In honor of International Women’s Day
Rasmea Fights Back:
The struggle of Women, Immigrants & Political Prisoners

Featuring:
Nadine Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago & Rasmea Odeh Defense Committee

#Justice4Rasmea

Hosted by:
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC)

Rasmea Odeh is a 67 year old Palestinian American community leader who was tortured and falsely convicted by an Israeli military court. As a direct result, years later the US government convicted her of Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization, sentenced her to 18 months in prison and imminent deportation. The appeals court heard oral arguments on October 14th and recently granted the appeal!

What does the court of appeals’ decision mean for her case?
What are the implications for her and the Arab and Muslim community?
How can you get involved in her defense and in the defense of all people facing state repression?

www.justice4rasmea.org

If Iowa and New Hampshire have shaken the political establishment, how will things look after Super Tuesday, March 1? We are inviting speakers from different political perspectives (including Progressive Democrats of America, Peace and Freedom Party, Socialist Alternative, and UC Berkeley Students for Sanders) to share their views about Super Tuesday 2016 and listen to ours.

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.

There is a solution to the Affordable Housing Crisis

Berkeley could build at least 100 units of affordable housing a year, if we raise funds for the Housing Trust Fund. Hear about practical solutions that will raise the money needed. Prepare for the 2016 Election by making plans to elect a mayor, city council members, and rent board commissioners who will represent all of us, not just the 1%.

Speakers include:

● Max Anderson ‐ Berkeley City Councilmember

District 3 (South Berkeley)

● Ben Bartlett ‐ member, Berkeley Planning Commission and District 3 City Council candidate

● Kate Harrison, Berkeley Progressive Alliance and National/State Politics Chair of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club

● Community Activists to update us on the upcoming 2016 Berkeley Tenant Convention, Minimum Wage efforts, the Proposed Landlord Tax and Public Campaign Financing

During the Winter the Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 2 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 2:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland.  On every last Sunday we meet a little earlier at 1 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over four years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally . Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.

At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.

General Assembly Standard Agenda

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (Optional) Discussion Topic

Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.

Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area

San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv

Issue #121 is due out on April 22, 2016
(Article Deadline for Issue #121 is April 9, 2016)

*Brainstorm articles for next issue
* Orientation on how you can submit articles, art, photographs
* Help us discuss our audience and themes for the next issue
* Discuss fundraising and distribution
* Your chance to comment on Slingshot

Lead poisoning is irreversible. Pediatricians such as Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha (who discovered the Flint water crisis) fear the Flint children who tested with elevated levels will suffer lifelong consequences. “If you were to put something in a population to keep them down for generation and generations to come, it would be lead,” Hanna-Attisha said. “It’s a well-known, potent neurotoxin. There’s tons of evidence on what lead does to a child, and it is one of the most damning things that you can do to a population. It drops your IQ, it affects your behavior, it’s been linked to criminality, it has multigenerational impacts. There is no safe level of lead in a child.”

The Flint water crisis is a drinking water contamination crisis began in April 2014. After Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water to the Flint River, its drinking water had a series of problems that culminated with lead contamination with extremely elevated levels of the heavy metal. In Flint, between 6,000 and 12,000 children have been exposed. Nine lawsuits have been filed against government officials on the issue, and several investigations have been opened. The city was declared to be in a state of emergency by the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, before Obama declared it as a federal state of emergency. Four government officials: one from the City of Flint, two from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and one from the Environmental Protection Agency resigned over the mishandling of the crisis, and one addditional MDEQ staff member was fired and another has a termination hearing pending. Governor Snyder issued an apology to citizens and promised to fix the problem.

While the local outcry about Flint water quality was growing in early 2015, Flint water officials filed papers with state regulators purporting to show that “tests at Flint’s water treatment plant had detected no lead and testing in homes had registered lead at acceptable levels.”The documents falsely claimed that the city had tested tap water from homes with lead service lines, and therefore the highest lead-poisoning risks; in reality; the city does not know the locations of lead service lines, which city officials acknowledged in November 2015 after the Flint Journal/MLive published an article revealing the practice after obtaining documents through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.

In 2003, Bayview Hunters Point residents and community environmental justice organizations filed complaints with the US Department of Energy, charging the California Independent System Operator and PG&E with violating Title VI of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964. By applying standards that subject Bayview Hunters Point residents, the majority of who are low-income people of color, to unnecessary levels of fossil fuels, PG&E and California Independent Systems Operator are violating civil rights, the residents and organizations said.

Two years later, residents continued to suffer a medical chart’s worth health problems through being exposed to pollution from two of the state’s oldest power plants. This is in addition to the constant bombardment they’ve received of fumes and gases from sewage treatment, cement factories, a radioactive shipyard, and two highways. According to a 2003 study by the nonprofit Greenaction, residents in Southeast San Francisco are hospitalized for cognitive heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, emphysema, and asthma at three times the statewide average. “The city of San Francisco has never made a commitment to the people of Bayview Hunters Point or to their health,” said Dr. Raymond Tompkins, administrative lecturer at San Francisco City College.

The rate of breast cancer in African American women under the age of 50 is twice as high there as in the rest of the state, he said. “The same chemicals that cause breast cancer cause testicular cancer,” he cautioned, adding that the health department has not even been searching for the latter disease when collecting its statistics on Bayview Hunters Point residents. He also pointed out that while the life expectancy for a white male living in San Francisco is 78 years, for an African American male in Bayview Hunters Point, it is 58 years. “We’re talking about life and death here.”

Please join us at OccupyForum Monday night to hear from Steve Zeltzer and Dr. Ray Tomkins about environmental genocide in communities of color; to call out the perpetrators, and to take a stand with communities against the corrupt agencies and systemic racism in the United States that allows, and perhaps encourages this to happen.

Meetings held Mondays at 7:00 PM
Excepting Monday March 7, when we will meet at 8:15 PM. Come one, come all!

VOLUNTEER NOW!!!
If you would like to go out on Copwatch shifts, work in our office, create art, become a Know Your Rights Trainer or help us out in other ways, WE NEED YOU! Send us an e-mail, subscribe to our email list, call our office or just come to our weekly meetings on Mondays, 2022 Blake Street, Berkeley or our weekly office hours on Wednesdays from 6:00pm – 8:00pm.

Meet at 14th and Broadway and take the streets in solidarity with the three anti-racists who were stabbed in Anaheim when confronting a KKK rally on February 27th.

The klansman that stabbed the three comrades is reportedly from San Francisco. He was later let go while counter protesters are still held in jail. This is unacceptable! Let’s take a stand against the KKK and white supremacy in the Bay and everywhere!

This is happening at the same time as riots and demonstrations in the streets of Salt Lake City, Utah and Raleigh, North Carolina in the wake of yet more police shootings of black youth.

This is not a coincidence. The cops and the klan go hand in hand. The whole damn system is guilty.

#blacklivesmatter
Solidarity with those who fight back!

2016 International Working Women’s Day: Fight the Right, Deportations are Violence against Women!

This March 8th, join working women across the world to celebrate the resistance of immigrant women and stand up against right-wing attacks against immigrant families!

2 PM: Art and cultural Celebration [Lake Merritt Amphitheater, Lake Merritt Blvd & 12th St.]
March to the Federal Building [1301 Clay Street, Oakland] Vans provided to drive those with mobility needs
Rally: Immigrant Women speak out against Deportations and to stop the right wing attacks to immigrant women’s rights and survival!

Sponsored by ACUDIR, the World March of Women Bay Area Chapter, and GABRIELA USA.

The second of three community “listening sessions” to be conducted by the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, known by its acronym COPS, which was called in by police Chief Greg Suhr and Mayor Ed Lee following the fatal shooting of Mario Woods on Dec. 2.

Background article.

Our first film this year will be Salt of the Earth (1954), which was produced, directed and written by victims of U.S. Congressional blacklisting, (aka redlisting). Originally banned in the U.S., it was directed by Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten. The cast is almost entirely workers who participated in the real-life strike that the film is based upon.
In a gritty mining town in New Mexico, Mexican-American workers go on strike to protest their dangerous working conditions and low wages. They meet with fierce opposition from company thugs and local deputies. After vicious beatings the wives and mothers of the striking workers take over the picket line in a final demand for justice.

Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Ctee
Wheelchair accessible.

Join us for an amazing panel discussion with four women activists with Black Lives Matter and associated organizations. Plus a documentary screening of “We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains!”

The future is up to us.

Join with activists, community, labor, students and faith-based groups to begin to formulate a vision, priorities and a plan of action for A BERKELEY FOR WORKING FAMILIES.

Berkeley can lead the way on expanding affordable housing, strengthening rent control, and creating livable wages, a healthy environment and expanded city services.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Minimum Wage Coalition.

Join us to fight for a livable wage for all Bay Area workers! We collaborate in principled reflection and action on what the Bay Area livable wage would be and where we are at on the right to a livable wage.

The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds Community and Power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers.

Our work together encompasses:

(1) The concerns of precarious, care and contingent workers,
(2) Campaigns to improve wages for low wage workers, and
(3) Efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.

We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.

Oakland Livable Wage Assembly meets every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month, 6:30-8:00 pm at the SEIU Local 1000 Union Hall, 436 14th Street #200, Oakland, CA

Please love and support one another ~ We have a duty to fight ~ We have a duty to win!

olwa.org

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1568668586707336/

 

Department 110 on the 5th Floor.

This is the last day of court for the incident with the CHP from last September.

“Good, stable jobs protecting the climate can help challenge the growing inequality and injustice of our society, but only if policy is designed to do so.”

Join us for a conversation with Jeremy Brecher, cofounder of the Labor Network for Sustainability and author, most recently, of the just-published Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival. He has received five regional Emmy Awards for his documentary film work and holds a PhD from the Union Graduate School.

“Good, stable jobs protecting the climate can help challenge the growing inequality and injustice of our society, but only if policy is designed to do so. Climate policy needs to include strong racial, gender, age, and locational hiring requirements to counter our current employment inequality and provide a jobs pipeline for those individuals and groups who have been denied equal access to good jobs. It needs to help remedy the concentration of pollution in low-income communities, the lack of transportation, education, health, and other facilities in poor neighborhoods, and other manifestations of discrimination.”
—  Jeremy Brecher, Making the Promises Real: Labor and the Paris Climate Agreement

This event is free and open to the public.

We encourage all Oakland residents to attend the weekly No Coal in Oakland meeting.

Up until its February 16th meeting, the position of a majority of Oakland City Council members on permitting coal shipment from the city’s port may have been in doubt. Even now the proposal remains on the table. But at that meeting, council members took concrete steps toward banning coal exports once and for all. Thanks to the efforts of Mayor Libby Schaff, local clergy, State Senator Loni Hancock, and community activists, the Council has signaled its intention to enact an outright ban on coal exports. In fact, it passed a moratorium on the issuance of any permits for the terminal until the question has been resolved. Read details on the latest developmemts here.

(And for more background, see A Coaltastrophe Threatens Oakland on this website.)

The US DoJ wants to hear your perspectives, concerns and suggestions concerning the San Francisco Police Department.

 Pizza is being served for free provided by SEIU (Union).

San Francisco residents don’t miss our next community mtgs 3/8 & 3/10! We want to hear from you regarding the #SFPD. pic.twitter.com/A5dUpv4MD9

— COPS Office (@COPSOffice) March 2, 2016