The Sheriff wants to build a new $55 million jail expansion at Santa Rita for treating mentally ill inmate.  It needs to be stopped in its tracks and the money redirected to mental health treatment outside of jail.

We’ve got some momentum to re-invigorate and have a lot to discuss with the decarceration plan. Here a tentative agenda for 7/28, feel free to add additional items by directly replying to me.

• Check in
• What’s happening, what’s coming up in the community
• LeeLoo Update
• Individual and org commitments
• Shared leadership structure and coalition admin.
  • agenda setting
  • meeting location
  • facilitation
  • meeting frequency
  • listservs
• Decarceration Plan

Join us for a town hall- let’s win 1400 jobs. It’s time for Alameda County to act by employing people impacted by the criminal justice system and youth in the school-to-prison pipline.

Pre-Registration form: http://bit.ly/jobs4freedom

The demand for justice is happening and needs you!

Breaking Through Concrete – An Arts & Activism celebration

This is a celebration. This is a gathering of local organizations and artist from impacted communities on the front lines of oil refineries, coal and oil train fights, displacement and gentrification. We will showcase artist who are exploring the impact of interconnected social and environmental justice issues that threaten the health and safety of our communities and our future, and offering solutions. Come and celebrate our resilience, our creativity, and our power.

This FREE, All ages, event features speakers, performance artists, musicians, and poets such as:

David Solnit (Artist in Residence for 350 Bay Area)
AshEl SeasunZ (Earth Amplified & Hip-Hop is Green)
Khafre James (Hip Hop For Change)
Desarie Harp (Wappo Native Performer)
Ajman (Black Men Determination Project)
DJ Davey D (KPFA: Hard Knock Radio)
Aimee Suzara (Filipino-American poet, performer, educator)

Sponsors:
• Stand (formerly ForestEthics)
• Communities for a Better Environment
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Islam today is the world’s second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith, discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims. A Jihad for Love was filmed in 12 countries and 9 languages and comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, it reclaims the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, whose true meaning is akin to ‘an inner struggle’ or ‘to strive in the path of God’ – allowing its remarkable subjects to move beyond the narrow concept of Jihad as holy war.

Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Ctee as part of our Conscientious Projector series.

In December, The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to reject state funding for the construction of a new jail in San Francisco. This decision is due to years of community organizing demanding more community resources that are accessible outside of cages. Currently, the city is convening various community stakeholders, with SF Department of Public Health and the Sheriff’s Office, to re-envision replacing the current jail. This city work group is now meeting monthly to decide what kinds of alternatives to incarceration can be built in SF, such as more funding for mental health and substance abuse services, more funding allocated to community based organizations, and the creation of affordable housing.

This month, as a member of the No New SF Jail Coalition, CUAV is inviting members of the LGBTQ community and allies to speak out for community based solutions, not incarceration. CUAV has long understood that practices of policing and incarceration are steeped in discrimination that most heavily impacts LGBTQ communities at the intersections of race, gender, and poverty since our founding in 1979. Because we know jails are inherently unsafe for anyone, especially queer and trans people, this Pride month we ask you to let the city of San Francisco know that Pride is not just a party, but a time to demand the end of state violence against queer and trans people.

Come out this Friday to this month’s meeting at DPH to express your fabulous dreams of what SF could look like if it invests in the wellness of our most marginalized communities rather than cages to lock people away!

#NoPrideInCages
#SolutionsNotSurveillance
#ComeOutAgainstCages

Take a look at No New SF Jail Coalition’s “8 Guiding Steps Towards Ending Jail” to give you inspiration! https://nonewsfjail.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/eightsteps/

Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to survivors and victims of violence and police terror in Oakland.

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.

May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, 1-5pm

Using news photographs, memorabilia, reconstructed objects, documentary fragments, and original documents, contemporary artist Kate Haug re-tells the story of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last monumental social protest prior to his assassination. The exhibition features images and objects culled from Haug’s extensive research in the archives of the Associated Press, the popular press, and eBay, which have not been seen together before, bringing to life the complex ambition of King’s vision.

King began organizing the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) in 1967 to unify America’s poor across class rather than racial lines, believing that economic parity was key to African American equality within the United States. The PPC culminated with a 3,000 person shanty town named Resurrection City, constructed on the National Mall in Washington DC. Resurrection City drew people from all over the country, was the nineteen sixties version of the 1932 Bonus March and a predecessor to “Occupy”. The exhibition time frame for this show mirrors many of the actual dates of the campaign, tracing the Resurrection City’s opening day to its final destruction.

The PPC echoes aspects of current social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fight for Fifteen, and Our Walmart. In San Francisco, a city with one the highest rates of income inequality in the United States, King’s work asks pointed questions about the contemporary social contract and the democratic promise of America.

News Today: A History of the Poor People’s Campaign in Real Time runs from April 9, 2016 to June 25, 2016.

Gallery Talks:
Sat May 14, 2pm:
Justin Gomer Ph.D., Lecturer, American Studies, UC Berkeley
A discussion of the images in News Today as they relate to the shifting political landscape in the years after 1968.

Sat May 21, 2pm:
E.C. Feiss, Ph.D. Student, Art History, UC Berkeley
The Politics of Display

The next general meeting of the Oakland Justice Coalition. Join us to talk politics in Oakland, endorsements, campaigns, elections, ballot initiatives, canvassing, the Renters’ crisis in Oakland and next steps.

Come learn about the candidates we have or soon will be endorsing in races for school board and City Council.  Come learn what you can do to join the fight for a fair and just Oakland for workers, renters, homeowners and the homeless, school parents and school kids.

Directions:  go directly across 14th St. from City Hall at the crosswalk, continue in about 20 yards, it’s the building diagonally to your left.

Inspired by Naomi Klein’s bestseller, this uplifting documentary portrays communities throughout the world living on the edge of climate change. Communities like West Oakland, now threatened by coal.

Please join the discussion at the end of the film.

Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio will speak at the Post Salon Community Assembly about the actions the city is taking on the Community Assembly’s 12 proposals as well as other actions of the city during Oakland’s 90-day Housing State of Emergency.

URGENT – HELP KEEP GAINS OF OAKLAND EMERGENCY HOUSING MORATORIUM

The Post Salon Community Assembly (with other local organizations) won a housing state of emergency that has lasted for the past two months. This ordinance has stopped hundreds and perhaps thousands of Oakland renters from having their rent raised above 1.7 percent (per year) and has prevented evictions without cause. But the ordinance ends on July 5. The Post Salon Community Assembly wants the city to take steps that will permanently protect the 60% of Oakland renters who typically earn less than $40,000 a year.

COME TO THE POST SALON TO DIALOGUE WITH CITY ADMINISTRATION ABOUT HOW TO MAKE THE GAINS OF THE EMERGENCY HOUSING MORATORIUM PERMANENT. (The Salon will also hear a brief report on the Police Commission initiative)

In March 2016, a delegation of 19 former prisoners, Black Panthers, activists and scholars convened by Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, professor at San Francisco State University, visited Palestine. This was the first U.S. delegation to focus specifically on political imprisonment and solidarity between Palestinian and U.S. prisoners.

Join us for slides, stories, reflections and discussion. With:

Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture, Black Panther Party, Rabab Abdulhadi, Professor, San Francisco State University, and other delegation members.

Oakland’s rents are rising faster than almost every city in the United States creating a displacement crisis that touches all of our communities.  The crisis has particular negative impacts on Black residents that manifest in lack of access to quality housing, jobs, and education, as well as increased racialized profiling.

Meanwhile, the Oakland Police continue to be out of control.

STOP the hemorrhaging of severely impacted populations.

STAY – Retain current & long-time residents of Oakland.

EXPAND opportunities for displaced persons to return to the City.

and put the Oakland Police under civilian control.

The Week of Action is Supported by: ACCE Action, Anti-Police Terror Project (APTP), Community Ready Corps (CRC) and East Bay Organizing Committee (EBOC, Fight 4 $15).

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly meets every Sunday at 4 PM at Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater at 14th Street & Broadway near the steps of City Hall. If it is raining (as in RAINING, not just misting) at 4:00 PM we meet in the basement of the Omni Collective, 4799 Shattuck Ave., Oakland.  On every last Sunday we meet a little earlier at 3 PM to have a community potluck to which all are welcome.

OO General Assembly has met on a continuous basis for over four years! Our General Assembly is a participatory gathering of Oakland community members and beyond, where everyone who shows up is treated equally . Our Assembly and the process we have collectively cultivated strives to reach agreement while building community.

At the GA committees, caucuses, and loosely associated groups whose representatives come voluntarily report on past and future actions, with discussion. We encourage everyone participating in the Occupy Oakland GA to be part of at least one associated group, but it is by no means a requirement. If you like, just come and hear all the organizing being done! Occupy Oakland encourages political activity that is decentralized and welcomes diverse voices and actions into the movement.

General Assembly Standard Agenda

1. Welcome & Introductions
2. Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
3. Announcements
4. (Optional) Discussion Topic

Occupy Oakland activities and contact info for some Bay Area Groups with past or present Occupy Oakland members.

Occupy Oakland Web Committee: (web@occupyoakland.org)
Strike Debt Bay Area : strikedebtbayarea.tumblr.com
Berkeley Post Office Defenders:http://berkeleypostofficedefenders.wordpress.com/
Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice:https://www.facebook.com/ABC4JUSTICE
Oakland Privacy Working Group:https://oaklandprivacy.wordpress.com
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
Bay Area AntiRepression: antirepression@occupyoakland.org
Biblioteca Popular: http://tinyurl.com/mdlzshy
Interfaith Tent: www.facebook.com/InterfaithTent
Port Truckers Solidarity: oaklandporttruckers.wordpress.com
Bay Area Intifada: bayareaintifada.wordpress.com
Transport Workers Solidarity: www.transportworkers.org
Fresh Juice Party (aka Chalkupy) freshjuiceparty.com/chalkupy-gallery
Sudo Room: https://sudoroom.org
Omni Collective: https://omnicommons.org/
First They Came for the Homeless: https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-they-came-for-the-homeless/253882908111999
Sunflower Alliance: http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/
Bay Area Public School: http://thepublicschool.org/bay-area

San Francisco based groups:
Occupy Bay Area United: www.obau.org
Occupy Forum: (see OBAU above)
San Francisco Projection Department: http://tinyurl.com/kpvb3rv

Candlelight Vigil for #Orlando in #Oakland tonight. 8-10pm #OGP 14th & Broadway. Please bring items for an altar. pic.twitter.com/CnruKCB6YH

— Bri. (@zuchinno) June 12, 2016

Beloved Ones, the times are urgent and we must remember to love and hold one another. With the recent pains of the Orlando Massacre, we are reminded of the dangers that LGBTQI family members face every day.

I will be holding space at Henry J Kaiser Memorial Park for those who need a hug, a listening ear, a smudging, an energetic cleansing. Stop by to grieve, to ground for a moment of silence, to drum, to sing a mourning song. We will send metta and lovingkindness to our relations in Orlando who are suffering. Bring an item for the #LGBTQI altar if you feel called to do so.

Even if you cannot join us, please join us from wherever you are, in sending metta and prayers to the community in Orlando, and the family and friends of loved ones lost in this senseless and violent act. Feel free to share this invitation with others who may want to attend.

Come find me near the tree and “The Remember Them: Champions for Humanity Monument” in the park.

With all my love, Brenda

P.S. No charge. This is a love offering to community, and donations will be accepted but are not necessary. ♥ Please feel free to share with LGBTQI friends who may be needing energetic support at this time.

P.S.S. If you are a healer I know, and want to also offer support please private message me. Let’s offer space and healing to community together.

Join the E12th Coalition and friends for a week of:
• Black & Brown liberation
• Decolonization
• People’s sovereignty
• Hella good food
• A right to housing
• Art, short films, comedy, land, and more!!

Free food and short films each evening, M–Thu.
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MONDAY: 6:30pm – 9:00pm

Honor This Land

Food, discussion, mindfully being with the land, and themes of decolonization from Huichin (Oakland) to Palestine. Screening of the trailer of “Beyond Recognition,” on Ohlone organizing to reclaim stewardship over their sacred sites and traditional homeland, here in the Bay Area.
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TUESDAY: 6:30pm–9:00pm

Black & Brown Unity

Drumming & healing circle with Maestro Arturo Carrillo, Black & Brown communities sharing a meal, sharing space, and discussing how to get free together in the face of legacies of trauma, violence, evictions, policing, and systems that pit us against one another. Affirming one another’s beauty and indispensable value to liberation. And screening the trailer of comedian Sampson McCormick’s “A Tough Act To Follow.”
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WEDNESDAY: 6:30pm–9:00pm

Building Our Visions

Highlighting visionary projects like Homefulness, POC Sustainable Housing Network, Sustainable Economies Law Center, La Biblioteca, Afrikatown / Qilombo, and more. While the Planning Commission rubber-stamps a segregated luxury tower (with objection from our few yet wonderful allies on the commission), we stay steadfast on the People’s Visions.
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THURSDAY: 6:30pm–9:00pm

Healing

Blessed with an abundance of local healing pracitioners in so many modalities, we assert the right of people and land to Heal. Herbal pain patches from Shift Acupuncture Collective; Danza Azteca with CuauhTonal; South African songs with the Vukani Mawethu choir; free food, and more.
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FRIDAY: 3:00–4:00pm

Rally & March Kickoff with #StopStayExpand

“WE DEMAND immediate protections for renters, redirecting City money to protect low wage workers & public education around connection between police terror, displacement and the impact on our schools/young people!”

More info on the Week of Action to ReClaim Oakland:
https://www.facebook.com/events/504950389694691/

By ANDREA PRICHETT

So it has been more than three years since Kayla was killed by Berkeley police. And yes, I believe that she was killed by the police. Perhaps unintentionally, but with an arrogance that should be considered criminal nonetheless: they killed her. Six cops participated in the killing of Kayla Moore. This transgender, African American woman who weighed almost 350 pounds, found herself underneath about 1,200 pounds of agitated police. By the time they got off of her enough to realize that she wasn’t breathing, it had also become clear that none of them would put their mouths to hers to offer CPR and assisted breathing.

So now these cops are going to go on trial in October as part of a civil lawsuit. There is no telling how much of the treatment she received from BPD had to do with her race, her gender identity, her size or her disability. But we know that her life was devalued by those officers to the point where they stopped listening to her. One officer characterized the sound of her last words as “verbiage” that he had learned not to hear.

JOIN THE NEXT ORGANIZING MEETING

Next meeting is June 13, and the following on June 27