Calendar

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL SOMETIME IN MAY, DATE TO BE DETERMINED.

Celebrating 4 years at the Gill Tract! Food, live music, holistic medicine, and farmin’! We would love your help in making the magic happen sign up to volunteer at http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0b4faba729a3fe3-earth

The BASTARD (Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory And Research & Development) conference promotes multiple approaches to anarchism. Come and share yours. Come and participate in a commerce-free event with other anarchists to talk about the philosophy and theory of where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going.

Every year we have a loose theme, to allow people who want a framework on which to base a workshop. The BASTARD Conference is an annual event and gathering organized by the Berkeley Anarchist Study Group, which is an open long running (10+ years) anarchist study group that meets every week on Tuesday @ The Long Haul Infoshop (3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley CA. 94705).

http://sfbay-anarchists.org/

It’s time to celebrate our History of Struggle!

Leave it to Diva
Skank Bank
Funky Nixons
Hali Hammer
Yukon Hannibal
Bogues
Tee Lewis
Bay Area Harmonica Club
Us
Steven Lewis
Max Ventura
Chanel
All Nations Singers
DJ Soul

Food Not Bombs Field Kitchen all day
Tables

Good Community Good Times…Details TBA

Congresswoman Barbara Lee & Troy Williams to Speak at Post Salon.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee will discuss overcoming barriers for the formerly incarcerated to vote and find jobs at next week’s Post Salon. Troy Williams, former San Quentin inmate, will respond.

The salon will also report on the housing moratorium, a local voter registration drive and the crisis of jobs and job training programs in Oakland, discussing the significance of what will be discussed at the Tuesday, April 26 Community and Economic Development Community Meeting.

RSVP online

Prince dance party at SFPD mission hunger strike at 8pm. #hunger4justicesf #FireChiefSuhr #BlackNBrownUnity#Justice4Luis

— Anti Police-Terror (@APTPaction) April 24, 2016

 URGENT!!
 We need 50 people to commit to collect 100 signatures over the next two weeks.

Our petition drive is reaching the final leg and we need to sprint to the finish. We can do this! Most of our volunteers get about 10 signatures an hour, on average. So, if 50 people can give us just under an hour a day for the next two weeks, we will easily make it!

           Can you commit to 5 hours a week for two weeks?

      Please look at the schedule, choose your times and locations, and email them to                                                                alamedarenterscoalition.com

Call or text us at 510 473-2332. Someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

Sing for an hour on Solano Avenue at the old Oaks Theater, Berkeley.

RSVP here!

Last winter, workers at the Holiday Inn Express Oakland Airport told the City of Oakland that their boss was violating their rights under Measure FF, the new minimum wage law. The City investigated and issued a report identifying a number of alleged violations at the hotel – failing to pay the minimum wage for all hours, “rounding off” time-clock records to shave off time worked, requiring employees to give notice before using sick leave, taking away workers’ accrued vacation time, and other alleged violations.

Then, the following month, the City’s Planning and Building Department gave the owners of the Holiday Inn Express permission to develop a new hotel in downtown Oakland – a Hampton Inn on 11th Street in Chinatown.

“The City assessed a penalty of $5,000 against the Holiday Inn Express – then turned around and gave the hotel’s owners a permit to build a brand new hotel where they can make lots of money. So what reason would any boss have to respect our rights?” said downtown Oakland hotel housekeeper Irma Perez.

The Planning and Building Department wants to ignore the issues of job quality and the impacts of poverty-wage jobs in considering hotel development, but we’re not going to let them! Councilmembers Guillen and Kalb have introduced a City Council resolution calling on the Planning and Building Department to take job quality seriously. The resolution would also begin the process of bringing more public accountability to hotel development decisions.

The City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee will consider this resolution on Tuesday, April 26th, at 1:00pm. Please attend, and call on the members of the Committee to vote YES for the resolution, for GOOD JOBS IN HOTELS and NO POVERTY-WAGE HOTELS IN OAKLAND!

Please let us know if you can be there, and if you plan to speak.

In solidarity,

UNITE HERE Local 2850

Hosted by Berkeley Copwatch.
Know Your Rights trainings are tools for learning how to deal with the police, how to safely assert your rights and how to safely and effectively observe the police in your community.

Join us in this workshop at the Grassroots House at 7:00 PM on April 26! This is a free event; bring your bodies and your buddies, as well as questions, concerns, stories, resources.

And in the meantime, check out the Berkeley Copwatch Know Your Rights Pocket Card.

Tell City Council to adopt a REAL Living Wage

Raise Berkeley’s minimum wage to $15 by Oct. 2017
Raise it each year by 3% + inflation until it’s in sync with Berkeley’s official “Living Wage” (now $16.37)
Bring sick leave up to the standards set by Oakland, Emeryville and San Francisco

There is a crisis in Berkeley and the Bay Area.  Rents are out of control and the wage standards are so low families can’t work enough hours to keep their heads above water.  Many are being pushed out of our communities.

Working families need relief now. The good news is some is on the way.   More than enough signatures were submitted last Monday to insure a progressive Berkeley Minimum Wage measure will be on the Ballot in November.

But relief could come sooner if the city council majority stopped stalling and adopted the initiative now. Their inaction and foot dragging has already extracted a heavy toll on Berkeley’s lowest paid workers costing them over $3,500 to date. Instead of joining with the voters of Oakland, SF and the Emeryville City Council, Bates, Capitelli, Droste, Maio, and Moore chose to prolong allowing poverty wages.

As unconscionable as that is they are now lining up to do it again.  Their current proposal will unnecessarily delay getting to $15 several years and will never catch up to Berkeley’s official Living Wage which the city defines as “a wage that can support a family at, or above, the poverty level” currently pegged at $16.37.

SPEAK OUT!

Vandana Shiva is a physicist, world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, and a tireless crusader for economic, food, and gender justice.

She has just compiled and edited a new book – Seed Sovereignty, Food Security; Women in the Vanguard of the Fight Against GMO’s and Corporate Agriculture – that is an extensive anthology of essays by women from around the globe. They write about the vital struggle to preserve small-scale farming, seed sharing, and local and indigenous knowledge. Seed keepers and community organizers, scientists and activists, mothers and scholars, the women in this collection are dedicated to speaking out against the GMO takeover and advocating for a food system that would truly support the health of our eco-systems, communities, and children.

With contributions by such notable women as Winona LaDuke, Frances Moore Lappe, and Marion Nestle, among others – this anthology dismantles the myths propagated by the GMO industry to reveal the widespread and devastating repercussions of genetic engineering. Highlighting the nightmarish effects of industrial agriculture on both the ecology and the human body, Seed Sovereignty, Food Security is a clear explication, an eloquent protest, and a cry for change.

“Women are not just sowing the seeds of resistance against an agriculture based on monocultures and corporate monopolies, they are sowing the seeds of alternative paradigms of science and alternative agricultural practice.”

“Her fierce intellect and her disarmingly friendly, accessible manner have made her a valuable advocate for people all over the developing world” -Ms. magazine

Hosted by Jeannine Etter

advance tickets: $15 : http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2513607 :: T: 800-838-3006 or Books Inc, Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, Diesel a Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s S.F. – Modern Times. $18 door, Benefits KPFA & Navdanya Institute,

Oakland Janitors March demanding a tech economy that works for all!

Contracted janitors are an integral part of daily operations at tech company offices, but the majority of janitors working at tech campuses across California are earning poverty wages. Our wages consistently trail behind the cost of living, especially in Oakland with the rising rents. In fact, there are more janitors living in poverty today in the Bay Area than there were in 1990.

 

Janitors are working in a toxic environment where exploitation and abuses including rape, sexual assault, and harassment, as seen in the PBS Frontline documentary Rape on the Night Shift, can occur. That’s why workers across California are coming together to say Enough! ¡Ya Basta!

 

Our contract expires next week. Janitors will decide shortly if there is a reason to go on strike throughout California to protest these unfair labor practices. While we don’t want to go on a STATEWIDE STRIKE, we are ready and willing to fight.

 

This is the last action in Oakland before our contract expires. Will you stand with us?

 

RSVP by replying to the email or on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/events/139380603130846/

Discussion to start at 7pm, potluck precedes. All are welcome.

Representatives [from] … East Bay Housing Organizations, the Oakland Tenants’ Union, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, The Berkeley Progressive Alliance, The Alameda Renters’ Coalition and the Oakland Alliance[will] brief the club and all interested parties on their efforts-how to join, support each other, learn from each other, and to organize region-wide towards long term, state solutions.

Please plan to attend, bring your friends, your organization, if not represented here, such as-small business and artist advocates who currently have few protections against the corporate gentrification of the neighborhoods they have invested in-and get ready to organize with the power of the not-so-silent majority in your cities, towns, counties and at the state house with us.

Hey Folks, This contingent is being organized/ called by the Anti-Police Terrorism Project, Black Lives Matter Bay Area and the BlackOUT Collective. Our groups are led by Black folks and People of Color, who have long connections to our communities in the Bay area, specifically SF and communities in the East. We have strong allies like Asians 4 Black Lives, Occupy Oakland, SURJ, Rising Tide, BASAT. We will operate as Affinity groups meaning: because there is a large mass of folks ready to hit the streets (on this page and on other pages) we do not approach this mass protest with the idea that one group will lead the direction or tone. And we do not expect for us to all use the same tactics or participate in the same program. But all of us agree that people of color/ the most impacted should always be centered. It’s a core shared value. People are going self organize. This is both a general call to action and an opportunity to coordinate some of the on the ground logistics. Our offering is messaging, coordinating roles, tactics, and a place to build community so we have each other’s backs in streets. ‪#‎Autonomy‬ ‪#‎SharedValues‬

“Today, Casey and I had court for our arrests at Liberty City. Trial begins April 29, 9 am, room 112.

We want to pack the courtroom. What is at stake is the freedom to protest without government being able to say “that’s not a protest.” We want to challenge the ability of the state to use 647e, illegal lodging, in the commons. The law plainly states “without the permission of the owner” in it. Yet, this law has been used on public property to prevent homeless people from sheltering themselves. This law is used by cities to steal people’s possessions as “evidence of lodging” and once confiscated, are destroyed.”