Calendar

Hardware hack night – each Tuesday, we welcome sudoers new and old to bring their hardware projects to the space, or simply come by to learn and tinker! All welcome, 7pm til… whomever’s left standing!

You can also jump in virtually via https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles !

Some stuff people have been working on:

• Pimping out cool bicycles with lights for the East Bay Bike Party
• the dancing robot arm
• stable diffusion watercolor painting IRL

Join 350 Bay Area and 350 Bay Area Action for their fourth annual Climate Justice Awards event “honoring leaders who have been working at the many intersections of climate justice,” who will share stories of their work and their wins.  We are delighted at their picks, and have had the extreme pleasure and honor of working with several of the honorees.  Ian Cohen and Alexi Lindeman are stalwarts of the No Drilling in Contra Costa campaign, having organized over 300 Contra Costa high school students for an Antioch march last Spring in support of a fossil-free future and an end to oil and gas drilling.  Mayor Devin Murphy has been a sustainability champion in the City of Pinole, and his many accomplishments include getting his city to pass a No Drilling in Contra Costa solidarity resolution.  See you at the awards ceremony!

Leading the Fight for Climate Justice and Liberation
* Arieann Harrison, founder, Marie Harrison Community Foundation, Bayview/Hunters Point
* Alexi Lindeman and Ian Cohen, Sustainable Leaders in Action

Centering Migrant and Labor Justice
Maria Salinas with Max Bell Alper, North Bay Jobs with Justice

Celebrating Major Wins for Environmental Justice
Kobi Nasek, VISION Coalition

This Year’s Elected Honoree
Devin Murphy, Mayor of Pinole

Admission: free to $100.
Register here

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We refuse to let the memory of our friend and neighbor Banko Brown fade away. The injustice of their death at the hands of private security still hovers over the city. Meanwhile, the core causes of this tragedy have yet to be addressed.

In recent weeks, fellow comrades have taken direct action across the city, declaring war on the capitalist police state that fuels violence against the poor, vulnerable and unhoused all over the Bay.

Mayor London Breed deserves to feel the displeasure and agitation of the masses in the face of this violence. So does DA Brooke Jenkins. So does every pig, corporate executive and privileged person who judges from their home, claiming that “theft” and “drugs” are destroying SF.

Ironic, considering the only thing destroying SF is the callous hand of capitalist liberalism, propped up by people who defend a wage-stealing corporate retailer over the needs of struggling people.

We refuse to march down this path toward oblivion, paved with the blood of Banko and so many other working-class people who have been oppressed by police and security forces across the city.

Instead, JOIN US on FRIDAY, JUNE 23rd as we raise our fists and voices for a revolution in thought and action.

We can do better. We MUST do better. AVENGE BANKO! DEFEND TRANS LIVES!

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.

For our June and July meetings we are reading Poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond.

For  our June meeting we’ll be reading the first five chapters.
For  the  July  meeting  we will finish the book.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth,  Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More,  Cannibal Capitalism, and Debt, the First 5000 Years.

    The US is spearheading an effort to reinvade and reoccupy Haiti, according to our speaker who last visited the island republic last month. Danny Shaw will report on the different ingredients in the neocolonial hybrid war in Port-au-Prince; the guns, the so-called gangs, and the neocolonial state. He has been working with the Haitian left both in Haiti and in the diaspora since 1998 and speaks Kreyòl.

Our speaker, Danny Shaw, teaches Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Race, Ethnicity, Class and Gender at the City University of New York. He holds a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University. He has worked and organized in seventy different countries, opening his spirit to countless testimonies about the inhumanity of the international economic system. He works with RT Intentional, TeleSUR, and is a senior research fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Relations.

Danny is also a retired Golden Gloves boxer, fighting twice in Madison Square Garden for the NYC heavyweight championship. He teaches boxing, yoga and nutrition and works as a Sober Coach, keeping young people out of the military and prison industrial complex. He is the father of two young Life Warriors and mentors many through the nutritional, ideological, social and emotional landmines that surround us. He is the author of six books and numerous articles. He recently posted an article on Haiti in Truthout.

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Join Moms 4 Housing and Community Ready Corps TOMORROW for a press conference in support of Leslie Lewis, a Black elder who is working to save his family home. Mr. Lewis is now a tenant in the home he was born in after his family lost ownership of the property through a predatory foreclosure. The new owner is showing the home to prospective buyers, despite Mr. Lewis’ desire to re-purchase the house himself.

Sign and share the petition to save the Lewis family home, and come stand with Mr. Lewis this Sunday at 271 Fitzpatrick Road at 3PM for a press conference calling on the landlord to negotiate the sale of the home with its rightful owner. Moms 4 Housing and Community Ready Corps are leading this effort, and Care 4 Community Action is rallying our neighbors to come out and support because housing is a human right!

Leslie Lewis prunes a rose bush in the back yard of the family home he is fighting to save.

In the waning days of Prohibition, Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) and his adopted son, Quick (Eddie Murphy), run a speakeasy called Club Sugar Ray. When gangster Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner) learns that Sugar Ray’s place is pulling in more money than his own establishment, the Pitty Pat Club, he pays corrupt cop Phil Cantone (Danny Aiello) to close Club Sugar Ray down.

The Oakland Greens Free Movie discussion series is a virtual community building event held on ZOOM.  Discuss lighting, script writing, cinematography, and the interesting question, “Could certain films — and would certain films — be made today?”.

Please register on Eventbrite, here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-oakland-greens-free-dinner-a-movie-discussion-series-june-2023-tickets-522193824787?aff=erelexpmlt

SPEAKER: Conor Tomas Reed

New York Liberation School documents how a public university and city were transformed by such writers and organizers as Toni Cade Bambara, Samuel Delany, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Assata Shakur. Through archives, interviews, publications, and movement waves, we chronicle what occurs when people commit to radically reconfiguring an urban learning institution instead of abandoning it as a lost cause. This dialogue will invite NYLS readers to discuss the book’s themes and proposals for revolutionary change in our lifetime.

Register

PEAKER: Maria del Mar Rosa Rodriguez

In 2016, PROMESA law was signed by President Obama to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt. A Federal Oversight Management Board (FOMB) of unelected Wall Street bankers was imposed to control all finances on the islands and renegotiate the debt. Austerity, privatization, hurricanes, earthquakes and a pandemic added to the Puerto Rican crisis. The University of Puerto Rico, as a social project and also as a site of political resistance, has been one of the main targets of the FOMB who has insisted on dismantling it and cutting its budget in half. We will explore the intersectionality between colonialism, debt and the neoliberal education agenda in Puerto Rico and the strategies of resistance from within and beyond the University of Puerto Rico.

Hardware hack night – each Tuesday, we welcome sudoers new and old to bring their hardware projects to the space, or simply come by to learn and tinker! All welcome, 7pm til… whomever’s left standing!

You can also jump in virtually via https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles !

Some stuff people have been working on:

• Pimping out cool bicycles with lights for the East Bay Bike Party
• the dancing robot arm
• stable diffusion watercolor painting IRL

Before we tell you more how we are innovating and shaping policy, take a moment to RSVP to our upcoming webinar on 6/28 where we will share results from our soon-to-be-released report Hidden Hazards: The Impact of Climate Change on Incarcerated People in California Prisons that sheds light on the intersections between the crises of climate disaster and incarceration. RSVP now
Learn More about Hidden Hazards

From the RISE Act (SB 483, Allen) to the Racial Justice Act 4 All (AB 256, Kalra), you know that the Ella Baker Center – along with our many co-sponsors and partners – has numerous state policy wins. These wins provide dignity and opportunity for communities that have historically been left out of policy considerations, like Black and Brown communities, and people with low or no income.

We know that our work must continue to be on the leading edge and continue to be informed those who are most impacted by prisons and policing. That’s why we have started the Emergent Policy Project.

The Emergent Policy Project is a “pop-up” think tank that will convene policymakers and movement partners with current and formerly incarcerated people, and systems-impacted community members to address a specific problem through policy innovation. Our plan is to strengthen movement strategies between established policy actors with experience in the legislature, movement organizations who advance the conditions for change, and people who have been historically excluded from policy decision-making but have unique vision and expertise.

The first brain-child of the Emergent Policy Project � thhe Hidden Hazards report � is set to go live on Wednesday, June 21. Spurred by the fact that climate disasters have the greatest impact on vulnerable populations, the Ella Baker Center, students from the Public Policy Master’s Program at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, and inside organizers examined the intersections of climate change, environmental justice, and the carceral system. Our report will detail why and how our state must do more to protect incarcerated Californians from climate hazards. Check your email and our social channels on June 21 for the exciting launch of this first-of-its-kind report.

To learn more about our Emergent Policy Project and the timely report Hidden Hazards, join us on Wednesday, June 28 for an exclusive webinar. RSVP today to hear from policy and climate experts from across our movement.

Register