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Panel Discussion:

After brief presentations by three ICSS members, Gene Ruyle, Raj Sahai, and Roger Harris, we will have an open discussion on this important topic.

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What constitutes a progressive position on the war in Ukraine?  What factors might bring about peace?  Should the United States continue to send military aid, and other support, to Ukraine?  What should be done about the parts of Ukraine currently occupied by Russian forces?  What should be done about NATO?

Please join us on April 9th to hear Howie Hawkins and Jill Stein present their perspectives on the Ukraine war and how peace might come about.  Jill and Howie are the Green Party’s two most recent Presidential candidates, Jill having run in 2012 and 2016 and Howie having run in 2020.  Following their presentations, we’ll have time for questions and answers.

Howie Hawkins has been a Green Party candidate for city council, mayor, and auditor in Syracuse, New York, winning 48% for a district council seat in 2011, and 35% of the citywide vote for city auditor in 2015.  Prior to becoming the Green Party’s Presidential candidate.in 2020, he was the Greens’ Governor candidate in New York in 2010, 2014, and 2018.  He was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the US in 1984.  Howie moved to Syracuse in 1991 to develop cooperatives for CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives.  Howie’s articles on politics, economics, and environmental issues have appeared in Against the Current, Black Agenda Report, CounterPunch, Green Politics, International Socialist Review, Labor Notes, New Politics, Peace and Democracy News, Roll Call, Society and Nature, Z Magazine, and other publications.

Dr. Jill Stein is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Medical School and was a practicing physician for 25 years. She has served on the Greater Boston board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Stein co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities. She has worked with Clean Water Action, Toxic Action Center, Global Climate Convergence, Physicians for a National Health Program, and the Massachusetts Medical Society.  She previously served as an elected member of Lexington Town Meeting, and ran for Massachusetts governor in 2002 and 2010. She also ran for Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2004 and for Massachusetts secretary of state in 2006, and in 2012 and 2016 she was the Green Party’s Presidential candidate.

Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows at 7:00 pm, after a 30-minute break.
Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.

 Landlords are mobilizing against permanent teenant protections and your voice is needed on Tuesday, April 11!

Black renters are TWICE as likely to face eviction as white renters. The eviction moratorium will soon end in Oakland and we are calling on all tenants and allies to come out in person to Oakland City Hall to speak in support of strengthening permanent tenant protections.

Although this proposal is hardly radical and is more than fair to landlords, they are guaranteed to turn out in numbers to oppose it. If YOU are a tenant and the eviction moratorium has helped you, your voice is needed!

• Press Conference @ 1pm at 1425 Harrison Street, Oakland
• City Council Meeting @ 4pm at Oakland City Hall (start gathering at 2pm)

Note: We’re asking for as many people as possible to show up to City Hall (*masks required*) and begin to take a seat in the chambers by 2pm – sadly, a fringe group of landlords and extremists plan to pack the chambers to erase the voice of renters, so we must fill the chambers! Public comment will begin shortly after 4pm.

If there isn’t any way you can make it in person, you can also join at 4pm by video conference (Zoom), or by dialing (669) 900-6833, Meeting ID: 861 3539 1880 (if asked for a participant ID or code, press #).

Your community is counting on you to take action!

United in struggle and liberation,

Anti Police-Terror Project

TOMORROW, 4/11, 4:15 PM, Grand Lake Theatre: Free screening & discussion of Birthing Justice, a feature length documentary highlighting the issues fueling the maternal health crisis within the African American community.https://t.co/lij0h1E4qq

— Supervisor Keith Carson (@Keith_Carson) April 10, 2023

Mark your calendar and c’mon down to Richmond City!
David Solnit is hosting an art build for People’s Earth Day 4 Water Justice (4/23 at Lake Merritt)

What: 1-2 banners, signs
=> RSVP to action@sunflower-alliance.org required (it’s a gated space, we’ll need to contact folks to let them in).

Volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members welcome!

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Last month we were honored to host partners, community members and impacted family members for a beautiful weekend dedicated to healing at The People’s House.

Special thanks to impacted families for trusting us to be part of their healing journeys, and to our healers who created such a warm, calm, and peaceful space.

Our aim is to offer healing services at The People’s House every 3rd weekend of each month, which is coming up in just over a week.

We invite volunteers, comrades at partner organizations, impacted family members, and local Black, Indigenous and other people of color to join us at our upcoming healing portal at The People’s House! **This April we are also appreciating our local librarians with an hour of healing dedicated to them.**

A healing portal is an intentional space meant to interrupt state violence and make room for healing, community care, and wellness. We’ll be offering healing services including acupuncture, massage, reiki, auricular therapy, talk therapy, and more!

Note: Masks are required indoors at The People’s House. The space is wheelchair accessible. Children are welcome to receive services with parent or guardian present.

Email guadalupe@antipoliceterrorproject.org to RSVP and with any questions.

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.

For our March, April and May meetings we are reading Debt: The First 5000 Years  by David Graeber (Warwick, Amazon).

For  our March meeting we’ll be reading the first five chapters.
For  the  April  meeting  we  are  reading  chapters  6 through  9.
For our May meeting will are reading the remainder of the book.

Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.

So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Renaissance Italy to Imperial China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong.

We are still fighting these battles today.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More, and Cannibal Capitalism.

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

Ann Garrison will discuss US foreign policy and struggles for self-determination in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the African Great Lakes Region. She spent the spring of 2022 in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Our sppeaker is Ann Garrison, a Contributing Editor to Black Agenda Report, and a contributor to The Grayzone, Counterpunch, the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, LA Progressive, and Pacifica Radio.  In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region.
Ann has invited an Eritrean scholar, Elias Amare, to join her.

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Since we won in City Council last year, we’ve been hard at work making sure the City of Oakland uses public land for public good. As a result of that hard work, we are currently in an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to build a people’s proposal on the E. 12th remainder parcel.

It’s been a long, hard-fought battle, and though the work isn’t over, there is a lot to celebrate. So we thought we’d invite you to come join us to do that. RSVP here for a reminder.

We will be gathering on Sunday, April 16th for a celebration! We’ll bring refreshments and good vibes; you bring a friend, neighbor, or family member and your best ideas for the E. 12th parcel. In addition to celebrating our victories, we’ll do some updating to the visioning work we did together in 2015.

RSVP here for a reminder about this event.

Please share this invitation with people you know in the neighborhood! Everyone is welcome.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 18 marks 3 years since San Leandro PD officer Jason Fletcher murdered Steven Taylor while he was having a mental health crisis. Since his death, his grandma Addie Kitchen has been leading the community efforts for justice.

The next court date against Fletcher is on May 12. Join the family and community of Steven Taylor tomorrow at the future site of the Steven Taylor Pavilion (San Leandro Marina) to celebrate life, justice, and community healing.

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Alameda County has a new District Attorney, Pamela Price. She ran on a reformist platform, and one of her first acts as DA was to reopen eight cases of police abuse in Alameda County. Unfortunately Erik Salgado’s case was not one of the cases that was reopened.

22-year-old Erik Salgado was murdered when plain-clothed California Highway Patrol officers in an unmarked vehicle shot 40 bullets into a car in East Oakland on June 6, 2020. Erik Salgado’s girlfriend, Brianna Colombo, was also in the car and injured. The lives of the officers were not endangered in any way when they recklessly opened fire in a residential area, on the same block as Elmhurst Middle School.

Please join the family of Erik Salgado by adding your name to the petition calling on DA Price to reopen the investigation into the murder of Erik Salgado by CHP!

Erik had his whole life ahead of him and had so much to learn and grow. There’s not a day that goes by that his loss hasn’t been felt in the life of his daughter Liliana, Erik’s parents, siblings, and the whole family. Price has said that her tenure is “the start of the reckoning Alameda County has asked for holding people accountable for their misconduct.” That reckoning cannot happen without Justice for Erik.

 
The loss of socialism is not as permanent as it appears and until capitalism’s inherent contradictions are resolved, its resurgence is not as improbable as Dugin suggests.  Until then, we as Marxists should not dismiss those who have picked up the mantle of anti-imperialism since the demise of the former Soviet Union, no matter which political form it takes shape.  By denouncing Dugin as a “fascist” and treating his work as unworthy of serious consideration, one is only showing that he is right to say that Marxism has become irrelevant in today’s world and Western capitalism is here to stay. The challenge has been issued, it remains to be seen whether we are up to it.

Speaker will be Max Parry, an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst based in New York. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com

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Join @afrosocialistSF at one of our first Slow Book Clubs on 4/23 at 2 pm at 1916 McAllister. We will be covering Chapters 1 and 2 of Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson, and intend to cover approx 1 chapter per month over the next 12 months. Register: https://t.co/eK2fGezO1N pic.twitter.com/B4tPsXf0bL

— DSA San Francisco (@DSA_SF) April 7, 2023

Join crime victims, survivors and community members who will be rallying in support of our Drum Major for Justice, Pamela Price on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland.

In case you missed it, SFGate exposed the Bay Area media members’ thirst for a recall in Alameda County. ABC7 News and the Berkeley Scanner are clearly on a mission to undermine Pamela’s vision for justice for our community. But we are not going to stand still or silent for these attacks.

In case you missed Pamela’s interview with KRON4’s Haaziq Madyun, here’s the KRON4 Live Link.

Also, here is Pamela’s interview with NBC7 Christine Ni, here’s the NBC7 Live Link.

Please share these interviews and the expose about the media members’ thirst for recall with your family and friends to help spread the truth about what is really going on! And join us this Sunday at the Alameda County Courthouse!

WE NEED YOU to keep us winning, to secure our Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) for E12th which will be voted  at Oakland City Council’s CED meeting.

We hear there may be turnout to throw curve balls at our project, so we’d love your voices of support. Our project is committed to the diversity that won this campaign as outlined in the ENA from the BIPOC neighbors who most risk displacement to those we want to hire to build this housing. We want council members of the CED to: pass the E12th ENA for 100% affordable housing, support deeply affordable housing that the Peoples Proposal delivers, and keep Public Land for Public Good.

HERE’S THE ORDER OF IMPORTANCE FOR TURN OUT. Will you take action (at least email)?!

1. Public comment in person at CED meeting 4/25 Tue 1:30pm. City Hall (1 Frank Ogawa Plaza). Fill out a speaker card with the City Clerk, for item #6 on E12th.
2. Public comment by zoom or phone at CED meeting 4/25 Tue 1:30pm, for item #6 on E12th. Submit an Electronic Speaker Card to speak via zoom or phone by emailing CityClerk@OaklandCa.Gov to get on stack before the item comes up. Speaker card link: https://www.oaklandca.gov/services/fill-out-a-speaker-card
3. Email City Council by tomorrow morning to support our E12th ENA at council@oaklandca.gov. Here’s a sample message:

Subject: Support E12th Peoples Proposal ENA

Dear Oakland City Council and members of CED,

I’m a supporter of the E12th community’s campaign for public land for public good, and the Peoples Proposal for 100% affordable housing on our city’s public land on E12th St. Please vote yes on the Exclusive Negotiating Agreement to build the Peoples Proposal for deeply affordable housing. Thank you! (your name)

We appreciate you for taking action. Let’s keep winning!
– Mari Rose, Dunya & the E12th Revival crew

RSVP

While as Democratic Socialists, we all agree on the need to go beyond Social Democracy, we will be reading a few articles about the successes and limitations of social democratic movements around the world and discussing what we can learn from them and incorporate into our actions as Democratic Socialists.

** Note that this will mostly be a discussion with a very light presentation at the start, so to get the most out of it please read the readings ahead of time. **

Articles: TBD

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