Calendar

Come see the acclaimed movie “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary” on the big screen. Sponsored by Labor Action for Mumia and Liberated Lens.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee bringing William J. Barber, II to Oakland! Let’s pack the house to be inspired by Rev. Dr. William Barber and to learan about the Poor People’s Campaign Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

ReZist is ninety minutes of Roy Zimmerman’s original songs, a funny and forceful affirmation of Peace and Social Justice. “Sometimes I think satire is the most hopeful and heartfelt form of expression,” says Roy, “because in calling out the world’s absurdities and laughing in their face, I’m affirming the real possibility for change.”
Roy’s songs have been heard on HBO and Showtime, and his videos have garnered tens of millions of views. He has recorded for Warner/Reprise Records. He’s shared stages with Bill Maher, Ellen DeGeneres, Holly Near, Robin Williams, Arlo Guthrie, John Oliver, Kate Clinton and George Carlin, and tours the country constantly with his wife and co-writer Melanie Harby.
Sponsored by the BFUU SJC.

Join the Ecology Center for TWO events on April 22nd.
From 10:00am – 6:00pm at the David Brower Center, join us for Berkeley Earth Day where Ecology Center’s Executive Director, Martin Bourque, will be speaking about the history of Earth Day, its power and its future.
Berkeley Earth Day includes inspiring speakers, music, up-cycled crafts, bamboo bikes, great food and much more!
Learn more at BerkeleyEarthDay.org

Join our staff from 5:00-10:00pm at Gio’s Pizza & Bocce for a fun night of drinks and food! Ecology Center will get to keep a percentage of all sales.  At 8:30pm we will have a raffle with lots of great prizes!
Kalin Freeman will be serenading on his Alto Sax. This free event is all ages, bring the family and bring your friends!

EARTH DAY IS ALMOST HERE

FIRST, join us on April 21st from 10-3 at Planting Justice Nursery (319 105 Ave. Oakland CA 94603) for a morning of community farm work, kids activities, a plant sale, and community lunch.

for more info check out plantingjustice.org

THEN join us on April 22nd at the UC Gill Tract Farm for the annual Earth Day Festival. We will kick the morning off with some good ol’ community farming to the tune of a few local DJ’s. Then together we will enjoy a FREE lunch of soup, bread and salad made with fresh produce. Our day will then focus on an enriching community conversation on working with local indigenous communities and issues titled “Living on Ohlone Land.” There will also be kids activities and tabling throughout the day.

Sign up to volunteer below!

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090848abaa29a0fe3-2018

West Oakland residents will get the results of three recent air monitoring studies  and discuss how to use this information and local knowledge to push for a truly comprehensive plan that minimizes air pollution in our neighborhoods.

The three studies were done in connection with a new Truck Management Program for West Oakland. The workshop will cover 100 x 100 air monitoring sensors placed throughout West Oakland; EDF/Google air mapping; and a study analyzing why filters on trucks are not working effectively at the Port of Oakland. The results of these studies will inform attendees of scientific findings about how black carbon — the main component of soot emitted from diesel engines, wood smoke, and other sources — varies throughout West Oakland.

Workshop participants will work together to set priorities and recommend ways that this information and residents’ local knowledge can inform the City and the Port of Oakland to produce a truly comprehensive plan that minimizes air pollution in our neighborhoods.

More info here

*not “some,” not “theirs,” but every single one

FREE Workshop with NuclearBan.US co-founders Timmon Wallis, PhD and Vicki Elson, MA.
Celebrating two huge victories for the world:
1. The new UN Treaty banning nuclear weapons, signed by 122 nations!
2. The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to ICAN, the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, for achieving the “impossible!”

Come learn how, together, we will compel divestment, legislation, and enforcement, even though the US government hasn’t signed on yet.

Presented by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee with NuclearBan.US Join the campaign:www.NuclearBan.US

Co-sponsored by the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom East Bay Branch and Code Pink Golden Gate

Refreshments! Free! (donations requested) Wheelchair access

This panel discussion on climate justice looks at the uneven racial and economic distribution of both environmental degradation and environmental benefits.   Come hear a lively conversation about these intersections, their impacts, and what we must do to ensure that the environmental movement is fighting for those most marginalized.  The intersection of environmental and social justice must be put at the forefront of our environmental movement.

Panelists include Jessica Tovar from Local Clean Energy Alliance, Alvaro Sanchez from the Greenlining Institute, Rachel Morello-Frosch from UC Berkeley, and Esther Goolsby from the Communities for a Better Environment.

Sponsored by the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC).

FREE admission Brown paper Tickets RSVP.
Facebook here.

Refreshments will be provided!

ADA Accessible

Unite for Oakland Kids!!!

We are negotiating to prioritize STUDENT LEARNING over wasteful bloat in OUSD.

Oakland Teachers need a FAIR CONTRACT NOW. We are demanding SMALLER CLASS SIZE and FAIR COMPENSATION and the District has disrespected us over and over by offering us almost nothing.

On April 24th, we will show the District that Students, Families and Teachers are UNITED behind PUTTING STUDENTS AT THE CENTER! In order to provide the highest quality education, we need SMALLER CLASS SIZE and CASE LOADS! In order to have teachers stay in Oakland, we need FAIR COMPENSATION!

Teachers and Families have mobilized in West Virginia and Oklahoma! This is our turn, come out on April 24th!

#OEAContractNow
#StudentsAtTheCenter
#SmallerClassSize
#FairPay
#Equity

Youth Spirit Artwork’s Tiny House Village project will be considered for very important permit & fee waivers, as well as other project benefits, by the Berkeley City Council. Our youth and project team are asking that as many of our supporters as possible attend this important Council meeting and speak on behalf of our item.

The proposal is sponsored by Council Members Ben Bartlett and Cheryl Davila and is being amended with input from the Mayor and City Manager. We will pass out the most up to date version of this proposal at the meeting, along with signs for everyone to hold.

The Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers present Malcolm Margolin, author, publisher, and cultural bridge-builder, to speak on  Becoming Fully Human: Lessons From The Ohlone Way  in honor of Earth Day. Margolin is founder and  former executive director of Heyday Press, an independent nonprofit  publisher and cultural institution based in Berkeley, CA. His 1974 book,  The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area  was named by the SF Chronicle as one of the hundred most important
books of the twentieth century by a western writer.

He will share his experiences from his four-decades of involvement
with the Native communities of California. They reshaped his view of the world
and the East Bay. “The battle for a healthy, diverse, and abundant world is
first won or lost in the human imagination.”  Under his guidance, Heyday launched
News from Native California in 1987, a quarterly magazine devoted to the history
and ongoing cultural concerns of California Indians, and Bay Nature, in 2001 on
the natural history of the San Francisco Bay Area.

After retiring from Heyday, he founded the California Institute for Community,
Art, and Nature (http://californiaican.org/) in 2017 to expand upon the work that
he began more than forty years ago. Friends of the California Institute for Community,
Art, and Nature, and the Alliance for Landless Peoples will join us on April 25th.

All ages are welcome – Wheelchair Accessible

Join us as we rally in front of Bank of America and march to San Francisco City Hall to demand the SF Board of Supervisors, SF Mayor, and SF Treasurer divest its 10+ billion dollar cash flow from Wall Street banks and create a People’s Bank that will operate with principles of equity, social, racial, economic and environmental justice.

April 25th is the day of Bank of America’s shareholder meeting and it is also one of the main banks that manages San Francisco taxpayer money. Bank of America currently invests in the Dakota Access Pipeline, fossil fuels, gun manufacturers, private prisons, the military industrial complex, and predatory loans that drive low-income people out of their homes.

It is clear that Bank of America is run to make money for wealthy shareholders and not the benefit of those living in San Francisco. The time is now to end our toxic relationship and to finally break up.

We call on everyone to come and say that Bank of America’s time is up and that City officials needs to move as quickly as possible to create a peoples bank now!

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS! More details to come and if you would like to get involved please email publicbanksf@gmail.com*

#DivestSF #SFPublicBankNow #defundDAPL #occupyWallStreet

Free & Open to the Public / ADA Accessible

A Conversation and Strategy Session with:
-Lara Kiswani, Executive Director, Arab Resource Organizing Center
-Christina Sinha, National Security and Civil Rights Program Co-Leader, Asian Law Caucus,
-Cat Brooks, Executive Director, Justice Teams Network & Co-Founder Anti-Police Terror Project
-Stephanie Lacambra, Attorney and Legal Analyst with Electronic Frontier Foundation
-Juan Prieto, Immigrant Rights Organizer / Statewide Communications Strategist, CIYJA
-facilitated by Leslie Dreyer, organizer with Housing Rights Committee and Artist in Residence with the UC ACES Program

Technologies coming out of the Bay Area are being used to surveil, profile, police and even deport vulnerable residents in our so-called Sanctuary Cities. Platforms claiming to promote democracy have corrupted it and recentralized power, while silencing dissent of targeted communities. Social media, license plate readers, facial recognition and AI are aiding local police, ICE, the Pentagon and beyond, and the most terrifying and distopian applications yet to be approved for use by our government get shipped abroad impacting the privacy and lives of international communities.

Combining analysis by legal experts and on-the-ground organizers, we’ll explore the following questions: What cross-movement strategies can we employ to keep undocumented folks and targeted communities safe? How can we pressure politicians who advance policies that threaten vulnerable residents, including immigrants of color, to work toward those that bring about real sanctuary? And how can we leverage our proximity to Bay Area-based tech surveillance behemoths to demand justice for those most impacted locally and abroad?

*Cosponsored by UC Berkeley’s American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Program, Housing Rights Committee of SF,
Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and the Arts and Design Initiative

Tomorrow the Re-Entry Council will consider taking a position in opposition to gang injunctions. We need a large show of support to let them know how critical this issue is, and move them to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, NO MORE GANG INJUNCTIONS!

The city attorney and police have used this out-dated tool of repression for years, and have never demonstrated its use in establishing public safety. On the contrary, gang injunctions push African American and Latino families out of SF and dismantle entire neighborhoods. Gang injunctions are actually a tool for police to racially profile and harass us in our own neighborhoods, putting the safety of people of color in jeopardy and making it impossible for us to stay in our homes.

Officials in San Francisco have been in the business of making racial profiling and other forms of police harassment sanctioned public policy for too long, and we’re going to stop them! Dennis Herrera is feeling the pressure. On Monday Herrera issued a press release after finally conducting the first known review of the injunctions, reviews that should have been conducted every 3 years since 2006 according to his own policy. In the press release he makes outrageous claims, stating that the injunctions are not stay away orders, and “They do not restrict anyone, including enjoined gang members, from living, working, going to school, or otherwise being present in the safety zones.”  This is an outright lie. We know that the persons named have been harassed and arrested for being at their work sites, for picking up or dropping off their children at school, visiting family members; if you can’t conduct functions necessary for living a normal life in your neighborhood then one’s neighborhood is unlivable. In short the injunctions are meant to drive those named, and by necessity their families out. SHAME ON YOU DENNIS HERRERA!

Upcoming: Save the date, June 13th at 4pm the BOS Public Safety & Neighborhood Services committee will hold a hearing on the injunctions at City Hall room 263.

From its inception, the Oakland Police Commission has been incredibly problematic. One of the most egregious elements is that it allows the Mayor to directly appoint three people to the commission with no vetting.

NOW – the Commission is dragging its feet to comply with community demands that the Chair of the commission, Thomas Lloyd Smith, who was directly appointed by Libby Schaaf, undergo an investigative process related to inappropriate actions he has taken as the Chair:

– On March 11, the night of the most recent police shooting in Oakland, Mr. Smith showed complete disregard for the community by getting on the media and parroting the police narrative of that shooting without any investigation having happened.

– Mr. Smith was not supposed to be at the scene in the first place. His mere presence at the scene violated the very procedures he was trained in and prevents him from later engaging in disciplinary procedures.

– Mr. Smith falsely claimed that the meetings needed to move from Wednesday to Thursday’s because that was the only day KTOP could broadcast in an effort to exclude a member of the commission who has been publicly critical of his behavior.

– There are multiple concerns about the actions of Mr. Smith, both on the dais and behind the scenes. These have been brought to him both from the community in public forum and privately, and as well have been expressed to him by several commissioners- mostly women. He remains unwilling to acknowledge or respond to these concerns.

Not only has his actions demonstrated a necessity for careful scrutiny of the behaviors of commissioners, but before this commission was even formed we knew it was compromised by the placement of Mayoral appointees without a clear transparent process for the skills, and characteristics of who the mayor would send to be on this commission. We knew this before the commission even began, but as a Mayoral appointee, he has simply proven our point.

We continue to maintain that all commissioners should be appointed by the community to represent the community, and should be always evaluated by and held accountable by the community. You cannot replicate the systems of oppression that exist within the police department by hiding facts, being dishonest and avoiding accountability.

Join APTP to demand an investigative process for Mr. Smith to be accountable for his actions.