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Join Movement Generation us for a Meal & Conversation

Behind that delicious #2 Burger & Fry Combo is a billion dollar fast food industry that not only erodes our soil, contaminates our water and destroys our health, but also serves up poverty wages and deadly working conditions to millions of fast food workers.

As food justice activists fighting to transition our food system away from industrial farming toward local, sustainable agriculture, how do we unite our frontlines with the very workers who plant, harvest, pack, transport, cook, serve, and compost our food?

As workers organizing for $15/hour and a union, how do we win not just respect and a fair wage, but also the power to transform the food industry itself into one that is good for both people and planet, for both our customers and our children?

From farm to plate, warehouse to compost, loading dock to drive thru, workers are the scholars of this rotten food system, placing them front and center in crafting solutions to the food, climate and economic crises.

Join us for a delicious meal and powerful conversation between food sovereignty activists and farmworkers, grocery workers, fast food workers, and restaurant workers about the future of our food system.

Visit http://bit.ly/1CouOAk to co-sponsor the event.

Free event. Accessible space. Program will be bilingual – Spanish & English. Childcare provided. For more information,

Film evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments & social hour at 6:30 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by optional discussion after the film.

CENTURY OF ENSLAVEMENT

by James Corbett

Humanist Hall is wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

Facebook event.

We’re all very honored to be having 2 parents from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero and 2 surviving students come to UCBerkeley from April 2nd to April 3rd. We’ve been working very hard planning events where everyone can come and see the parents speak on their journey and on their continuous fight to find their missing children. We want the whole community, non-students and students, to come out and come together to welcome them to UCBerkeley and show them what international solidarity looks like.
We are asking you all to spread the word of their anticipated arrival and attend the spaces we are holding for them because their testimonies are direct evidence as to why, we, thousands of miles away from Ayotzinapa, should continue to carry on this struggle and denounce the injustices of their government.

Agenda/ Here is the schedule for the 2 days.

April 2nd:
2PM-4PM Martin Luther King Civic Center Park (2151
M.L.K. Jr Way)

Bienvenida a los padres y normalistas/Welcoming the parents

6PM-8PM 110 Boalt Hall
Discusión/ Discussion with Jim Cavallaro
Commisioner, Inter-American Commission of Human Rights/Berkeley Law School

April 3rd
1PM -3PM
“Ayotzinapa: Mexico at the Crossroads”
Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

5PM
Vigilia/ Vigil at Campanile

Transition Berkeley invites you to join us for an award winning film about Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American philosopher, writer and activist in Detroit with a thick FBI file and a surprising vision of what an American revolution can be. Rooted for 75 years in the labor, civil rights and Black Power movements, she challenges a new generation to throw off old assumptions, think creatively and redefine revolution for our times.

American Revolutionary has won six Audience Awards from film festivals around the world, including the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival. The film will be introduced by Alison Paskal, educator and urban gardener, and Hank Herrera, food justice activist, working to build new sustainable, local healthy food systems serving vulnerable neighborhoods, who have both known and worked with Grace in Detroit.

Come at 6:30 for conversation and snacks. At 7:00 the film will be preceded by a short presentation from the Gil Tract Community Farm and the Ashby Garden where gardeners are practicing their own style of remaking our world in a more just and sustainable way. The film begins at 7:15 and will be followed by small group discussions. Don’t miss this film!

For more info: info [at] transitionberkeley.com
website: http://www.transitionberkeley.com

This event is co-sponsored by Transition Berkeley, Victory Garden Foundation, We Bee Gardeners and BFUU’s Social Justice Ctee.

Wheelchair accessible.

For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
bfuusjev-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net

For weekly notices of BFUU services etc. go to:
http://www.bfuu.org/signup.html

WiFi Mesh General Meeting
When: Every Thursday @ 7:30pm – 11:30pm
Where: 4799 Shattuck Avenue – Oakland, CA
(corner of 48th and Shattuck)
Contact: Jenny Ryan – email –

We’re building a community wireless mesh network!

A wireless mesh network is a network where each computer acts as a relay to other computers, such that a network can stretch to cover entire cities. Our goal is to create such a free mesh network that is entirely controlled and operated by the community!

Want to help create an alternate means of digital communication that isn’t governed by for-profit internet service providers? Join us for the mesh hacknight!

We have crowdfunded the purchase of our first 100+ routers and are preparing to deploy the first nodes in Oakland. We need people with both technical and non-technical backgrounds to help with everything from local community involvement and crowdfunding to mounting wifi routers on buildings and developing software!

Last Thursdays are General Meetings for planning, strategy, and orientation for new folks.

We need the voices, bodies and the love of the local community to stop developers from destroying the vision of a successful African counterculture movement. AfrikaTown has provided the community with fresh fruits and vegetables, a comfortable environment to interact with one another, barbecues and a place to gain political awareness. We are asking for folks to show up, bring your bodies, signs and stand in solidarity with one of the last black-ran community spaces in West Oakland. With your help, AfrikaTown has the power to prevent the complete displacement of black and brown residents in West Oakland.

Join us on April 3rd as EARLY AS YOU CAN, as we take a stand and say “NO MORE!”

There will be food, performances and knowledge on ways to get involved in the protection of AfrikaTown and the movement.

Please stand in solidarity, and spread the word in a discreet manor, we do not want the landlord to get word of our plans.

We appreciate your support and discretion.

Asante,

AfrikaTown

Fireworks article on Afrikatown, interview with Linda Grant.

The struggle for justice for the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa continues. Protesters around the world are demanding justice for the students who disappeared in September 2014 at the hands of the mayor of Iguala in Guerrero, the police and the “Guerreros Unidos” gang. Many in Mexico are demanding the resignation of President Enrique Peña Nieto and an end to the impunity of the Mexican government towards murderous criminal gangs that have killed more than 100,000 people in recent years.

But the U.S. government and banks are not let off the hook either. The 1994 NAFTA free-trade agreement created Mexico’s economic crisis and the drug trafficking epidemic that filled that void. Why does the U.S. give so much military aid to Mexico? Why is the border between Mexico and the U.S. so militarized?

Join us for talks on the history of the U.S.-Mexico relations and the state of the current struggle for economic and social justice happening inside of Mexico.

The Conscious Eating Conference brings expert speakers to Berkeley, California to share their ideas about the best food choices we can make for the planet, ourselves, and animals. This conference will feature a fearless investigator who went undercover to document the inside story of animal farming. We will reveal little known facts about fish and the fishing industry and explore how plant-based eating is going mainstream. You don’t want to miss this exciting day of information exchange! Registration includes vegan continental breakfast and lunch.

March and Forum for Ayotzinapa

Community March:
Mission and 16th Sts.
1:30pm- Danzantes welcome the community
2pm- Start of the rally
2:30pm- March starts towards 24th St.

Community Forum:
Buena Vista Horace Mann Elementary
3351 23rd St., between Bartlett and Valencia Sts.
4-6pm

Saturday, April 4th, San Francisco welcomes the families of the 43 students disappeared by the Mexican government this past September, 2014, joining with their demand for justice with their caravan throughout the US.

We are in solidarity with their struggle and welcome everyone to a community and family-friendly march from 16th St. to 24th St. on Saturday, April 4th. This march is called for 2pm and will arrive at Buena Vista Horace Mann (3351 23rd St.) where a community forum organized by KPOO, Radio Bilingüe and Rompeviento TV USA, will be held. Here, all attendees will learn about the atrocities committed by the Mexican State as well as the struggle for justice. Ayotzinapa is the most recent and horrific example of a State that exercises violence with impunity against its citizens and social justice fighters.

We also recognize our own experiences in the United States where police kill our people in the streets, just as the case of Almicar, or any other community, especially the Black community.

Its time to say, “Stop State-Sponsored Terror in the Mission, San Francisco, the Bay Area, California and throughout the United States! Justice for all victims of State violence! A State that disappears and murders its own citizens does not deserve to govern! The Mission stands with Ayotzinapa! Stop State-sponsored terror on both sides of the border!

Special thanks to the United Educators of San Francisco for their support in sponsoring this community event.

Initiated by:
Bay Area Committee in Solidarity with Ayotzinapa

THIS SAT: Memorial for Amilcar Perez-Lopez, killed by SFPD. 4:00 PM, St. John the Evangelist, 1661 15th Street, SF pic.twitter.com/M998n9iXRI

— هدهد (@thehoopoe) April 3, 2015

As part of the Mission District MAPP events, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition will be hosting LYRICAL REVOLT, a political-artistic space to express oneself through any vocal medium. Join us as we use the power of our words and art to battle the injustices that face the world today. This open mic is dedicated to all of those who are struggling all around the world against the hands of an oppressor. We also remember the victims of racist police terror.

The program will start at 7pm sharp, sign ups will start at 6pm. =
(near 24th St. BART, #14, #49 MUNI)
Wheelchair accessible,
All are welcome

Over the past 30 years, around 300 million men and women have moved from China’s farms to its factories, industrial plants and construction sites, in one of the largest and most rapid migrations in human history. Luo Xiaoping is a daughter of farmers who graduated from the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her presentation will review this migration, some of the extraordinary challenges that have accompanied it, and efforts to address them. Luo Xiaoping is an assistant professor at Zhejiang Ocean University and a visiting scholar at Boston University this year.

For our full schedule, go to:
http://icssmarx.org
 

Black Lives Matter:
Origins, the Present
and the Future

A Speak Out and Call to Action:
Stop Police Brutality and Murder!

Speakers include…

Dionne Smith Downs & Carey Downs, parents of James Rivera, murdered by Stockton police; Angela Naggie, mother of O’Shaine Evans, murdered by SFPD; Laurie Valdez, wife of Antonio Guzman Lopez, murdered by SJSU police;

Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Revolution Club, Bay Area
Additional Speakers TBA

On April 7 the Emeryville City Council will hold a study session on hiking the minimum wage to $14.42, equal to the city’s living wage, effective July 1 2015.

F
ALL WARS ARE BANKERS’ WARS

by Michael Avero & Zane Henry

ilm evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments & social hour at 6:30 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by optional discussion after the film.

For a description of this film, see the website shown below.

Humanist Hall is wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

We’ll be checking up on what’s happened in Greece 2 1/2 months after Syriza, the anti-austerity party, won the election.

Here are links to various recent articles. Feel free to find your own as well!  And you don’t need to feel like you need to read them all – choose perhaps five or six.

This list will be updated and possibly culled as new information becomes available, so check back!