Calendar
How can we build our capacity and leverage our grassroots power to support the Movement for Black Lives Policy platform?
Please join the SURJ Policy Working Group on Saturday April 8th from 1pm to 4pm for an interactive legislative strategy session and workshop that will demystify the legislative process, build our legislative capacity, and highlight the legislative priorities and strategies of our POC partners. All levels of experience are welcome!
In addition to break-out discussion groups, we will hear from special guests Bridget Kolakosky, Legislative Director for Senator Holly Mitchell, author of the RISE Act and Emily Harris, State Field Director for the Ella Baker Center, a co-sponsor of the RISE Act. Both guests will share their experiences and strategies on how to bring grassroots voices to the capitol in meaningful and impactful ways.
This event is FREE but an RSVP on our website to required to attend as there is limited space: http://
ACCESS NEEDS: This event is wheelchair accessible. If you have specific access needs, please email us and we’ll be happy to work with you to accommodate them.
SCENT FREE: We ask that guests do their best to be as scent free as possible. Please refer to this resource from the EastBay Meditation Center for more information on what that means. There will be a scent free section of seating offered. http://
Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to survivors and victims of violence and police terror in Oakland.
“Remember the saying: ‘Of all pilgrimages the greatest is to relieve the sorrow-laden heart.'” ~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
The Baha’i community of Oakland is organizing this gathering for the community to connect, share prayers, writings and poems from all spiritual traditions, reflect and recharge and build coalitions interested in healing.
Come share prayers, quotes, poems, and favorite passages from your scriptures with us. Simple breakfast will be served.
“Thy name is my healing, O my God, and remembrance of Thee is my remedy. Nearness to Thee is my hope, and love for Thee is my companion. Thy mercy to me is my healing and my succor in both this world and the world to come. Thou, verily, art the All-Bountiful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” ~ Bahá’u’lláh
Today, 12 pm, gather at GG Bridge Plaza, #SF side for monthly @CODEPINK Golden Gate Bridge Walk for Peace. #Syriahttps://t.co/0KCFvflbeQ pic.twitter.com/4mcAwsZjWk
— Indybay (@Indybay) April 9, 2017
The Trump-Putin post-truth world of Fox News and Russia Today, are kindred moments of a global capitalist order that has devolved into neo-fascism: scapegoating the “Other” and accepting genocide. Internal reactionaries and competing multiple regional and global powers have no regard for human life, as demonstrated most horribly by Assad’s latest chemical gas assault on Khan Sheikhoun and Trump’s terror against civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. As a Syrian revolutionary recently put it, “After all this slaughter, we ask, do the Syrian people not belong to the human community?”
Multiple forms of resistance continue: the global women’s movement, Black Lives Matter and immigrants everywhere, including in the U.S. Mass demonstrations against Putin’s regime emerged anew across Russia last week, demanding end to official corruption.
Is this world of vile nationalism and permanent war a return to the horrors of so-called primitive accumulation through enslavement and conquest? Does Marx’s thought and revolutionary practice speak to this moment? Gerry Emmett’s essay, “Marx’s Marxism vs. Trump-Putin’s barbarism,” in the March/April News & Letters addresses these issues.
How can the mass outpourings go beyond opposition and give humanity a different future?
We hope to see you there and hear your thoughts.
Tax the Rich Rallies every Monday from 5-6 pm on upper Solano in front of the Oaks Theater and the Chase Bank.
All are welcome!
Also We’ll be at SURJ (Stand Up for Racial Justice) event that starts at the Grand Lake Theater on Saturday April 1st from noon-1 :00 PM.
For our calendar of events, songs to download and more: www.occupella.org.
OccupyForum Presents the film “Thirty Seconds to Midnight” with Producer Regis Tremblay about the danger of nuclear war, climate change and the struggle to challenge these dangers
Friends,
Hope you can join us for one of the three Bay area showings of excellent new film Thirty Seconds to Midnight April 10 and 11. It is a powerful film about the danger of nuclear war and climate change and the struggle of people around the world to challenge these dangers. Please spread the word to the larger community and hope to see you there. See the flyer attached.
Warm Greetings and Peace,
David Hartsough
What: Film “Thirty Seconds to Midnight” with Producer Regis Tremblay.
Three threats to life on the planet: nuclear technology, a nuclear Armageddon, climate change.
EFF Launches Community Security Training Series
EFF is pleased to announce a series of community security trainings in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. High-profile data breaches and hard-fought battles against unlawful mass surveillance programs underscore that the public needs practical information about online security. We know more about potential threats each day, but we also know that encryption works and can help thwart digital spying. Lack of knowledge about best practices puts individuals at risk, so EFF will bring lessons from its comprehensive Surveillance Self-Defense guide to the SFPL.
EFF has tailored this series for technology beginners who may be unaware of potential privacy dangers, but already use smart phones or computers. Library patrons are invited to bring their devices to EFF’s introductory classes which include discussions of basic online security concepts and privacy tools. Lisa Wright and Willie Theaker, members of EFF’s TechOps Team, will facilitate Digital Privacy and Security: A Beginner-to-Intermediate Workshop followed by Encryption Apps for your Phone: An Intermediate Workshop. There will be two opportunities to attend each class.
- Digital Privacy and Security: A Beginner-to-Intermediate Workshop
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- Encryption Apps for your Phone: An Intermediate Workshop
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- Digital Privacy and Security: A Beginner-to-Intermediate Workshop
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- Encryption Apps for your Phone: An Intermediate Workshop
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Event details are included in each link to the EFF calendar above. Space is limited and attendance is on a first-come, first-served basis so attendees should prepare to arrive early. We encourage all EFF supporters to help people in their circles learn more about online rights issues and how to keep themselves—and each other— safer.
At the end of April, EFF’s spring Bay Area Members’ Speakeasy will feature a more advanced workshop on email encryption and key generation open to EFF members and their guests—we encourage you to bring a friend! Following the workshop, all EFF members will be invited to join our PGP keysigning party to help bring the community together and further expand the web of trust. If you are a current Bay Area member accepting email, you will receive a personal invitation including event details. Not a member yet? Join today!
With the Surveillance Self-Defense project and these local events, EFF strives to help make information about online security accessible to beginners as well as seasoned techno-activists and journalists. We hope you will consider our tips on how to protect your digital privacy, but we also hope you will encourage those around you to learn more and make better choices with technology. After all, privacy is a team sport and everyone wins.
Three Threats to Life on the Planet:
- Nuclear Technology
- Nuclear Armaggedon
- Climate Change
A powerful film about the danger of nuclear war and climate change and the struggle of people around the world to challenge these dangers. Please spread the word to the larger community and hope to see you there.
Producer Regis Tremblay will be at the showing.
[Note: We called the Hayward City Manager’s office to confirm that there is a meeting on 4/11 at 7pm. Per the Brown Act, they’re supposed to post the agenda publicly 72 hours before the meeting, so hopefully that happens. We’ll call again the day of to make sure it’s still happening.]
Join the family of Elena “Ebbie” Mondragon at the next Hayward City Council meeting to demand both the truth and real accountability for her recent killing by Fremont police. (Hayward PD is “investigating” since it happened there.)
Unidentified Fremont detectives – driving an unmarked car in Hayward – shot 16 year-old Ebbie on March 14th in the middle of an apartment complex and concocted a very suspicious story to justify killing an innocent girl.
Ebbie’s family misses her deeply and remembers her as a kind young woman who was a big SF 49ers fan.
The family demands are as follows:
-Any video footage leading up to, during and after the shooting
-Full autopsy report plus any and all medical records
-Any and all information about what happened to the car the police were following
-Questions answered: Did Fremont police have permission to be conducting surveillance and following a car in Hayward? Was Hayward PD at all aware of this operation?
—–
Can’t make it? You can also support Ebbie’s family with funeral costs (they still need to pay for the grave marker – at least $1,000 at the Antioch cemetery) by donating here: https://www.gofundme.com/
Dejuan Hall’s trial has been moved to June 19th as of now.
Dejuan Hall was brutally beaten by Vallejo police officer Spencer Muniz-Bottomley on 3/10/2017, then charged with battery on police officer and resisting arrest. Hall does not face ANY charges related to the reason police were called on him as he was not breaking any laws.
Video of VPD officer Bottomley beating unarmed Dejuan Hall can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/antionette.saddler/posts/1338405206216750?pnref=story
Officer Bottomley was never suspended and remains on duty.
Hall’s trial is Wednesday, April 12th at 9 AM in Dept. 9 Room 209 at the Solano County Courthouse in Fairfied. Please come out and show support.
No to War in Syria!
The Causes and Consequences of the Unending US War Drive
With the launching of military strikes on Syria, the US is opening a new chapter in its bloody wars in the Middle East, which have left more than one million dead. The consequences of the direct targeting of the Syrian government are incalculable. How will Russia respond? The world could wake up some morning in the near future to the news that the two largest nuclear-armed powers in the world are at war.
There is no opposition to war from within the media and political establishment. Indeed, the Trump administration’s actions against Syria are in line with the demands of the Democratic Party, backed by the most powerful factions of the Pentagon and CIA.
As always, the US government justifies its actions by reference to allegations of atrocities carried out by whatever government is in its crosshairs. The media treats as established fact the claims that the Syrian government is responsible for the use of chemical weapons, while ignoring the horrific atrocities committed by the US throughout the Middle East.
What are the real motivations for the unending war drive? What are the geostrategic interests of the US in the Middle East? What will be the consequences? Above all, how can war be opposed?
Suggested reading for Wednesday’s class:
The airstrikes in Syria and the war drive of American imperialism
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/10/pers-a10.html
The US attack on Syria: A prelude to wider war
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/08/pers-a08.html
The bombing of Syria: A new chapter in the US drive for global hegemony
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/07/pers-a07.html
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“Andres Reséndez vividly recounts the harrowing story of a previously little-known aspect of the histories of American slavery and of encounters between indigenes and invaders.” — Publishers Weeklyhttp://www.kpfa.org/events
KPFA Radio 94.1FM presents
Andres Resendez , Hosted by Mickey Huff
advance tickets: $12: T: 800-838-3006 or Books Inc/Berkeley, Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, Marcus Books, Diesel a Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s $15 door, KPFA benefit, kpfa.org/events, wheelchair access
“Resendez vividly recounts the harrowing story of a previously little-known aspect of the histories of American slavery and of encounters between indigenes and invaders.” – Publishers Weekly
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America is an eye-opening, landmark history of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Native Americans across America, from the time of the conquistadores to the Early 20th century.
The Other Slavery is a key missing chapter of American history. Resendez offers a startling contemporary insight: today’s global human trafficking has its roots less in the black slavery we have studied since grade school, and more in the other slavery we have entirely failed to see.
Unlike African slavery, Native American slavery was technically illegal on most of the American continent since the time of Columbus. Practiced as an open secret for centuries, there was no abolitionist movement to protect the indigenous people who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadores throughout the 18th Century, or made to serve Mormon settlers and other Anglos as servants.
Resendez builds the incisive, original case that mass slavery was more damaging than the disease epidemics that decimated indigenous populations across North America. He also sheds light on how and why the European enslaving incited Native Americans to enslave their own, through compelling anecdotes from priests, merchants, Indian captives, and Anglo colonists. What started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread across the entire American Southwest.
In the last year, California has accomplished major gains for agricultural workers, from the new overtime pay law to innovative farm labor certification programs. At the same time, however, agricultural workers and their families are facing extreme threats from federal immigration policies and policing, and a heightened culture of fear. What efforts are underway to address the problems and develop solutions?
Farmworker, business, policy, and research leaders will share on-the-ground perspectives on the current farm labor landscape in California. As the state with the highest number of agricultural workers, 75% of whom are immigrants, we will explore how California can lead the nation in providing healthy, safe, just, and equitable working conditions and how engaged community members can support these efforts.
Speakers:
Luis Alejo, Monterey County Supervisor and Former State Assemblyman, 30th District
Christy Getz, Associate Cooperative Extension Specialist, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley
Chad Sokol, Dry Grocery and Commodity Buyer, Costco Bay Area Region
Mily Trevino Sauceda, Co-founder, Líderes Campesinas
Moderated by: Maria Echaveste, Senior Fellow, Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley
Opening theatrical presentation, or teatro, by members of Líderes Campesinas.
Come on down to our @DSAEastBay party tonight at Spats on Berkeley! You can also wish me an early birthday https://t.co/FiBotRJt4i pic.twitter.com/XhzVi6lUkW
— TimeCrime (@prosperdave) April 13, 2017
Ecumenical Peace Institute and the Livermore Conversion Project will offer a service of worship and nonviolent witness against nuclear weapons.
Martin Luther King gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech 50 years ago this spring. We ask, “Where would Dr. King be today?” We believe Dr. King’s spirit is with us at the Livermore Lab where new nuclear weapons continue to be designed, saying once again, “In a day when . . . guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. Today it is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
Our main speakers will be Francisco and Christina Herrera. The service contains elements from Christian and other traditions. In Christian tradition, April 14 this year is Good Friday, the day on which we remember the crucifixion of Jesus.
The service begins at 6:45 am. We start early, so that we can be visible to commuters who are coming to work at Livermore Lab. We meet at the corner of South Vasco Road and Patterson Pass Road; this is about 2 miles south of I-580. The event is wheelchair accessible, and we meet rain or shine.
Following the witness at the gate, there will be a community gathering at nearby Asbury United Methodist Church to share our work and vision. Light refreshments will be served.
Speakers include Joanna Macy, Antonia Juhasz, Donald Goldmacher, “Heist” film, co-founder Berkeley Progressive Alliance; Shahid Buttar, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Mike Rufo, Bill of Rights Defense Committee; Rev. Earl Koteen, Sunflower Alliance; Mike Katz-Lacabe, Oakland Privacy Working Group; Michael Wong, Veterans for Peace; Susan Harman, Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland; Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley Cares; 350.org Bay Area; April 29 Climate Mobilization; Codepink Women for Peace; Indivisible Berkeley; Diablo Rising Tide, and more!
Music: Lydia Violet (tentative), Betsy Rose, Mike Rufo, Francis Collins, more!
An evening for conscious activists, organizers, musicians, writers, poets, artists, thinkers who work for justice, peace, the future. The concept for “Active Hope” events is meeting outside our ‘silo’ issues – seeing common threads, connecting the dots, drawing from each other the inspiration and courage to act. We will again bring multi-issue activists and organizers together to hear, speak, network, collaborate, strategize. Groups will present briefly across the activist spectrum— environment, social justice, civil liberties, peace and anti-militarism, health care, education, jobs, immigration, and more– all with an emphasis on action opportunities.
Codepink Women for Peace, Golden Gate Chapter
Blueprints for Our Future
Emergency California Education Conference
Let’s Fight for Free Public Education For All Students, Faculty and Staff
A strong public education system is the foundation of every just and democratic society. Yet for most working families—especially those from black and brown communities—the right to free, high-quality education seems further than ever: preschool is inaccessible to children whose parents can’t afford it; k-12 schools are starved of resources while the imposition of high-stakes tests penalizes low-income districts and the explosion of charters exacerbates segregation and inequality; college and graduate students are drowning in debt as tuition at the UC and CSU systems continues to rise; black and brown students are terrorized by police violence, constant raids, and ongoing deportations; LGBTQI students are brutally bullied for their sexual and gender identity; and most students are delivered an education that does not embrace their histories and experiences, and does not educate them for liberation.
Moreover, education workers are under attack, as universities insist on replacing tenure and tenure-track positions with precarious, contingent jobs and the prospect of right-to-work legislation threatens to weaken teachers’ unions, thereby undermining their working conditions and ability to advocate for themselves and their students. Now billionaire and privatization lobbyist Betsy DeVos begins her tenure as Secretary of Education, and she is planning to escalate the oppression and corporatization of the current education system.
For us, it’s time to propose another path: if we tax corporations and billionaires in our state, and if we get students and teachers to democratically run their schools, we can bring about the kind of education system we need. We must build a mass movement that can fight for our education and we must organize it democratically and independently from the Republican and the Democratic parties so we rely on our power and have the final say on what our students and teachers deserve.
To this end, we call on all California students, parents, and education workers to join us in building a collective vision and strategy for transforming public education, and to participate in the May 1st General Strike to defend immigrant and workers’ rights, and to defeat privatization and right-to-work legislation. We need a system that guarantees free, high-quality education from preschool to doctoral degrees as a universal right; provides just working conditions for all teachers and education employees; and centers the needs of our most vulnerable and marginalized students while openly combating racism, islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression. It’s time to go on the offensive. Our students and education labor unions have a key role to play and we must unite across sectors and build power through independent, grassroots action!
At the Emergency California Education Conference we will:
• Discuss the multiple factors that have led to the current crisis at all levels of public education.
• Hold teach-ins and workshops on how to build collective power in our education workers’ unions and schools.
• Discuss strategies for taking action, in particular labor action (including May 1st), to fight privatization and build an education system that gives all people a future worth fighting for!
WE ARE ACCEPTING WORKSHOP PROPOSALS UNTIL APRIL 1: we encourage facilitators to submit workshop proposals on specific aspects of the education crisis, educational activism, and/or visions for the future of public education.
To submit a workshop proposal, please indicate your interest in the form below, and follow up by emailing your proposal to ever.upward.march@gmail.co
Your proposal should be for a workshop of about one hour, and include:
Facilitator(s) name(s)
Title of Workshop
A short blurb about the workshop main idea (2-3 sentences)
A quick outline of your workshop (4-5 sentences)
Please use the survey to RSVP and submit your workshop proposals! While the workshops are open to all who’d like to facilitate, we especially encourage high school students, university students, teachers and education workers, university instructors, and parents to apply. People of color, women and queers, differently abled folks, immigrants, and the working class to the front!
RSVP AND FIND DIRECTIONS TO SUBMIT YOUR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS HERE: https://goo.gl/forms/