Please join us pic.twitter.com/lNxrPQyepY

— jeralynn (@mommablueford) May 5, 2016

Please join us at Oakland First Friday to table and canvass! We’ll focus on collecting signature for our three Oakland ballot initiatives, as well as voter registration.

We haven’t been assigned a space yet, but the political groups are always located together at the south end of the event on Telegraph between Grand and 23rd. We’ll have a table with two chairs and signage.

Please share this event with your friends! There is so much foot traffic at Oakland First Fridays that we’ll need all the help we can get.

We’re working to get these three measures on the ballot:

From the Coalition for Police Accountability: Measure X turns the current Citizens’ Police Review Board into a Police Commission that has power to approve police policies and discipline officers who are found guilty of misconduct.

From the Oakland Tenants Union: Oakland’s “Renters Upgrade” would expand Oakland’s current “Just Cause for Eviction” law and provide greater ability for the city to enforce existing laws amidst a wave of unfair evictions and widespread harassment as demand for housing in Oakland grows.

With Green for the Heart Chakra & Peace for what we Cultivate in the Space- Alan Blueford Center for Justice (First Friday). May 6th is the exact day Alan Blueford’s life was taken at 18 years old by an Oakland police officer. So we come together- hearts open, creativity flowing, band live- to transcend, so are you coming through?

‪#‎TatuVision‬ ‪#‎OneLove‬ ‪#‎ABC4J‬

The Communist Party USA (Oakland/Berkeley)
invites you to a discussion: Police Militarization
Suggested Readings:

Ana Conner &Tara Tabassi, ‘Ending Police Militarization, One City at a Time’
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33001-ending-police-militarization-one-city-at-a-tim

Stephen Graham, Cities Under Seige, The New Military Urbanism
http://libcom.org/files/Graham,%20Stephen%20-%20Cities%20Under%20Siege.%20The%20New%20Military%20Urbanism_0.pdf This is a book length piece – worth reading introduction and skimming the rest

From the Peace and Freedom Party Platform: “The drive for greater profits by multi-national corporations which direct U.S. foreign policy is a major cause of war. We stand for peace between nations and the right of all peoples to self-determination. We support an ongoing socialist transformation everywhere.” We have confirmed speakers to address issues of war, imperialism, revolution, and socialism in Haiti (Pierre Labossiere), Puerto Rico (Ricardo Ortiz), and Venezuela (Laura Wells).

FREE! Please buy food & drink at the Pub. All ages welcome! FREE!

This is part of our on-going Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every month. Doors open at 2 pm and the program will start promptly at 2:30 pm. The forum will end by 4:30 pm, but folks can stay and talk as long as you like.

The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.

Sing for an hour on Solano Avenue at the old Oaks Theater, Berkeley.

@MLNow @48hills @sfexaminer @sfchronicle @sjmercnews @EastBayTimes #SFPD pic.twitter.com/TY0lC1STEd

— Mary Kelly Persyn (@mkpersyn) May 7, 2016

Ahmed Salah was imprisoned, tortured and nearly killed by the Egyptian authorities. After making it out of the country he was born in, by sheer luck, Salah’s memoir of co-designing and implementing the Egyptian revolution during the “Arab Spring” was published on April 4th, 2016. Salah will discuss his newly released book, and field questions and dialogue.

For more event information: https://www.facebook.com/events/115739705491611/

The Assassination Complex reveals stunning details of the government’s secretive and horrific drone warfare program, based on documents supplied by a confidential source in the intelligence community.

Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. Proponents of drone warfare, however, prefer the term “targeted killings.” But drone strikes Frequently kill people who are not the intended target. Unless it can be proven otherwise, the government refers to these unintended victims as “enemies killed in action.” These deaths – all too often of women and children – dwarf the number of actual combatants who have been murdered by drones. They have generated among foreign populations intense anger toward the U.S., and they have become a recruiting tool for jihadists.

Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues on The Intercept obtained a cache of classified slides from a source within the intelligence community that provides a startling window onto the Inner workings of the U.S. military’s drone operations. These documents make it possible to begin the necessary, long-overdue debate about this 14-year campaign of targeted killing that has been deliberately hidden from the public, and exactly why it is conducted so ruinously in so many places.

Jeremy Scahill, one of the three founding editors of The Intercept, is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, author of the internationally bestselling books Dirty Wars and Blackwater, and twice a recipient of the George Pol Award.  He will also discuss The Intercept, the investigative web magazine founded by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill, a publication of First Look Media.

Brian Edwards-Tiekert, host of this one-time event, is the daily host of UpFront, KPFA’s popular hour-long news magazine with a strong focus on state and local issues.

Justice 4 Mario Woods Coalition With John Burris Law Office, Jeff Adachi, Alex Nieto Coalition Frisco 5, Amilcar Perez Lopez Coalition, SEIU 1021…

Facebook event.

Wed at 5:30 police commission meeting. Everyone come out. #FireChiefSuhr #BlueRibbon pic.twitter.com/GJEUSDWunP

— mary mad (@marymad) May 10, 2016

SF POLICE COMMISSION MEETING

Tonight, 5:30pm, SF City Hall#frisco5 #frisco500 #firechiefsuhr

— Equipto (@EQUIPTO) May 11, 2016

Personally let Chief Greg Suhr and the Police Commission know you proudly and courageously stand in solidarity with and support the FRISCO 5’s demand. Calling all FRISCO 500. This is a public meeting to hear and speak to Police Chief Greg Suhr and the SF Police Commission. Come get informed and involved. Support your community and let your voices be heard loud and clear. Spread the word.

Liberty City, the protest organized by First They Came for the Homeless against anti-homeless ordinances considered and ultimately passed by the Berkeley City Council, was swept away by the Berkeley Police in late December.

The Police Review Commission will take up the matter. Details to follow.

THURSDAY: #FRISCO5 PRESS CONFERENCE at Mission Station 630 Valencia St, SF, CA. 10:30 AM @ShaunKing #FIRECHIEFSUHR #RECALLEDLEE

— OccupythePort (@occupytheport) May 11, 2016

“This Changes Everything” is the great critically acclaimed film inspired by Naomi Klein’s book and directed by Avi Lewis about how the challenges of climate change can lead us to a post-fossil fuel, post-capitalist future. This is an ultimately encouraging film, which everyone must as most if not all people do care about justice.

The film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.

Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.

MAY COPWATCH DAYS AND TIMES

– FRIDAY 5/6 – 8pm
– FRIDAY 5/13 – 8pm
– SATURDAY 5/21 – 8pm
– FRIDAY 5/27 – 8pm

You’re invited to join Berkeley Copwatch on one of our weekly copwatch shifts. We’ll be out in the streets witnessing and documenting police activity and doing outreach. No experience is required – we’ll train you in the essentials for documenting police activity and staying safe in the process.

DETAILS:
* Please RSVP (no deadline) by calling/texting 510-224-5950 or emailing CRivka@sonic.net to let us know which day(s) you plan to come. That way we can update you if we make any changes to the schedule.

* If you are able to bring a car and be a shift driver, that would be GREAT! Please let us know when you RSVP.

* Dress prepared for being outdoors

May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25, 1-5pm

Using news photographs, memorabilia, reconstructed objects, documentary fragments, and original documents, contemporary artist Kate Haug re-tells the story of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last monumental social protest prior to his assassination. The exhibition features images and objects culled from Haug’s extensive research in the archives of the Associated Press, the popular press, and eBay, which have not been seen together before, bringing to life the complex ambition of King’s vision.

King began organizing the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) in 1967 to unify America’s poor across class rather than racial lines, believing that economic parity was key to African American equality within the United States. The PPC culminated with a 3,000 person shanty town named Resurrection City, constructed on the National Mall in Washington DC. Resurrection City drew people from all over the country, was the nineteen sixties version of the 1932 Bonus March and a predecessor to “Occupy”. The exhibition time frame for this show mirrors many of the actual dates of the campaign, tracing the Resurrection City’s opening day to its final destruction.

The PPC echoes aspects of current social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Fight for Fifteen, and Our Walmart. In San Francisco, a city with one the highest rates of income inequality in the United States, King’s work asks pointed questions about the contemporary social contract and the democratic promise of America.

News Today: A History of the Poor People’s Campaign in Real Time runs from April 9, 2016 to June 25, 2016.

Gallery Talks:
Sat May 14, 2pm:
Justin Gomer Ph.D., Lecturer, American Studies, UC Berkeley
A discussion of the images in News Today as they relate to the shifting political landscape in the years after 1968.

Sat May 21, 2pm:
E.C. Feiss, Ph.D. Student, Art History, UC Berkeley
The Politics of Display