Calendar

BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING:

WHERE

Join Zoom call with option for public speaking here. 

Update:  After an hour of staff presentations, questions from the Board of Directors, and 5 1/2 hours of impassioned public testimony, the Board lost its quorum and the clock ran out on the scheduled June vote on BAAQMD’s Rule 6-5.  It has been continued to July 21st at 8:30 AM.  There will be further opportunity for public comment, but those comments will be limited to 30 seconds, and only if you didn’t speak at the June 2nd meeting.

Previous action alert:

Join the Bay Area public in demanding that BAAQMD adopt the strictest refinery regulation of particulate matter emissions!

Last March, a majority of the BAAQMD Stationary Source Committee voted 7-4  to send the most stringent proposal for Rule 6.5*—a measure to reduce health-destroying particulate matter from the Chevron and Marathon refineries—to the full Board of Directors. The community turned out in force and made eloquent, persuasive comments in favor of the tightest possible regulation of Bay Area refinery particulate matter emissions, or PM 2.5, the primary cause of our “stationary” (non-transportation) air pollution–related illness. They demanded that these refineries install wet scrubbing technology in the chambers that break down heavy oils—the Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Units (FCCUs), or “cat crackers”—on the earliest feasible timeline, as recommended by BAAQMD’s own Advisory Board.

BAAQMD staff has been taking the indefensible position that oil companies’ costs outweigh the health benefits of wet scrubbing technology, already in place at Valero in Benicia as well as over half of U.S. refineries. They’ve  justified this stance by accepting industry’s extravagant cost claims and grossly underestimating the health consequences—asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease and stroke—borne primarily by low-income, Black, and Brown residents of frontline communities.

It’s clear that industry has been pulling out all the stops to prevent Board approval of the most health-protective standards: every union member (from unions opposing this rule) was instructed to call in to the June 2nd meeting and speak in opposition. This is wildly unprecedented. While this struggle is again being framed as the environment vs. jobs, what is not generally understood is that job loss in the fossil fuel industry is not driven by environmental regulations:  it’s market forces that are to blame.

Talking points here.

*See a detailed analysis of “Rule 6-5” and its potential to reduce enormous health impacts in this December post.

RSVP (scroll down)

If you love sci-fi, fantasy, and other speculative fiction, chances are you love futuristic world-building and supernatural elements. What if we made more space for daydreaming, re-imaginings, and inventions in the real world?

If our systems of law and property were designed around a flawed worldview of separation and dominance, then what does it look like if we rebuild them on a foundation of interdependence? Bring your imagination!

Sustainable Economies Law Center staff, interns, and partners will share about our on-the-ground work and visions for the future. We’ll also do some small group visioning and then turn our collective story about the future into a sci-non-fi blog post or video!

Guest Speakers:

Christopher J. Chew | Co-Director of Cooperative 4 the Community

Chris (they/them) was born and raised in Oakland, where they consumed a LOT of sci-fi and fantasy. They use their imagination to dream up unique solutions to the world’s problems. For example, when the Community Democracy Project needed a way to pay signature gatherers to help with the People’s Budget Amendment Campaign, Chris co-founded Cooperative 4 the Community to create the first worker-owned signature gathering firm.

Hope Williams | Co-Director and Legal Apprentice of Radical Real Estate Law School

Hope (she/her) is a legal apprentice at the Sustainable Economies Law Center! She is excited to finally begin her path to becoming an attorney advocate that helps black and brown marginalized communities. Devoted to housing rights and organizing people power to fight the oppressive white supremacist regime, Hope spends most of her time making sure that the law is accessible to the people.

Victoria Jin Yu | Member of the Community Democracy Project

Victoria (she/her) works at Design Action Collective and spends her free time reading/writing fantasy fiction and volunteering at the Community Democracy Project on a campaign to put the entire city budget in the hands of the people. Every other week, she combines those two passions and plays D&D with a group of Oakland activists, cooperators, and organizers.

Yeji Jung | Intern at the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Sustainable Economies Law Center

Yeji (she/they) is a Korean American immigrant woman continuously learning their histories and connecting with their ancestors. They connect the land struggle on the Korean peninsula to land struggles everywhere, especially where they reside, and join movements for liberation with a growing understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as environmental justice in the face of the global climate/capitalist crisis. They strive to show up for community in various roles, including artist, organizer, Korean political pungmul drummer, law student, and gardener learning Korean farming. At SELC, they are working with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust to support the rematriation of Lisjan Ohlone land.

Thirty years since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, awareness of disability rights, advocacy, and visibility has increased, yet there is still a long way to go toward equality and understanding. Examining the complexities of disability issues with wisdom, humor, and honesty, author and disability advocate Rebekah Taussig offers a roadmap for broadening our awareness and expanding our understanding to help build a more inclusive world.

Growing up as a paralyzed girl in the 1990s and early 2000s, Rebekah saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of these depictions felt right because none of them represented her lived experience-complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Rebekah seeks to normalize the lived experience of disabled persons while also advocating for improvements and a paradigm shift-something that we all play a necessary part in. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another.

We need more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity and in Rebekah’s latest book, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, she challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we build a more radically inclusive future together.

Join Rebekah in conversation as she talks about her book, her life and her work, and challenges us to work together to build a more inclusive world.

Your donation helps offset the costs of producing events like these, and allows us to offer them for free to those who cannot give at this time. Click the button below to register and donate.

Register

Register
7/23 Fukushima, The Pandemic & Olympics On The Opening Of the Olympics

http://www.laborfest.net
July 23 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm PST free

The plans by the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese Suga government to go ahead with the Olympics in the middle of a pandemic could create a new virus according to Japanese scientists. It also takes place with the government threatening to release over 1 million tons of radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean and the failure to remove the melted nuclear rods from the reactor 10 years after the meltdown.

This panel and discussion will look at the business and corruption of the Olympics, and how it now could lead to a health-care disaster as Japanese hospitals are already overloaded with Covid patients. Even the health-care and doctors union is demanding that the Olympics be canceled.

Speakers:
Professor Geoge Wright, An expert on the history of the Olympics
Tsukuru Fors, Pacific Asian Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance
Seto Tadashi, International Secretary/Doro Chiba Support International Committee
Chizu Hamada, NoNukes Action Committee
Louis Carlet, Tokyo General Union Founder of TOZEN & Teacher
and others

Assuming it is open, we will be meeting in-person at our old haunt, the OMNI, and, as an experiment, with a Zoom live link for those who can’t be there physically.  Check back here a few days before the event to insure the availability of the OMNI, otherwise we will meet again solely online.

Due to the exponential growth of Delta COVID in Alameda County we will still be meeting online in July.  The August meeting may be held dually online and at the OMNI Commons.
Stay tuned!

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com for up-to-date status and the online invite.

Our current topic is degrowth. Our book is Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide, by Liegey and Nelson, available from its publisher Pluto Press and elsewhere, including Amazon.  We will be reading the first half of the book this month, constituting the first three chapters, through page 85 of the paper back edition, and the second half of the book for our August meeting.

“A sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism, and the degrowth movement is bursting into the mainstream. As climate catastrophe looms closer, people are eager to learn what degrowth is about, and whether we can save the planet by changing how we live. This book is an introduction to the movement. As politicians and corporations obsess over growth objectives, the degrowth movement demands that we must slow down the economy by transforming our economies, our politics and our cultures to live within the Earth’s limits. This book navigates the practice and strategies of the movement, looking at its strengths and weaknesses. Covering horizontal democracy, local economies and the reduction of work, it shows us why degrowth is a compelling and realistic project.”

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, and Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.

Register

During this virtual panel we will learn from movement organizers who are leading the way toward holistically safe schools to understand the themes emerging across North America when it comes to implementing policies and practices that are truly about police-free schools and the call for abolition. To be on the freedom side means that schools are rid of all forms of policing, recognizing its oppressive origins. We will identify and discuss how to eliminate new threats and challenges that are emerging at the local, state, and federal levels. Lastly, we will dream forward to the other side of a carceral state as we pose visions and strategies for community-rooted safety.

We invite you to join us, ask questions and be in community as we dive into this necessary conversation.

Come meet up with comrades at our first in-person night school since the pandemic. We’re exploring electoral politics and socialist governance. Reading Colin Hays survey of differing Marxist analyses of the State, a piece on Sewer Socialism, and an excerpt from “Outsider in the White House.”

Readings:

Marxism and the State

The Socialist Party and the Union in Milwaukee

Socialism in One City

Optional:

Philly DA

RSVP

Register

When EFF was founded on July 10, 1990, the early Internet was an extraordinary place burgeoning with possibilities. But for all the joy, creativity, and togetherness that this technology would help bring, EFF took root because even from those early days it was clear that powerful new digital tools could be used to hurt as well as to heal.

Join us for a live discussion and Q&A with EFF founders and early leaders: Esther Dyson, John Gilmore, Mitch Kapor, and Steve Wozniak. At this very special final EFF30 Fireside Chat, hear about EFF’s origin story, how drastically the digital world has changed since then, and the digital future these leaders still believe in.

Join Causa Justa :: Just Cause for our 10th Anniversary Virtual Event, Connect. Rise. Create: Celebrating Our Legacies, Forging Our Future. Celebrate 10 years of CJJC’s victories and growth and say farewell to our Executive Director Vanessa Moses as she transitions from CJJC after 15 years of leadership! Join community members, political leaders, and social justice organizers to enjoy a lively conversation with CJJC leaders past, present, and future, along with video tributes and special performances!

RSVP

Despite the many setbacks fueled by the plastics industry during the pandemic to halt forward momentum around reuse and reduction efforts, dozens of groundbreaking plastics policies have pushed through, sparking much hope in real solutions. With plastic production expected to grow 30% in the next five years, strong and comprehensive legislation that focuses on key issues in plastic and recycling industries is critical for historical and urgent shifts.

Join the Ecology Center and a cadre of plastics policy experts, leaders, and organizers for an informative and encouraging overview of the 2021 plastics policy agenda. Learn more about these new and improved bills as we breakdown how they address significant issues impacting the plastic crisis such as extended producer responsibility for packaging, reuse, deposit-return systems, and what’s new in the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. Panel discussion will be followed by a live audience Q&A.

OUR FEATURED SPEAKERS:

Kate Bailey, AMBR National Policy Coordinator & EcoCycle Policy Director

Heidi Sanborn, Chair of Cal Recycling Council and Executive Director at the National Stewardship Action Council

Heidi Obermeit, City of Berkeley Recycling Manager.

The event will be moderated by the Ecology Center’s Executive Director Martin Bourque and will include a live Q&A for the community to join in.

This is a free community event sponsored by the Ecology Center.

In the middle of a pandemic that is still killing our folks, straining our economy, & fueling divisions, our government is committed to policing-using COVID funds to cage us instead of care for us. Not sure where CARE funds are going where you live? #FollowTheMoney #CareNotCages pic.twitter.com/mHmiTEs0YZ

— Anti Police-Terror Project (@APTPaction) July 26, 2021

Picture a Bay Area free of fossil fuel infrastructure —no refineries, drilling, or tankers. Join the Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force to find out why that’s so crucial, and what we need to do to make it happen.

This is part of the second series of virtual summits hosted by the Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force, to be held on the third Friday of each month.

The Fossil Fuel Free Bay Area summit will include presentations and discussion of strategies to:

The DSA People’s Transit Alliance will be hosting our first in person social on August 31st from 1-4 PM at Snow Park, right next to Lake Merritt. Come spend the afternoon with us as we chop it up about socialism, transit, and enjoy a sunny summer afternoon. And yes… there will be snacks! We hope to see you there!

RSVP

Flyer

Health Care is a Human Right!  Join other single payer supporters at in Oakland at Lake Merritt Amphitheater,  on Medicare’s 56th birthday to call on Governor Newsom to deliver state single payer.

We are looking for advocates to come and engage with the public to build pressure on the Governor to keep his campaign promise to being single payer to California.  Informational materials will be provided.  Please join us! Check our event post for the most up to date information.

Contact Pat Snyder patsnydr@gmail.com if you can be there to help.