Calendar
Next Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting will be a critical one, on several fronts, for police accountability. Please make sure to attend and raise your voices for true change.
* One year after the police assault on demonstrators proclaiming Black Lives Matter, the Council will finally hear recommendations from the Police Review Commission investigation.
* Council will hold its annual vote on BPD agreements with law enforcement and military bodies. Community people are mobilizing to protest the relationships with NCRIC, the intelligence fusion center, and UASI, the funder of the militaristic Urban Shield exercise.
* Jesse Arreguin has placed a positive item on the agenda to move the City toward a new model of public safety.
If you participated in the December 2014 protests and felt your rights were violated—COME OUT DEC. 15!
If you disagree with Donald Trump and think Muslims and Arabs should not be treated like criminals because of their ethnicity and religion, COME TO COUNCIL!
If you or people you know have been racially profiled by the BPD—wwhich has now been substantiated by their own data–COME TO COUNCIL DEC. 15!
Details on apropos agenda items:
Item 34: Updates on Police and Community Relations Referrals
From: Councilmember Arreguin
Recommendation: Schedule a worksession on April 26, 2016 for staff to update City Council on the progress of the referrals approved at the February 24, 2015 Council meeting regarding Police and Community Relations.
Consent calendar
Item 39: Agreements, With Other Law Enforcement Agencies, Police Departments or Private Security Organization (Continued from December 1, 2015)
Attachment 1, Exhibit A
From: City Manager
Recommendation: Conduct a public hearing, and at the conclusion of the hearing, adopt a Resolution approving agreements, understandings or policies existing or revised as of July 15, 2015 between the Berkeley Police Department and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, military and/or intelligence agencies, police departments and private security organizations in order to maintain the current level of police resources and emergency services. Review attached Suspicious Activity Reports and Mutual Aid requests/responses provided annually as per City Council request.
Action calendar
Item 40:
a. Report of Investigation Into the Police Department Response to Protests on December 6, 2014 (Continued from December 1, 2015)
From: Police Review Commission
Recommendation:
1. Accept the PRC’s investigative report into the BPD’s response to the protests of December 6, 2014; and
2. Refer the report to the City Manager for implementation of the recommendations
Financial Implications: Unknown
Contact: Katherine Lee, Commission Secretary, 981-4950
b. Response to PRC Report on BPD Response to December 6 Protests, Revision of Police Crowd Management Policies(Continued from December 1, 2015)
From: City Manager
Recommendation: Direct the City Manager to have the Berkeley Police Department collaborate with the Police Review Commission to further develop mutually agreed upon revisions to the Berkeley Police Department’s policies and procedures regarding response to protest activity and to report back to the Council within 180 days for an update.
Action calendar
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Many other critical items are also on the agenda, including implementation of Homeless Task Force Tier One Recommendations, Living Wage for City Employees, Eviction Prevention, Affordable Housing Plan, Worker Co-ops; and from Peace and Justice: Prosecution of John Yoo, Haitian Family Reunification Program, Support for Indigenous Peoples in Berkeley, and End Drone Warfare.
The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club has scheduled an emergency meeting.
The panel includes Xiomara Castro of Citizens Trade Campaign[www.citizenstrade.org] and Suzanne York of the Sierra Club. There will be time for questions and a discussion of effective responses. Refreshments will be provided, but there will be no potluck at this meeting. You do not have to be a member or a Democrat to attend.
Showdown at the Air District
SAVE THE DATE!
This is it, folks—the adoption hearing on Air District Staff’s deeply flawed refinery emission regulations. We are bitterly disappointed that voting members of the Board have been promised, and repeatedly denied, any real opportunity to consider a viable alternative that would actually cap greenhouse gases and their co-pollutants and keep tar sands out of the Bay Area. This is KXL 2.0.
Climate activists, forget Paris. Our real struggle is here.
Come prepared to deliver one- or two-minute testimony. And watch this space for talking points and further info.
Everybody needs to show up. Numbers count.
Agenda:
1. Re-cap of meetings w/Monitor, Dan Kalb and Rebecca Kaplan
2. Strategic analysis for 2016: Council votes vs signature collection
3. Budget/infrastructure/501 c 4/fundraising: what must we do to succeed?
4. Voting procedures moving forward: how we will make decisions in 2016.
5. Political analysis (mapping): please read the attached poll that was conducted. Pay close attention to the differences from district to district on key issues.
We will be doing an interactive mapping session that identifies our supporters, our opponents and those that are somewhere in between. We will identify groups that we need to outreach to and start to develop our outreach strategy for 2016.
6. Kick off fundraising event: January 23 7:00 PM Eastside Cultural Alliance
Poetry for the People- curated by Cat Brooks.
Mobilization – outreach-publicity: all hands needed on deck!!!
7. Announcements: Feel free to bring some holiday treats to share!!!
Our weekly meeting to get this hackerspace together, to provide a venue for those things that otherwise cannot be worked out through day-to-day practice.
Potluck! (optional) – bring your own tasty dish!
Monthly APTP meeting, held on every 3rd Wednesday of the month.
The Anti Police-Terror Project is a project of the ONYX ORGANIZING COMMITTEE that in coalition with other organizations like The Alan Blueford Center For Justice, Idriss Stelley Foundation, Community Ready Corps and Workers World is working to develop a replicable and sustainable model to end police terrorism in this country.
We are led by the most impacted communities but are a multi-racial, mutil-generational coalition.
Sex worker groups from around the Bay Area will convene for a press conference and rally outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
They’ll be there to support a favorable decision in the lawsuit, ESPLERP v. Gascon. The suit, filed in February on behalf of several women and a man, seeks to topple California’s anti-prostitution statute, Section 647(b) of the Penal Code, on grounds that it is “fundamentally” unconstitutional.
ESPLERP, formally known as the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project, hopes that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White will rule against a motion by the district attorneys of four California counties — Alameda, Marin, San Francisco and Sonoma as well as state Attorney General Kamala Harris — that would dismiss their case entirely.
They’ll be in front of the courthouse “to call for the remembrance of sex worker victims” on “The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers,” an annual and global event that falls on each Dec. 17.
“The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers (IDEVASW) started in 2003 when serial killer Gary Ridgway admitted killing over 70 women in Washington State in the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Doogan said. “When his rampage ended, he said he had picked prostitutes as victims because they were the easiest targets and that no one would miss them.
“Well he was wrong about that. Many of the family and friends did and do grieve.”
(Potluck at 6:00, program starts at 7:00.)
Join the SF Bay Area progressive community to commemorate the first anniversary of the historic return of the Cuban 5 and the announcement from both Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama of a new tage of relations between Cuba and the U.S. Also there will be an eyewitness report from the elections in Venezuela. Program will include: Gayle McLaughlin, Richmond City Council member; Teri Matsson, Task Force on the Americas; poetry by Nina Serrano; Vic Sadot will sing Phil Ochs’ “United Fruit”; and more to be announced.
Initial endorsers: Social Justice Committee of the BFUU, and International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity. If you want to endorse the event please contact Cynthia Johnson at cyn4justice [at] gmail.com or call at 510-225-9962.http://www.facebook.com/events/686396231496536
Wheelchair accessible.
Alan’s Birthday Celebration🎂🎊🎁🎉
The Alan Blueford Foundation will be hosting Alan’s Holiday Birthday Gift giveaway. We will be giving gifts to family members that have lost loved ones in honor of Alan’s Birthday and the Holiday season. We can’t give Alan gifts, but we can give to those that struggle with lost and pain during this time of year. If you would like to donate toys, canned foods(non perishables),or monetary donations: Please contact Jeralynn Blueford at ABC4J , 2434 Telegraph Ave
Donations will be collected on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s from 1-5pm at the center.
Please support us as we bless our community and family members that have lost their loved ones. Thank you in advance
Join us12/18 11 am, 850 Bryant press conference to fire Chief Suhr! Justice for #MarioWoods #BlackLivesMatter @Isa pic.twitter.com/oaiB6X26mb
— Michelle Ann Schudel (@MichelleAnnSchu) December 17, 2015
In recent weeks, we have witnessed a new wave of racist violence against Arabs, Muslims, and perceived Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Join us in challenging scapegoating and xenophobia, and demonstrating our commitment to upholding the dignity of communities in the Bay Area
We observe and document all suspicious activities of our local law enforcement agencies.
Come learn the art of copwatching and help out as we go out afterwards on our “neighborhood watch.”
Pizza provided during debrief.
This is being organized in Davis as part of a nation-wide day of action:
“On December 19th , let’s join a billion others around the globe in issuing a mandate:
WE DEMAND A 1% TAX ON ALL STOCK TRADE TRANSACTIONS!
Money in the capitalist casino needs to slooooowwww dooowwwn before it runs us off a cliff.
One week following the Paris COP21 climate talks, one billion of us will flood the streets. We will no longer accept such a mockery of an effort to respect the earth! If you’re in office, stop pretending we can adequately address climate change at a conference funded by fossil fuel companies!
Let’s meet at the North end of Central Park (past the carousel) at noon, then demand some real change from the bottom up. Make a sign. Put on your boots. Bring drums or other instruments to march with. Practice your dance moves. Get indignant!
Bring your love, leave your hate.
This action is in solidarity with a global call for a Billion People March by the Adbusters Media Foundation (the same folks that inspired Occupy Wall Street). More information on the call can be found at BillionPeopleMarch.org.”
To riff off of Janice Joplin,
“Come on, take another piece of my part now, brother,
Come on, take my part in making community. . .
You know you can take it,
If you got the title to land.”
Come along on a walking tour that exposes the depth of our self-deception regarding the housing crisis in San Francisco.
Despite knowing that the rising land values in San Francisco real estate are the cause of evictions, displacement, and little-to-no-paycheck-left after paying the rent, who in the housing rights advocate army (or guerrilla brigades) is calling for socializing those land values to equalize housing access?
It’s all short term thinking, and “go after commercial Prop 13 reform” yanking, sisters and brothers. Meanwhile, the land values go to the land owners, not to the community that generated those values. Instead, the cry is for inclusive housing even as the land values saturate the wallets of land owners.
Come along on a free walking tour that amounts to a religious call to demand the earth’s rent be treated as the birthright of community. You’ve made your contribution to land values, why is it ending up in my pocket?
Led by Land Owners for Justice founder D. Giesen
Sunday December 20th, 12 Noon Stand with #Kurdistan against aggression by #Turkey https://t.co/bOLXDemanv pic.twitter.com/6Fu1p0Fq60
— FireWorks (@FireWorksBAY) December 17, 2015
Kurdish Film Series in #Oakland coming up in solidarity w #Rojava first one Dec 20th 5:30pm @ 1501 Harrison St pic.twitter.com/u2CnfVpbFC
— Occupy Oakland (@OccupyOakland) December 17, 2015
In loving memory of Alan, The Alan Blueford Foundation a Non-Profit Organization will be hosting Alan’s Birthday Holiday Gift giveaway. (Alan would have been 22 on Dec 20th this year.)
In honor of Alan’s Birthday during the Holiday season of giving, we will be giving gifts to family members who have lost loved ones.
We can’t give Alan gifts, however we can celebrate his life, during this holiday season, we want to give to those who struggle with lost and pain during this time of year. It is our way of helping to heal the community, and putting a smile on the faces of children ages 0-18 that truly feel the loss. Giving is healing and we all need to heal.
If you would like to donate toys, canned foods (non perishables), or monetary donations,
please contact Jeralynn Blueford at The Alan Blueford Center for Justice located at 2434 Telegraph Ave Oakland.
Donations will be collected on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s from 1-5pm at the ABC4J center.
Please contact Jeralynn if donated items needs to be picked up: jqblueford@yahoo.com or inbox
Please support us as we bless our community and family members who have lost loved ones.
Thank you in advance!
with love & in struggle…
Innovative, “Truly Green” Vision of Housing and Land Use in Oakland for Homeless Families and Youth created by Homeless Families and Youth
Low-income and homeless indigenous youth, families and elders in collaboration with pre-eminent natural building experts, architects and engineers present an innovative housing and land use project for themselves and other very low-income, displaced and homeless families
What: Press Conference
When: 12:30pm Monday, December 21, 2015
Where: Oscar Grant Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall 14th & Broadway Oakland, Ca
“Homefulness is a visionary model of how to create affordable, sustainable housing and community at a time when we, in Oakland, could not need it more. Not only that, this effort is being led by formerly homeless and under house people setting a powerful example for all of us”,” said Dunya Alwan, one of the innovative artists/ architectural designers working on the Homefulness project.
After a 18 year journey of struggle, poverty, homelessness and displacement, the poor, indigenous and disabled people who lead the non-profit, grassroots, arts organization POOR Magazine, launched Homefulness- a truly green, amazingly innovative project which would be the first of its kind in the nation.
Homefulness, which is based in Deep East Oakland includes four straw bale multi-famiy townhomes side by side, community gardens, a school and community center.
“The Homefulness project is working to make compact, ecological shelter available to the low income city dwellers who need it most,” said Bob Theis, a pre-eminent natural builder and one of the team of architects with Homefulness
This extremely exciting project is led by a powerful collaboration of pre-eminent “natural” builder/architects including Bob Theis who was involved in the design and building of one of the first post-colonial straw bale structures in Oakland as well as youth and families who themselves have experienced homelessness, poverty, displacement, racism, immigration and eviction,
The project has also been guided by 1st nations Ohlone people of this land who are working on a self-determined land trust for this Ohlone territory as well as by an innovative concept developed by POOR Magazine called Poverty scholarship, ie, the most impacted peoples should be leading and/or directly involved in their own, self-determined solutions.
“Homefulness was always the way of our African peoples, interdependence which we practice is a truly powerful way of taking care of Mama Earth and each other, said QueenandiXSheba of POOR Magazine
“Homefulness is a poor and indigenous people-led solution to Homelessness, it was conceived by my mother and i and several other homeless,disabled, and displaced community members, while we were living in our car in Oakland, aware that our survival was linked to the survival not just of each other but to other people in homelessness and to Mama Earth, ” said Tiny Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-founder of POOR Magazine and author of the book Criminal of Poverty , Growing Up Homeless in America. Gray-Garcia continued,”In light of the recent COP21 summit in Paris, it is more important than ever for cities like Oakland to take up visionary projects like Homefulness which work with Mother Earth’s resources, not against her.
So far the planning dept approved the Homefulness project but the building department who grants the permits to begin the community -centered building project has had some trouble understanding this innovative and ancient vision to steward and care for mama earth and its earth people through age-old green materials.
“We hope the building dept and the City of Oakland can see, with us, this powerful visionary way of taking care of mama earth through truly green, age-old natural building,” Miguel Soberanis, poverty and indigenous scholar with POOR Magazine