UPDATE
The Board of Supervisors, for a reason unknown to us, canceled their scheduled Transportation and Planning Committee meeting scheduled for Monday 3/4, at which this issue was scheduled to be heard. As far as we know, the issue will be heard Monday April 1st at 9am. Please come, and spread the word!

We have an historic opportunity to place a moratorium on Bayer’s (formerly Monsanto’s) RoundUp, and all toxic herbicides containing glyphosate in Alameda County. We need YOU to come out on April 1st and to spread the word. The Transportation/Planning Committee of the BOS will be considering the moratorium, and it won’t happen without mass turnout and thousands of signatures. Please sign and share this petition: https://www.change.org/p/alameda-county-board-of-supervisors-ban-roundup-glyphosates-in-alameda-county?recruiter=6256975&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=share_petition

Here’s the deal: Alameda County agencies still spray thousands of gallons of RoundUp on Alameda County residents without their knowledge, despite clear scientific evidence spanning years of studies around the globe demonstrating glyphosate’s toxicity to humans and Life. They only post notifications when they spray on public trails/trailheads, but the vast majority of RoundUp is sprayed on literally thousands of linear miles of waterways and flood control channels, many of which border homes and backyards of East Oakland and unincorporated Alameda County residents. These residents are NOT warned, and are being put at risk by Alameda County agencies and officials by toxic RoundUp “drift”.

RoundUp is associated with higher rates of cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, early pregnancy terminations, low-birth weight, endocrine disruption, and it kills beneficial gut bacteria which is linked to a growing list of health problems. With this knowledge, Alameda County agencies are at risk for class action lawsuits if they don’t stop. Like Dewayne Johnson, who recently won a $289 million settlement against Monsanto, the Alameda County workers who are tasked with spraying this poison are also at great risk. And in this moment of severe climate disruption, why would Alameda County continue to spray RoundUp directly into the waterways of the Bay???

Let’s follow the lead of our indigenous elders who are leading this fight to force Alameda County to stop using glyphosates. Goats are being used by the county already with great results, at a comparable financial expense. Let’s have Alameda County join the dozens and dozens of cities and countries who have banned glyphosates, and help inspire other cities and counties throughout the U.S. to follow suit!

We’re still playing every Monday that it doesn’t rain!

Occupella organizes informal public singing at Bay Area occupation sites, marches and at BART stations. We sing to promote peace, justice, and an end to corporate domination, especially in support of the Occupy movement.

Music has the power to build spirit, foster a sense of unity, convey messages and emotions, spread information, and bring joy to participants and audience alike. See spirited clip of an action at BART. Check out the actions calendar and come add your voice. There are lots of ways to participate and everyone is welcome.

Next Organizers’ Meeting: Come Get Involved in the Effort to Create a Regional Public Bank!

Working Group Meetings:

Some of our working groups meet between organizers’ meetings, and others just confer by phone and email. You can plug into any one of these:

• Outreach to Organizations
• Outreach to Individuals
• Digital Outreach
• Advocacy (working with politicians)
• Governance
• California Public Banking Alliance
• Operations

Just send us a note and we’ll help you get connected to the work you want to do.

The Advocacy Working Group meets with public officials, government staff and other stakeholders to learn what they can teach us about integrating a public bank into existing systems, and to convince them to support our bank. Drop us a note (contact@friendsofpublicbankofoakland.org) if you want to participate.  Read a report on a recent Sacramento lobbying and public testimony outing.

The Outreach Working Group needs organizers, and people to staff tables and talk to folks about public banking. Send us a note at contact@friendsofpublicbankofoakland.org if you can help.

The ad hoc Governance Working Group is working on updating our governance plan in light of new information. Drop us a note at contact@friendsofpublicbankofoakland.org if you want to be part of this effort.

In the way of all things in springtime, we want to engage what is emerging around us and begin to assess where we need to be in the months to come. You’re invited to join us for a “What’s Next for OJC” conversation. The focus of this meeting will be the beginning of our engagement around these questions:

1. What is my individual capacity for future work in this coalition? What is my organization’s interest in participating?
2. What is my individual capacity and interest in taking up organizing roles within OJC?
3. What commitment am I willing to make as an individual to organize to build OJC’s capacity in particular?
4. What is my comfort level with struggling together in the event that leadership develops work that may not always be in perfect alignment with all coalition partners?

RSVP to help us prepare

Snacks provided.
P.S. Copies of our platforms and other material will be available at the meeting. Contact info@oaklandjustice.org to get copies in advance.

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

In alliance with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) we organized the October 23, 2010 labor and community rally for Justice for Oscar Grant. On that day the ILWU shut down the Bay Area ports in solidarity. Our mission is to educate, organize and mobilize people against police and state repression. Sisters and brothers! The Oscar Grant Committee invites you to join us in this vital struggle.

We meet on the 1^st Monday of each month
You can join our discussion list by sending a blank (doesn’t even need a subject) email to

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Our monthly member meeting is tonight! Join us for a conversation with council member Nikki Bas and a delicious dinner from #7flavors. Can't wait to see you there! pic.twitter.com/ka432Yk5mE

— Ella Baker Center (@ellabakercenter) April 3, 2019

RACHEL KLEINFELD at Books Inc. Berkeley

Senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Rachel Kleinfeld discusses her comprehensive work, A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security.

The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political conflict, corruption, and state brutality. Such devastating violence can feel hopeless, yet some places–from Colombia to the Republic of Georgia–have been able to recover.

In this powerfully argued and urgent book, Rachel Kleinfeld examines why some democracies, including our own, are crippled by extreme violence and how they can regain security. Drawing on fifteen years of study and firsthand field research–interviewing generals, former guerrillas, activists, politicians, mobsters, and law enforcement in countries around the world–Kleinfeld tells the stories of societies that successfully fought seemingly ingrained violence and offers penetrating conclusions about what must be done to build governments that are able to protect the lives of their citizens.

Taking on existing literature and popular theories about war, crime, and foreign intervention, A Savage Order is a blistering yet inspiring investigation into what makes some countries peaceful and others war zones, and a blueprint for what we can do to help.

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

As the United States continues to tear-gas and imprison asylum seekers on the U.S.-Mexico border, we wonder why so many Hondurans are fleeing their homeland, now one of the most violent countries in the world due to a devastating drug war and a political crisis stemming largely from a U.S.-backed coup. Dana Frank’s powerful narrative recounts the tumultuous time in Honduras that witnessed then-President Manuel Zelaya overthrown in 2009. Told through first-person experiences layered with deeper political analysis, this narrative weaves together two perspectives; first, the broad picture of Honduras since the coup, including the coup itself and its continuation in two repressive regimes; secondly, the evolving Honduran resistance movement, plus an emerging solidarity movement in the United States.

While full of disturbing incidents, this narrative directly counters mainstream media coverage that portrays Honduras as a pit of unrelenting awfulness, in which powerless sobbing mothers cry over bodies in the morgue. Rather, it’s about sobering challenges and the inspiring collective strength with which people can face them.

Dana Frank, Professor of History Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of Baneras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America. Since the 2009 military coup her articles about human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras have appeared in The Nation, New York Times, Politico Magazine, Foreign Affairs.com, The Baffler, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and many other publications, and she has testified before both the US Congress and Canadian Parliament.

Diana Martinez is a native of El Salvador. She graduated from medical school in Mexico City and worked as a community doctor in rural Mexico. Later she served in the conflict zones as part of the liberation movement during the war in El Salvador. Subsequently Diana returned to academics to study public health and demographic sciences. After doing a fellowship at UCSF, she coordinated innovative research in health literacy, reproductive health, pesticide exposure, and chronic disease among Latino immigrants and farm workers across California. Through her use of multimedia in public health education interventions, Diana became passionate about radio production. She graduated from the KPFA Apprenticeship program and has since been involved at the station as a producer for more than ten years. Currently she is KPFA’s senior producer for Letters and Politics.

KPFA benefit

Attend one of the 300 actions around the country demanding that Barr immediately release the full Mueller report and underlying evidence.

Last night, Donald Trump’s hand-picked attorney general, William Barr, missed the deadline set by Congress to release the full Mueller report.

That’s why tomorrow, Thursday, April 4 at nearly 300 events around the country the Nobody Is As Above the Law coalition is joining together to demand that Barr immediately release the full report and supporting evidence.

Click here to check out a map of the actions and RSVP to join a “Release The Report” event near you tomorrow, Thursday, April 4.

As Rachel Maddow reported live on her show Monday night, these #ReleaseTheReport actions will be critical to getting the backs of congressional Democrats who are subpoenaing the full report and underlying evidence and pushing back against Barr and Trump’s stonewalling.

We’ll be gathering with friends and neighbors to hold signs, chant, grab local and national media attention, and amplify our demand that Barr to release the report – and that Congress to use all its power to obtain the full report if Barr fails to act.

Relevant Agenda Items

4. 5:15pm: Federal Task Force Transparency Ordinance – OPD – presentation of inaugural annual report for FBI/JTTF, review and take possible action.

5. 5:25pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Automated License Plate Reader Anticipated Impact Report and draft Use Policy – review and take possible action.

6. 6:00pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Remote Camera Impact Report and draft use Policy – review and take possible action.

7. 6:20pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – UC Berkeley/Steve Trush – Review of Surveillance Acquisition Technology Questionnaire revisions

8. 6:50pm: Review of Old Business and take possible action
a. City Attorney opinion re applicability of SB 1160 (BART jammer bill) to cell-site simulator use
b. City Attorney opinion re applicability of SB 178 (CalECPA) to cell-site simulator use (PC 1546.2 notice provision)

EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Elisabeth Jay Friedman to discuss her new book Seeking Rights From the Left: Gender, Sexuality and the Latin American Pink Tide, on Thursday, April 4 at 7pm. She will be joined in conversation by C.S. Soong.

Seeking Rights from the Left offers a unique comparative assessment of left-leaning Latin American governments by examining their engagement with feminist, women’s, and LGBT movements and issues. Focusing on the “Pink Tide” in eight national cases–Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela–the contributors evaluate how the Left addressed gender- and sexuality-based rights through the state. Most of these governments improved the basic conditions of poor women and their families. Many significantly advanced women’s representation in national legislatures. Some legalized same-sex relationships and enabled their citizens to claim their own gender identity. They also opened opportunities for feminist and LGBT movements to press forward their demands. But at the same time, these governments have largely relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power, ignoring or rejecting the more challenging elements of a social agenda and engaging in strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights. Moreover, the comparative examination of such rights arenas reveals that the Left’s more general political and economic projects have been profoundly, if at times unintentionally, informed by traditional understandings of gender and sexuality.

Contributors: Sonia E. Alvarez, Mar a Constanza Diaz, Rachel Elfenbein, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Niki Johnson, Victoria Keller, Edurne Larracoechea Bohigas, Amy Lind, Marlise Matos, Shawnna Mullenax, Ana Laura Rodr guez Gust , Diego Sempol, Constanza Tabbush, Gwynn Thomas, Catalina Trebisacce, Annie Wilkinson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elisabeth Jay Friedman is Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at the University of San Francisco and the author of several books, including Interpreting the Internet: Feminist and Queer Counterpublics in Latin America.

C.S. Soong is co-host and producer of Against the Grain, a thrice-weekly program on KPFA-FM that highlights progressive and radical thinking and activism.