Calendar
EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes JJ Mulligan Sepulveda to discuss his new new book No Human Is Illegal. He will be joined by Lauren Markham.
The perfect author on one of today’s hottest topics– an immigration reform lawyer’s journalistic memoir of being on the front lines of deportation.
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL is a powerful document of one lawyer’s fight for those seeking a better life in America against its ever-tightening borders. For author Mulligan Sepúlveda, the son and husband of Spanish-speaking immigrants, the battle for immigration reform is personal. Mulligan Sepúlveda writes of visiting border detention centers, defending undocumented immigrants in court, and taking his services to JFK to represent people being turned away at the gates during Trump’s infamous travel ban.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. J. MULLIGAN SEPÚLVEDA is an immigration lawyer working at the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California Davis School of Law. He is a former Immigrant Justice Corps fellow and Fulbright Scholar. This is his first book.
Lauren Markham is a writer based in Berkeley, California. Her work has appeared in VQR, VICE, Orion, Pacific Standard, Guernica, The New Yorker.com, on This American Life, and elsewhere. Lauren earned her MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been awarded Fellowships from the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism, the 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, the Mesa Refuge, and the Rotary Foundation. For the past decade, she has worked in the fields of refugee resettlement and immigrant education.
Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance meeting to discuss plans, outreach, organizing regarding regional homeless communities and organizations.
For more info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/541837129562482/
A talk by Edgard Sánchez, leader of the (Partido Revolucionario de losTrajabadores de Mexico (Mexican Revolutionary Workers Party)
Sponsored by Solidarity and Northern California Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Love jigsaw puzzles?
Hate white supremacy?
Want to #MoveInSolidarity with #BlackSolidarityWeek?
Join us at the ACCE office in Oakland for two hours of solving puzzles to raise money for the Black Solidarity Fund, a project of Community READY Corps.
We’ll have 2500 pieces worth of puzzles and 2 hours to put together as many pieces as possible. People who want to donate to the drive will pledge a certain amount of money per piece solved*. For example, if a donor pledges to give 2 cents per piece, and we manage to complete 1500 pieces worth of puzzles, that person would donate 1500 * 2 cents = $30.
You can help out by showing up to the event as a participant and helping us solve puzzles, or by pledging to donate.
For donors, sign up to donate here: https://puzzlesforjustice.typeform.com/to/jVMVJO
and we’ll send you the total amount to donate once the event is over and we know how many pieces we managed to solve.
For participants, we’ll have food and snacks and a chance to have fun with fellow justice-minded puzzle solvers.
Solve puzzles! Sign up to donate! Fight racism! Invite your friends!
- NEW: Relieving millions in local Medical Debt through pennies-on-the-dollar buyback programs.
- NEW: A book group and seminar focused on Economic Inequality and Economic Theory for the modern age.
- Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions.
- Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
- Money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
- Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
- Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
- Helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
- Promoting the concept of Basic Income
- Advocating for Postal banking
- Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com
Strike Debt – Principles of Solidarity
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
We also oppose debt because it is an instrument of exploitation and political domination. Debt is used to discipline us, deepen existing inequalities, and reinforce racial, gendered, and other social hierarchies. Every Strike Debt action is designed to weaken the institutions that seek to divide us and benefit from our division. As an alternative to this predatory system, Strike Debt advocates a just and sustainable economy, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence.
Strike Debt is committed to the principles and tactics of political autonomy, direct democracy, direct action, creative openness, a culture of solidarity, and commitment to anti-oppressive language and conduct. We struggle for a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression.
Strike Debt holds that we are all debtors, whether or not we have personal loan agreements. Through the manipulation of sovereign and municipal debt, the costs of speculator-driven crises are passed on to all of us. Though different kinds of debt can affect the same household, they are all interconnected, and so all household debtors have a common interest in resisting.
Strike Debt engages in public education about the debt-system to counteract the self-serving myth that finance is too complicated for laypersons to understand. In particular, it urges direct action as a way of stopping the damage caused by the creditor class and their enablers among elected government officials. Direct action empowers those who participate in challenging the debt-system.
Strike Debt holds that we owe the financial institutions nothing, whereas, to our friends, families and communities, we owe everything. In pursuing a long-term strategy for national organizing around this principle, we pledge international solidarity with the growing global movement against debt and austerity.
Bay Area Artists Benefit featuring Souls of Mischief, Jenny Lim, Phavia Kujichagulia, Avotcja, Robert Wood, GoodLOVE, Destiny Muhammad, Toreadah Mikell, Tacuma King, Stone’s of Fire, Sankofa Akili Dance Ensemble and more! Come out for a great show and give to support Haiti at the same time. Tickets $20 Please share!!!
Climate change is upon us, and the time has come to decide: will we live under socialism, or live under water? We’ll take socialism, thank you, and so come party at the launch of East Bay DSA’s Green New Deal campaign.
Explore the stark divide between the nihilism of market-driven climate destruction and the hopeful future of ecosocialism in two theme rooms, enter the costume contest to see who can enshrine each eco-timeline sartorially, and learn a little about our campaigns to support the Green New Deal and bring PG&E into public ownership. We’ll be raising funds for future work with raffle prizes, drinks and a sliding-scale cover charge.
Tickets: Set up a monthly, sustaining donation of $5 or more to East Bay DSA (or increase your existing donation by at least $5) for free admission and an open bar. Or, make a one-time donation of $5-20 sliding scale for admission — just go to eastbaydsa.org/donate and show your email receipt at the party. Donations by cash and venmo (@eastbaydsa) will also be accepted at the door.
Alcohol policy: This is an all-ages event, but you must be 21+ to drink. Non-alcoholic beverages and snacks will be abundant.
Accessibility: The space is fully wheelchair accessible, and parking is available on the street. Please message the East Bay DSA account with any accessibility questions or concerns that would help you enjoy this event.
Curious about the labor movement after the recent teachers strike wave? Trying to figure out why socialists talk to much about labor? Maybe thinking about getting a union job? Come on out, and bring your friends!
Socialists have always seen organized labor as the vital center of a broader working-class movement, and in the 19th and early 20th centuries, socialist politics largely emerged from the labor movement. But since the red-baiting and McCarythism of the Cold War, the connection between socialists and the labor movement has been dramatically loosened.
But many socialists have worked union jobs and participated in their unions as rank-and-file members over the past decades.
The first part of this event will be a panel discussion of socialists who have been rank-and-file union workers, discussing their experiences and perspectives on the labor movement.
The second part will be a kind of rank-and-file job fair. DSA members who work in union jobs in a variety of industries will have tables set up where you can chat with them about their experiences, hear about what different union jobs are like, and talk about how they navigate the broader politics of labor.
This is a FREE event co-presented by Appreciating Diversity Film Series
I was in prison before I was even born.’ So begins the story of Dr. Victor Rios who, by 15, was a high school “dropout,” heroin dealer, and Oakland gang member with multiple felony convictions and a death wish. But when a teacher’s quiet persistence, a mentor’s moral conviction, and his best friend’s murder converge, Rios’s path takes an unexpected turn.
NOTE: During the Plague Year of 2020 GA will be held every week or two on Zoom. To find out the exact time a date get on the Occupy Oakland email list my sending an email to:
occupyoakland-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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 for some reason the amphitheater is being used otherwise and/or OGP itself is inaccessible, we will meet at Kaiser Park, right next to the statues, on 19th St. between San Pablo and Telegraph. 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. (Note: we tend to meet at 3:00 PM during the cooler months from November to early March after Daylights Savings Time.)
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 six years, since October 2011! 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
Welcome & Introductions
Reports from Committees, Caucuses, & Independent Organizations
Announcements
(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
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.
Odile is the co-chair of the US Middle East Committee of the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom.
She helped maintain the Long Haul between 1987-1993 and can tell stories about Long Haul before the Infoshop. She was also involved in the radical homeless movement in the 1980s/90s as well as the struggle to defend People’s Park. She was a “participant in the crowd” in Paris 1968.
Advance tickets: $12: brownpapertickets.com :: T: 800-838-3006 or
Pegasus Books (3 sites),
Moe’s,
Books Inc (Berkeley),
Walden Pond Bookstore,
East Bay Books,
Mrs. Dalloway’s
“This luminous book stands beside the memoirs of Pablo Neruda and Czeslaw Milosz in its account of a poet’s education, the struggle of a great artist to be worthy of her gifts. Carolyn Forché’s prose is shamanic: it sees both the surface of things and their inner workings, it animates the inanimate world.”
— Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
Carolyn Forché is one of the most gifted poets of her generation. Her work—including Blue Hour, The Angel of History, The Country Between Us, and Gathering the Tribes—has been translated into more than twenty languages. She has received the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship.
For decades the story of how Carolyn became an effective activist has not been told. At last, in her shimmering, gripping prose, we learn how a fateful encounter and a radical act of empathy changed the course of her life. Carolyn was twenty-seven when a mysterious stranger appeared on her doorstep— a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it was brilliant. She’d heard rumors about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a coffee farmer…He had driven from El Salvador to invite her to his country. Captivated, she accepted and became enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension; they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, Carolyn is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. Pursued by death squads, sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship as she attempts to make sense of what she’s experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. She learns how she can act as a witness and translate that into an art that might illumine the lives of others. That is “the poetry of witness,” and she has proven to be one of North America’s rare practitioners.
What You Have Heard Is True— a riveting and essential account of a young woman’s political awakening— is as beautiful as it is painful to read.”
— Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl
KPFA benefit
Join us as we discuss the homeless crisis in Oakland. Learn about our campaign and what you can do to help decriminalize the unsheltered community. You do not need to be a member to join, so bring a friend. Wheelchair accessible. Dinner will be provided.
Join East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses Social!
Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in the East Bay DSA Labor Committee, and learn how you can get involved!
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents
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
$15 door
“This extraordinary history of resistance counters the myth of Indigenous disappearance and insignificance while calling into question the very notion that resistance itself is impossible in a world saturated by capital and atrophying inequality. This is a radical Indigenous history in its finest form.” —Audra Simpson, author of Mohawk Interruptus
In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan – “Mni Wiconi” – Water is Life – was about more than just a pipeline. Water protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that even after the encampment was gone their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan Dams, the American Indian Movement and the campaign for Indigenous Rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on personal observations from the encampments and from his own growing up as a citizen of Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making this book a work of authentic history, a personal story, and a stirring manifesto for native liberation.
“This book is a jewel—history and analysis that reads like the best poetry—certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.”
—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author ofAn Indigenous People’s History of the United States
Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, and a co-founder of The Red Nation, an organization dedicated to native liberation. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She is the author of many books, including Outlaw Woman, a memoir of her time in an armed underground group, Red Dirt: Growing up Okie, and Blood On the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War,and the recent, widely acclaimed An Indigenous People’s History of the United States.
KPFA benefit
Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance meeting to discuss plans, outreach, organizing regarding regional homeless communities and organizations.
For more info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/541837129562482/
*WE HATE SANTA RITA JAIL*
A fundraiser for Oakland IWOC
6pm to close
Come share in the hatred of our county jail (and every other jail, prison, and detention center) and support you favorite local abolitionist crew. All proceeds go toward IWOC’s direct material support program for late night releasees from Santa Rita.
Every week we bring a crew of people out to Santa Rita Jail to meet people as they are released. We share pizza, cigarettes, warm clothes, rides to BART with our neighbors who are getting out late at night. This material support and care work is a small but meaningful way to address the harm caused by incarceration in our Bay Area community. We need your help to keep this project going strong. Please spread the word and we hope to see you Friday
Food and drink provided by Tamarack
Short presentation by IWOC Oakland
Vinyl by Left of the Dial
Inside, Outside, All on the Same Side!