Since November of 2018, there have been weekly protests, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of people, from students to housewives to workers to retirees, angry at the high cost of living and the government’s policies.
Come and hear a presentation by Camille Chauchat, a French school teacher and an activist with the Fraction L’Etincelle in the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) and participant in the Yellow Vest Movement in Lyons, France.

EastSide Arts Alliance, the Global Uchinanchu Alliance (GUA) and the Okinawa Kenjinkai Study Group (OKSG) present:
Final Fridays Films of Solidarity & Resistance
“Our Island’s Treasure”

film screening, Q and A with the filmmaker, and yuntaku/talk story

Have you heard about what’s been going on in Henoko, Okinawa? What is #RiseForHenoko? Maybe you’ve heard about how local residents have been protesting the building of a new U.S. military base in Oura Bay? The ongoing landfill work to create this base is destroying thousand-year-old coral reef structures, and threatens the aquatic life in the bay, including the Dugong, a manatee-like marine mammal that is close to extinction.

Maybe you’ve heard about the February 2019 Okinawan prefectural referendum, where 71.7% of Okinawans voted in opposition to the new base? Despite the democratic opposition of the indigenous Okinawans, the Japanese government continues to push forward with the land reclamation process.

A lack of U.S. media attention has meant that most people in the United States don’t know about the social and environmental crisis in Okinawa that worsens every day. Teenaged filmmaker Kaiya Yonamine created a documentary this year to shed light on what’s going on. She explains on her website, https://www.riseforhenoko.com:

My name is Kaiya, and I am a 17-year old Okinawan-American high school student from Portland, Oregon. I recently went back to Henoko this spring because I was frustrated with the silence of the media around this crisis.

I wanted to make a documentary to show the world what’s happening. My documentary, “Our Island’s Treasure,” focuses on the current destruction of the beautiful Okinawan ocean in Henoko and the fight by native Uchinanchu people to protect it. Please help spread awareness.

FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival

The Teachers’ Protest – 2019 (78 min.) Directed by Jon Seal (UK)

1942. Occupied Norway. Teachers must join the Nazi Teachers’ League and teach Nazi ideas in their classrooms. 8,000 of them write protest letters. They are threatened with salary withdrawal and the sack. Still they refuse. In a desperate attempt to break them, the Nazi government arrests 1000 male teachers and sends them to prison camps, 300 miles above the Arctic Circle. The education system is in chaos and now the battle begins.

The Teachers’ Protest is an opportunity to learn about one of the most remarkable stories of passive resistance in World War Two – a story unknown outside of Norway. The documentary brings these events to an international audience through the memories of those involved in the protest. The drawings of Herlov Åmland, made in the terrible conditions of the Arctic prison camp, are brought to life through animation and become the dramatic heart. The Teachers’ Protest tells us how ordinary people stood up to horrific oppression in an extra ordinary way. Sadly, it is as relevant today as ever.

This feature length documentary uses interviews, archive footage, and the fascinating animation of original drawings to tell the teachers’ story to an international audience for the first time.

For those hungering for a plan, a scheme, a scenario, an idea that could draw together the centrifugal factional interests of the left [see Doonesbury for 7/21/19: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2019/07/21] to form a concentrated, transformative movement, make time this Saturday morning to come on a free weekly walking tour that serves up a candidate plan for the task.

The Commons SF proposes, in the course of a tour of San Francisco social movement history, that treating planet Earth as a commonwealth can very well operate as a unifying principle for environmentalists, Labor advocates, socialist dreamers, poverty-busters, gender and race identity politics activists, and other niche lefties.

The walk builds upon the hypothesis that all oppressed and marginalized people seek “security in geography” (safety and stability in location) to argue for consensus that the privatization of of the economic value of “location, location, location” disrupts class solidarity, environmental integrity (and responsibility), and the conceptualization of universal equality of humanity. Further, and positively, specific public policy is proposed.

Advisory: this walk is heavy on details, eschewing vague generalities, and is therefore provocative and unnerving for those owning real estate.

Note: this walk will be offered to Libertarians, anti-Big government rhetoricians, Free Market haranguers, Republicans, and others next week. Treating land as a common wealth is a unifying principle for all people.

For more info: http://www.TheCommonsSF.org

You’re invited to the Reel Stories June Film Festival!

July 27th location is the California Theater, 2113 Kittredge, Berkeley, CA.

Reel Stories teaches young women and non-binary youth ages 12-18 how to create a film in only 10 days.  Institute and Beginner 1 filmmakers are debuting their films June 29th. Join us for the Reel Stories Film Festival and support the next generation of filmmakers!

Reel Stories believes that when women and non-binary people are better represented behind the scenes in the media, they will be better reflected on the screen. Reel Stories is a non-profit Oakland-based organization that empowers young women and non-binary people with the skills to create their own media, to view current media critically and thoughtfully, and to aspire to leadership in their field.

More info and tickets here.

Oakland 1946 General Strike Walk

With Gifford Hartman of the Flying Picket Historical Society.

This year is the 73rd anniversary of the Oakland General Strike. This walk will revisit the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday” that spontaneously began with rank-and-file solidarity with the striking, mostly women retail clerks at Kahn’s and Hastings department stores, where picket lines were broken by police-escorted scabs.

Within 24 hours, it involved over 100,000 workers and shut down nearly all commerce in the East Bay for 54 hours. In 1946 there were six general strikes across the U.S.; that year set the all-time record year for strikes and work stoppages. The Oakland “Work Holiday” was the last general strike to ever occur in the U.S. This walk and history talk will attempt to keep alive the memory of this tradition of community-wide working class solidarity.

Anarchist gathering 2019! Featuring speakers, poets, workshops, a fashion show, bands, and more!

Workshop- “What We Can Learn From Other Movements”: Images and stories of the Black Panther Party in South Berkeley by Billy X Jennings from 4pm-5pm

An exploration of the situation in Cuba today, speakers to include Tony Ryan, founder of the Turquino Project, and Steve Wasserman, publisher and executive director of Heyday Books. Tony Ryan will moderate.

Join 350 Bay Area for an interactive, informative, and just plain fun afternoon celebrating its community of esteemed members, volunteers and donors.

Activities include:

• Picking up your FREE T-SHIRT (must RSVP for this) – These shirts help us find each other at events and send the message that we are united in our concern and determination.  They are great conversation starters about the urgent climate situation we find ourselves in.
• Chalk art contest.
• Making activist art to use at events.
• Chatting with fellow climate activists about how we go forward.
• Chilling under our EZ up and/or in hammocks.
• Snacking on chips and dip – Bring a chip or dip if you like (vegan or vegetarian items only).  But picnic planners will provide a lot, so feel free to just bring yourself and friends.

Anarchist gathering 2019! Featuring speakers, poets, workshops, a fashion show, bands, and more!

Workshop- “What We Can Learn From Other Movements”: Images and stories of the Black Panther Party in South Berkeley by Billy X Jennings from 4pm-5pm

“We cannot heal what we will not face”

On May 21, 1998, President Suharto of Indonesia resigned after 32 years in power. The events leading up to that day are complicated. There was an economic crisis. There was a student movement. There was a contested election. And there were riots, killings, and mass rapes of Chinese Indonesian women. To this day, nobody has been held accountable. A whole generation has grown up in ignorance of these events. Chinese Whispers seeks to challenge that ignorance.

Screening and discussion with the lead artist, Rani Pramesti, facilitated by National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence (NAPIESV).

This event is supported by Oakland Asian Cultural Center, National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence (NAPIESV), Banteay Srei, Center for Asian American Media, APEX Express, Design Action Collective.

“We would like to respectfully acknowledge that this event takes place on the lands of the Ohlone People.”