON?
       Having learned how the “big banks” take our money and oft-times invest in things we don’t want, like fossil fuel businesses and corporations who create the mechanisms of war, we are in the midst of a movement to create public banks so we can invest in affordable housing, renewable energy, and other essentials of a society that shares and cares.
Our forum explores the history and progress of 4 Bay Area public bank endeavors and how close they are to making these a reality.   Our guests are:
JACKIE FIELDER–as a co-founder of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, a lecturer in the College of Ethnic Studies (being a descendant of the Lakota Nation) at SF State, Jackie holds a Bachelor’s in Public Policy & a Master’s in Sociology from Stanford.
SUSAN HARMAN–having fallen in love with public banking 8 yrs. ago, Susan has been instrumental in getting the East Bay Public Bank through its feasibility study and on to its business plan.
JUDY YOUNG–following Ellen Brown’s work with the Public Banking Institute for many years, Judy was eager to add #Public Banks to her tweets with the South Bay Progressive Alliance, Public Banking Action Team.
LEE CLARK–in the aftermath of Santa Rosa’s fires, Lee feels the work on a Public Bank is critical for recovery from a severe financial crisis and replacing city infrastructure, in addition to many other social justice uses.
Because these and other public banking projects here in California will take some time to come to fruition, we will have CYNTHIA PAPERMASTER speaking on how we can divest our money from fossil fuels & the war machine NOW.   She is a coordinator of the Golden Gate Chapter of CODE-PINK and a member of the Berkeley Mayor’s Task Force on Socially Responsible Banking.

65743
Astra Taylor: What is Democracy? @ Nourse Theater
Feb 28 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

City Arts & Lectures Presents ASTRA TAYLOR

What Is Democracy? film imageFilm screening and discussion with director Astra Taylor

Astra Taylor’s engagement with philosophy, democracy, and political organizing transcends form, emerging through documentary films, books, essays, and social activism. Her feature documentaries include Zizek! (2005) and An Examined Life (2008). Her most recent film, What is Democracy? (2018), collapses time and space, doggedly pursuing the eponymous question, while exploring a conglomeration of threads that refuse to be constrained by the camera’s frame, continuing the conversation rather than offering decisive answers. The film has been called “a deliberate challenge to complacency” (The Guardian), and features the political activists and thinkers Cornel West and Silvia Federici.

Taylor is also the author of Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and the American Book Award-winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Her essays have been published in The Nation, The Washington Post, n+1, The New York Times, and The Baffler, where she is a contributing editor.

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.[19]

65738