Calendar

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
 

Get involved with the fight against solitary confinement.

Become a human rights pen pal: Contact cws@igc.org

Come learn about continuing developments in the battle save the Berkeley Post Office and the Postal Service from privatization, support our Occupiers and help us plan our next steps in opposition to the theft of our public commons.

The postal service wanted to sell the post office to Hudson-Mcdonald, a local developer. The City of Berkeley sued the post office to stop the sale. Hudson-mcdonald backed out of the deal in early december.

Get an overview of the sale announcement here. Here’s a good more general overview piece.

 There was a hearing in Federal Court on December 11th.

There was another hearing in March 26th.

Federal Judge William Alsup will decide whether the lawsuit will continue or be dismissed – he’ll decide sometime after April 2nd, when the Post Office gets back to him on whether they are willing to rescind their decision to sell. We’ll be discussing the judge’s decision if he’s made it at this meeting, and our response.

Check out the Community Garden at the Post Office.

Also check out our website and the Save the Berkeley Post Office website, and First they Came for the Homeless Facebook for updates.

BPOD is an offshoot of Strike Debt Bay Area, which itself is an offshoot of Occupy Oakland and a chapter of the national Strike Debt movement, which is an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street.

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.

Check calendar to verify and for location

Help organize to defend public education! Remove the dictatorship and demand an end to downsizing, pushout policies, austerity, and attacks on diversity, and the cancellation of the construction of the Performing Arts Education Center.

www.facebook.com/saveccsf
info@saveccsf.org
www.saveccsf.org

From the Berkeley Daily Planet

An interfaith coalition representing over 40 Berkeley religious congregations is organizing “Interfaith Actions in Solidarity with Homeless” people Thursday April 9 5pm to 6:15am Friday–at Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza, Center and Shattuck Street, Berkeley. 

Events will start with blessing of a meal at 5pm to 5:30pm by Rev. Michael McBride, long time pastor of The Way Christian Center; followed by An Interfaith Service 5:30pm to 6:15pm involving more than 20 local clergy 5:30pm to 6:15pm; followed by a “Night Out Sleeping Vigil” 6:15pm to 8pm & 6:15am in which clergy & members of the interfaith religious community will sleep on the BART Plaza with homeless people. 

The event is in response to the proposed passage of new anti-homeless laws by Berkeley City Council on March 17^th, despite Berkeley voters opposing passage of Measure S no-sitting laws in 2012 and the recent violent assault on a homeless man by one of the Downtown Business Association’s private “Ambassadors.” 

According to Sally Hindman, a Quaker & Executive Director of Youth Spirit Artworks, “All the great religions of the world call us to stand up for justice—so we will be lying down tonight—sleeping on the sidewalk with Berkeley’s homeless. There are two year long waiting lists housing in Alameda County, so the very last thing we would want to do now is criminalize homeless people forced to live outside in our doorways!” 

Pastor Michael McBride states, “Having just celebrated Easter, as Christians we are gathering to express God’s love and deep compassion for all people—including homeless people.” This is a Black Lives Matters issue as well—since a predominance of those being criminalized, who will be ticketed and arrested with these new laws are, once again, African American. 

Celebrating Passover, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Beyt Tikkun emphasizes, “The clear message of our faith is that those who do not care for the poor and oppressed are defiling God’s name.” 

Zen Abbot Geri Rosen adds, “in the Zen Buddhist tradition our practice calls us to selflessness, to peaceful positive solutions, never hurtfulness or violence. We move toward practices of loving kindness. There are multiple creative proposals for approaching the challenge of homelessness in downtown Berkeley we would want the City to support.” 

Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman highlights, “Forty percent of homeless youth are marginalized LGBTQI young people who have left their homes and otherwise been forced out on the street—the very last thing our traditions call us to do is make life harder for them than it already is.” 

Bay Area: Join a community conversation on police terrorism featuring @es_snipes. Eric Garner's daughter. This Thursday at @bettiono. 6pm.

— BlackOUT Collective (@blackoutcollect) April 7, 2015

The Oakland Livable Wage Assembly builds community and power among those who seek higher wages and better work life conditions for area workers. We meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month at the SEIU Local 1000 union hall, 1433 Webster Street, 2nd Floor in downtown Oakland. These assembly meetings occur from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.

Our work together encompasses:

• (1) the concerns of precarious, contingent and care workers;
• (2) current campaigns to improve wages for low-wage workers; and
• (3) efforts by unionized workers and unions to improve wages and quality of work life.

At this meeting we will be planning an action at OGP on April 15th (4/15 = FOR $15)  in tandem with other actions around the East Bay and converging on a huge FF15 rally to commence at 3:00 PM at UC Berkeley.

We share stories and information in an egalitarian and participatory way to build relationships and build the movement.

We look forward to learning with you and making change for the better. Please love and support one another. We have a duty to fight. We have a duty to win.

Demand the power to hire, fire and discipline the police be in the hands of a community-selected committee.

Culture. Speakers. Food.

Keynote by Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International and leader of the Uhuru Movement.

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!

Friday, April 10th is a “National Call to Action to Save Mumia’s Life.”

SIGN THIS PETITION:
sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/john-e-wetzel-pa-secretary-of-corrections-tom-wolf-pa-governor-stop-the-medical-execution-of-mumia-abu-jamal-by-neglect-and-malpractice-3

For three months U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal showed signs of diabetes. He was examined by prison doctors multiple times with blood drawn three times in February alone, yet the diabetes was not diagnosed until he was taken to an outside hospital after fainting in the prison with blood sugar near diabetic coma levels. After a couple of days, he was sent back to the care in the same prison that put him at death’s door.

Keep making the phone calls urging the below named indidual permit Mumia’s family and friends to appoint the team of medical specialist. Please call in reference to Mumia’s legal name, “Wesley Cook:”

Richard Ellers
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
rellers@pa.gov
(717) 728-5311

John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109

SCI Mahanoy
Superindendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158

Mumia Abu-Jamal Needs Medical Care NOW!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mumia-abu-jamal-needs-medical-care-now

Special free screening of THE PIPELINE NEXT DOOR.

David faces Goliath when a village of Georgian farmers takes on the BP oil corporation in this character-driven documentary. The filmmaker’s verite approach captures the negotiations, breakdowns, heartbreak, and anger surrounding BP’s purchase of Georgian countryside to construct a 1700-kilometer pipeline from Kazaskstan to the Black Sea. A wrenching expose of the exploitation of common people.

Filmmaker Nino Kirtadze in person.

SAVE THE LIFE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

STOP HIS EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!

DON’T LET THE STATE MURDER ANOTHER BLACK LEADER!

SHUT IT DOWN FOR MUMIA!

Stopped from carrying out the death penalty against Mumia Abu-Jamal by a worldwide movement that spanned three decades, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been attempting over the past three months to execute him by medical neglect.

On March 30, Abu-Jamal was rushed, unconscious, to the Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa., suffering from diabetic shock, with a dangerously high blood sugar level of 779. After just two days of treatment in the hospital’s ICU, on April 1, Abu-Jamal was returned to the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa., into the hands of the very same doctors whose medical neglect and mistreatment nearly killed him.

Prison officials initially denied visits by family members, supporters and Abu-Jamal’s attorneys and only backed down after receiving thousands of calls. Those able to visit Mumia on April 3 reported he was extremely weak, had lost 80 pounds, and still had elevated blood sugar levels over 300. For lunch that day the prison fed him spaghetti, one of the worst foods to give a diabetic patient.

The murder of aging political prisoners by denying them inadequate health care has happened before. Earlier this year, MOVE 9 member Phil Africa died under suspicious circumstances at SCI Dallas. The lack of standard medical treatment impacts all prisoners, particularly those over 55.

We are demanding that the state of Pennsylvania cease and desist in their attempts to murder political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal:

●Allow daily visits by Mumia’s family, friends and attorneys. Their support and protection at this time of vulnerability should not be restricted.

●Allow Mumia’s choice of specialist doctors to examine and schedule treatment for him — NOW. Neither the prison staff at SCI Mahanoy nor the Schuylkill Medical Center has a diabetes specialist. There is precedent in Pennsylvania for this. Prisoner John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, was allowed care by private doctors during imprisonment. Mumia deserves the same.

●Release Mumia’s medical records to his attorneys.

●Release from prison all the elderly age 55 and over. Mumia will turn 61 on April 24.

●Allowa full investigation of prison health care in Pennsylvania.

●Mumia is innocent and should never have been incarcerated. We demand his immediate release.

We are calling on everyone to participate in the following actions over the next few days:

●Twitter widely using the hashtags #mumiamustlive, #saveMumia and #Blacklivesmatter.

●Call, fax and email the following state officials to raise the above demands:

~ DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-4109; crpadocsecretary@pa.gov.

~ Gov. Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500; fax 717-772-8284; governor@pa.gov.

~ Prison Superintendent John Kerestes: 570-773-2158; contact.doc@pa.gov.

SAY YOU ARE CALLING ABOUT PRISONER WESLEY COOK, #AM8335
(note that this is a save the date placeholder, and the description, time, place could change)

One of America’s most provocative public intellectuals, Dr. Cornel West has been a champion for racial justice since childhood. His writing, speaking, and teaching weave together the traditions of the Black Baptist Church, progressive politics, and jazz. The New York Times has praised his “ferocious moral vision.” Currently the Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, West burst onto the national scene in 1993 with his best-selling book, Race Matters, a searing analysis of racism in American democracy. Race Matters has become a contemporary classic, selling more than half a million copies to date.

In his long awaited life story, BROTHER WEST: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, West offers a compelling exploration of his heart behind the human mind. Themes include faith, family, philosophy, love, and service. He has published 19 other books and has edited 13 texts. West also offers commentary weekly on The Tavis Smiley Show from PRI (Public Radio International). He was an influential force in developing the storyline for the popular Matrix movie trilogy and has served as its official spokesperson, as well as playing a recurring role in the final two films. West graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and has a PhD. from Princeton.

His CDs, Sketches of My Culture and Street Knowledge highlight his belief that growing divisions in our society foster the despair and distrust that undermines our democratic process. By working to create an ongoing dialogue between the myriad of voices in our culture, Dr. West is vigilant in his efforts to restore hope to America. He is a mesmerizing speaker, dynamic philosopher, and enlightened activist. With astute intellect and ferocious moral vision, Dr. West continuously challenges modern thought with great efficacy.

Become a Member today and Save up to 20%! 

THIS FRIDAY! Join us at @oaklandqilombo as we celebrate #MotherEarth and @afrikatown with our #OpenMic and #SisterCypher!

Bringing you poetry, songs, beats, raps, rhymes, and rhythm from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm!!! See you there!