Calendar

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

PRESENTED by:
The Roy E. and Patricia Disney Forum and Communication Department, President James Donahue, the Committee on Inclusive Excellence, CILSA and the Black Lives Matter Subcommittee.

This is the signature event of 44 Days Honoring Black History.

Bree Newsome is a noted artist, community organizer, and advocate for racial justice. Newsome gained national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and removed a Confederate battle flag that was originally raised in 1961 as a white supremacist statement of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and lunch counter sit-ins occurring at the time.

REGISTER HERE: https://wwws.stmarys-ca.edu/forms/speakers/bree-newsome/index.html

Admission: FREE

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

 “The most controversial Russia expert in America.”— The Chronicle Review

War With Russia? is an alternative narrative of Donald Trump’s US and Putin’s Russia, from America’s most prominent Russian scholar. America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from  Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen — the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia— gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.  War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves.

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. His other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience; Sovieticus; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives. Cohen is married to Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is Editor and Publisher of The Nation, as well as a frequent commentator on US and international politics for ABC, MSNBC, CNN and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.  She writes a weekly column for The Washington Post.  She is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama.  She has received numerous awards for public service from various groups–the New York Civil Liberties Union’s Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right of Privacy; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s  “Voices of Peace” award and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s “Justice in Action” award. In 2010, she received the Exceptional Woman in Publishing Award. In 2013, she received American Rights at Work’s Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award; the Center for Community Change’s Champion in Activism Award. In 2015, she received the Progressive Congress Leadership Award on behalf of her work “creating pathways of success on behalf of progressive causes.

KPFA benefit

POLICE REFORM:  Alameda County Urban Shield/UASI Task Force   

For six years, Bay Area activists have pushed to repurpose Homeland Security disaster preparedness funds away from the hyper-militarized training exercise Urban Shield. Finally the Alameda Board of Supervisors agreed and convened a task force to end “Urban Shield as we know it”.  The  task force has provided dozens of recommendations to do exactly that.

There is lots of pushback and lots more coming, according to the SF Chronicle, which announced the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is “primed for battle“.  But this is our taxpayer money to protect us and help us recover from disasters like catastrophic wildfires. We get a say in how it is spent.

You can view some of the proposed recommendations here and here. The recommendations follow years of problems with racial profiling, right wing vigilantes, and environmental abuse. Your physical presence on the 26th is important, but you can also use this easy action alert to tell the Supervisors not to buckle to the pressure and really change Urban Shield. Now:

Easy Action Alert

Take action right now.
Take Action

POLICE REFORM:  Alameda County Urban Shield/UASI Task Force   

For six years, Bay Area activists have pushed to repurpose Homeland Security disaster preparedness funds away from the hyper-militarized training exercise Urban Shield. Finally the Alameda Board of Supervisors agreed and convened a task force to end “Urban Shield as we know it”.  The  task force has provided dozens of recommendations to do exactly that.

There is lots of pushback and lots more coming, according to the SF Chronicle, which announced the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is “primed for battle.  But this is our taxpayer money to protect us and help us recover from disasters like catastrophic wildfires. We get a say in how it is spent.

You can view some of the proposed recommendations here and here. The recommendations follow years of problems with racial profiling, right wing vigilantes, and environmental abuse. Your physical presence on the 26th is important (look out for an event invite), but you can also use this easy action alert to tell the Supervisors not to buckle to the pressure and really change Urban Shield. Now:

After 5 years, Urban Shield may end on February 26 …. with your help

Since 2013, the Bay Area has been trying to transform Urban Shield from a highly militarized SWAT competition and weapons expo into a community-focused safety and resilence exercise

And now we are almost there.

The second Alameda County task force has completed its work and issued a long and thorough list of recommendations that include ending the weapons expo that features spying and crowd control gadgets, ending the violent SWAT competition to focus on training other first responders, and.directing $5 million in new funding to health and social services.

But we need to make the adoption of these recommendations by the Supervisors a reality – and that means countering the Sheriff’s Department pressure with our own.

Take action right now.
Take Action

Write to the Board of Supervisors with this easy one-click action from our friends at Media Alliance and share it with others.

And join us at the Alameda Administration Building on February 26 at 10:45am to end Urban Shield.

Board of Supervisors – Alameda County
Alameda County Administration Building
1221 Oak Street, 5th Floor
Oakland

Tuesday  February 26  10:45AM Meeting Start

More Info About Urban Shield

2018 Urban Shield Promo Video

2018  Notes From The Last Urban Shield As We Know It 

2017 Urban Shield Community Report Card from the Stop Urban Shield Coalition

2017 ICE At Urban Shield Photo Gallery

Oakland Privacy Recommendations to Task Force

Dr. Tina Sacks discusses her book “Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System”.

All out for City Council on Tuesday, February 26 to demand written commitment to community benefits for the proposed Mandela hotel.

Development without community benefits = displacement of Oakland’s Black community!

To get involved please contact Pastor David Brazil at 510-508-7104 or david@workingeastbay.org

The Sanctuary City Contracting Ordinance will keep the money of Berkeley’s residents from lining the pockets of companies that collaborate directly with the Trump administration’s lawless and unconstitutional immigration policies.

The contracting ordinance will phase out gradually the use of vendors that supply ICE with information that helps them to better terrorize immigrant communities. Combined with similar actions by other Bay Area cities, the ordinance will send the message that it isn’t good business to separate young children from their parents, violate asylum seekers constitutional rights and lock people up in private immigration detention facilities like Adelanto and Otay Mesa that don’t conform to UN human rights standards.

Berkeley’s money should not be spent on feeding the deportation pipeline when there are alternatives available and the contracting ordinance will make sure as little of our money as possible will be going to ICE data brokers.

The item is the first item on the action calendar and will likely be heard between 7:30pm and 9:00pm on the evening of February 26. The meeting begins at 6:00pm.

DeportICE website.

Join us for a screening of the documentary City Rising: The Informal Economy, which follows four California workers organizing to find pathways for legalization and protection. The documentary follows the lives of a street vendor in Boyle Heights, a truck driver in Long Beach, a farm-working family in Coachella and an organizer in Oakland fighting for jobs for formerly incarcerated people. Featured in the film, Sylvia Allegretto from CWED will join us in discussion after the screening. Food and refreshments will be provided. Space is ADA accessible.

Co-sponsored by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics

Enough is enough: The rent is too damn high. East Bay DSA is fighting for bold solutions that don’t depend on the luxury developers or hoping you end up with a friendly landlord.

Come grab a drink, hang out and talk about housing justice with socialists in Berkeley!

Panel Discussion and Q&A.

Panelists: Jim Chanin, Dan Siegel, Carol Denny, Joe Liesner, Andrea Pritchett

Music by Hali Hammer.