Calendar
In February a delegation of 15 representatives from U.S. social movements traveled to Brazil to attend the National Congress of the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or MST). The Congress was a celebration of the MST’s thirty-years of struggle, and a debate about its future.
This event is a report-back to the Bay Area community at large, with insights into the MST’s structure and strategy, and examples of how they’re changing relations to land and labor.
Followed by a concert by local artists: Cradle Duende, Diana Gameros, & The Black Riders Liberation Party!
Report back by Bay Area Delegates: Effie Rawlings of Occupy the Farm, Shango Abiola of The Black Riders Liberation Party, and Rebecca Tarlau of Friends of the MST
This event is in solidarity with The International Day of Peasant Resistance which commemorates the massacre of 19 MST activists at the hands of state military police on April 17th, 1996.
Tickets are $10-20, sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds.
All proceeds benefit ongoing political organizing between the Bay Area and the MST.
Purchase advance tickets at http://tinyurl.com/n6t6cb5
“Oscar Grant was murdered for the first time on January 1, 2009; he would be murdered by the courts and the media soon thereafter.”
Join the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, ONYX, and Davey D in a discussion with award winning journalist and author, Thandisizwe Chimurenga on her recently released book, “No Doubt: The Murder of Oscar Grant”. Watch the book trailer.
Chimurenga uses her writing as political activism. In ‘No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant,’ she connects the systematic state-sanctioned violence against young Black males through the case of Oscar Grant’s murder by police on January 1, 2009 in California’s Bay Area.
Thandisizwe is a founding member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (1990) and is currently a member of Black August Los Angeles. She has received awards from New America Media for “Outstanding Reporting on Health and Health Care” (2013 Ethnic Media Awards), the All African Women’s Revolutionary Union as a “Grassroots Media Advocate” (2010 Mawina Kouyate Daughters of Africa Award), and she was recognized by the African Community Centers for Unity and Self-Determination as a “Pioneer for African Unity and Victory” (Atlanta, 2009). She came to journalism through activism and sees her writing as a form of activism.
Food will be provided. Books will be available for purchase.
New Deal Film Festival presented by the Save the Berkeley Post Office Committee. Films from the 30’s. Two evenings of double features: April 18th & April 25th.
SATURDAY, April 19, 10 am-1pm: SAVE THIS DATE for our big Friends of Knowland Park Earth Day Rally at the Oakland Zoo entrance!
SPECIAL GUESTS: COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD and the duo of Hali Hammer and Randy Berge! If you can only come out to help with one thing, this is it! Our goal is to turn out even more people than our last successful rally, so please come and bring your friends!
SHOWING UP MATTERS. Homemade signs are great—we will have a bunch, but bring your own if you can (or organize your own sign-making party and we’ll contribute materials!) We’ll have music, fun, some surprises and inspiration! The great places that have been saved, from Yosemite down to small bayside parcels, have been saved because lots of ordinary people took a stand and fought to protect them. This is ours – time to take to the street and stand up for what you believe in! Watch our new video!
Oakland Zoo is at the intersection of Golf Links Road and Mountain Blvd. Allow time for parking on nearby streets and walking to zoo entrance; please carpool, if possible. Let us know if you have something special you could contribute to make it a fun and fruitful rally. Bring water, sunscreen, lunch and plan a picnic in Knowland Park after the rally! Please RSVP to info@friendsofknowlandpark.org so we have a rough head count for planning purposes.
The Earth Day Action Parade
is Sat. April 19th, in conjunction with The Earth Day San Francisco Festival (EDSF). The March/Parade will be from Justin Herman Plaza at 11:30 to the main EDSF Festival at the UN Plaza, with a short Rally at the Main Stage, at 1pm. Pre-events (rallies, marches) as feed-ins from local groups across the Bay Area are being planned.
Impact – Bringing Political Action Back to Earth Day
Earth Day is the single largest day of environmental action. This year, the SF theme is “Action”. Last year 8,000 attended EDSF, aiming for 10,000 this year. Climate and environmental activism is front and central this year.
Your Message, Artistic
Not your “standard” march, The Earth Day Action Parade will be in sections that emphasize themes/messages with artistic visuals or small floats, including: Why/Morality: Children’s Brigade and faith groups Environmental Justice: Impacted Communities, Health impacts of Fossil Fuels, Problems/Dangers: Keystone XL, Fracking, Big Oil refinery expansions, Extreme Weather, and Solutions: Solar, Wind, Mass Transit, Bicycles, Electric Vehicles (EV’s), Resilient Communities…
See www.350bayarea.org/earthday-sf (under Events):
For more information
To Endorse or become a Sponsor
To RSVP
To post your organization’s Demands
To Volunteer (many roles are available) Make The Earth Day Action Parade a significant statement and spread the word about your organization!
Organizations Contact: Rand Wrobel (rand.wrobel@gmail.com, 510.914-2349) Volunteers Contact: John Anderson (p8ton.anderson@gmail.com).
Music.
Food.
Live Art.
The Oakland Privacy Working Group will show the movie Terms & Conditions May Apply at the sudoroom on Sunday, April 20th at 6 PM. There will be some food and drink, as well.
The movie will be shown after the sudoroom Cryptoparty, where you can learn how to protect your digital privacy. Make a day of it!
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
Occupy Forum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
OccupyForum Field Trip to hear
Author Nomi Prins:
All the President’s Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power
The relationship between Washington and Wall Street isn’t really a revolving door. It’s a merry-go-round.
Based on original archival presidential correspondence, All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power exposes a century of tight, personal relationships and interdependence between America’s past 19 presidents (from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama) and key bankers (from J.P. Morgan to Jamie Dimon) even including intermarriage. It explores the shocking ways in which the same people, through blood, mentorship and other symbiotic collaborations impacted American domestic and foreign policy and shaped the nation’s status as a super-power. Prins’s book examines how these relationships have effected the establishment of the Federal Reserve, two world wars, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, and all the international economic crises from the Panic of 1907 through today. It divulges the historical alignment of the White House and Wall Street, and presents a haunting examination of America’s geneology of power.
This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how the same financiers retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation.All the Presidents’ Bankers explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances, or they will break us.
Nomi Prins is an American author, journalist, and Senior Fellow at Demos. She has worked as a director at Goldman-Sachs and as an analyst at Bear Stearns.
It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street
was her loudest whistleblower book so far.
BART OFFICERS & SANTA RITA SHERIFFS TAG-TEAM BATTERY OF NUBIA BOWE, A 19-YEAR OLD AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN
One might think that based on the sordid history and negative press surrounding Oakland’s law enforcement activity, officers would think twice before using excessive force on unarmed citizens.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for many black and brown youth who are overly scrutinized and policed simply for existing in the skin in which they were born, nor was it the case for Nubia Bowe on Friday, March 21, 2014. On this evening, officers responded to a complaint of two young performers soliciting for money on the train. Two male passengers, and friends of Bowe, were approached by officers at the Lake Merritt station, with a witness who identified the two young men as the guilty suspects. The men were instructed by the officers to get off the train for questioning. Some of the train’s passengers stood up for the youth, telling the officers that young people they were looking for had already gotten off the train at the West Oakland station and that these three riders had not been engaged in the solicitation of passengers.
Bowe, a 19-year-old African American female and full-time student of a local security-training program, repeatedly iterated the group’s innocence, telling the officers that they were in violation of the young men’s rights. This “challenge”, as well as mounting vocal pressure from other BART riders, agitated the officers who forcibly removed Bowe from the train. One officer threw the 5’0” tall, 105 pound teen into the platform and repeatedly “roughed her up” according to one passenger. “They kept slamming her around..her mouth was full of blood” as she was ushered by her attackers to the Lake Merritt station holding cell in preparation for transport to Santa Rita County Jail on one felony and three misdemeanor charges.
Bowe’s first experience with the law quickly intensified at Santa Rita where she was taunted, battered, and denied serious medical care, as well as the usage of phone privileges by deputies at the County Jail; a jail whose condition is reported to be torturous in-and-of itself. “Three male guards and one female guard came in my cell and beat me up. They hit me then said that I assaulted one of them..they chained my wrists to my ankles and tipped me over onto the urine-soaked ground so I couldn’t get up. I could tell they were trying to break my spirit” says Bowe about the four-night stay that resulted in two additional arrest charges being tacked to her quickly growing rap sheet.
Though the felony charge has been dropped to a misdemeanor, Nubia is not yet out of the woods. As a result of the felony arrest, she was kicked out of her training program at the Treasure Island Job Corp where she was only 2 months away from graduation; she is facing criminal charges that can potentially impact the rest of her life, and she will forever have to deal with the trauma of her experiences.
Nubia’s upcoming court dates are: Mon., April 21 at 9 a.m. at the Gale-Schenone Hall of Justice, Dept. 701 located at 5672 Stoneridge Drive in Pleasanton & Wed., April 23 at 9 a.m. at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse, Dept. 104 at 661 Washington Street in Oakland. Come to the courthouse to support Nubia in her uncompromising fight for justice and her future.
Fundraiser for currently striking miners!
In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from dayone, showing the courageous but isolated fi ght waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.
This is a rare opportunity to see a courageous
documentary in a class of its own — the only
feature-length documentary on the Marikana
massacre. Never before screened in the United
States, the director Rehad Desai has generously
agreed to let us screen this fi lm.
With the impending Bay
Area visit of Mphumzi
Maqungo from the National
Union of Metalworkers
of South Africa (NUMSA), this screening will
provide ample background on the rise of rankand-
fi le militancy in South Africa and the
completion of the African National Congress’ lo
The movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against the State of Israel has taken major strides recently in the United States. With divestment votes moving forward on campuses across the country, and votes to boycott Israeli institutions passed by the American Studies Association and other organizations, discussions of the movement and its objectives have entered the mainstream.
At the same time, others have redoubled their efforts to suppress discussion of Israel’s escalating war against Palestinians, promoting legislation to defund institutions that participate in boycotts, and pressuring university administrations to punish students and faculty who support BDS.
ALI ABUNIMAH is the author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine. MAX BLUMENTHAL is the author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.
They will discuss their acclaimed new books, recent developments in the Middle East and United States, and the prospects for justice in Palestine.
Sponsored by Haymarket Books and Lannan Foundation.
Local actions:
SAN FRANCISCO
Time: 10:00 AM
Address: 1700 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109
SAN LEANDRO
Time: 1:00 PM
Address: 15555 East 14th Street #200, San Leandro, CA 94578
Berkeley Post Office Defenders and Save the Berkeley Post Office will be supporting these actions.
Staples attacks good jobs and public post offices.
Staples and the U.S. Postal Service have cut a deal that jeopardizes your mail service and your local post office. In fact, post offices across the country are at risk – along with thousands of good jobs.
The Staples deal will replace full-service U.S. Post Offices with knock-off post offices in Staples stores that are not staffed with U.S. Postal Service employees.
A bad deal for workers and consumers.
You have a right to post offices staffed by workers who are accountable to you and the American people. You have a right to postal services provided by highly trained, uniformed Postal Service employees, who are sworn to safeguard your mail – whether it’s at the Post Office or Staples.
The Staples deal is bad for consumers like you who will pay the same for less service. And if Staples and the USPS move forward with this deal, it could lead to the end of the Postal Service as we know it.
Undermining good jobs.
In the meantime, the Staples deal is replacing good-paying jobs that our community depends on with low-wage jobs that hurt our economy.
Free Dental and Medical Care at the Bridges to Health medical and dental clinic.
First come – first serve
100% FREE FOR EVERYONE!
Complete Dental (Surgery & Cleaning)
Eye Exam & Glasses
STD/HIV screening
Medical Care
Women’s Health
Meal & Childcare Provided
Come hear
Ian Angus, Canadian EcoSocialist Activist, founder and editor of Climate and Capitalism, an ecosocialist journal. He is the author of The Global Fight for Climate Justice, Anticapitalist Responses to Global Wasrming and Ecological Destruction (2010).
New Deal Film Festival presented by the Save the Berkeley Post Office Committee. Films from the 30’s. Two evenings of double features: April 18th & April 25th.
Gentrification is HERE! Organizations and neighbors in Oakland are fighting to stop it. Let’s join forces to make an even bigger impact.
Our vision is for self-determined communities where residents will thrive and make collective decisions about the resources in their neighborhoods. We want to start this journey by building a citywide movement against gentrification and displacement.
� Learn what people are doing to fight gentrification
� Hear and share what is working and what is not.
� Plug in with other people who want to get involved in the fight
� Learn about opportunities for collaboration and citywide efforts.
� Find out about the “dirty dozen” — the top evictors in our city
Food, childcare and Spanish translation provided.
RSVP and more info HERE.
Organizers of the event, which includes different Bay Area social justice organizations, community groups and coalitions, seek to build a city-wide movement against gentrification and displacement. Our community meeting will focus on pulling together all of the folks that we know of that are doing good work to fight gentrification to learn about what folks are doing, share what’s working, plug in folks that want to get involved in the fight, and identify opportunities for collaboration and city-wide efforts.
A unique partnership between community members, UC Berkeley students, academics and staff has been preparing a 1.5 acre urban farm and research center on the Gill Tract. Come join us as we celebrate this new joint venture by planting, learning, playing, and eating together!
Schedule:
11:00 AM-2:30 PM: Planting, kid friendly activities, and educational workshops presented by UC Berkeley and community organizations
12:30 PM: Lunch provided by the Berkeley Student Food Collective
2:30-3:00 PM: Open community discussion about visions for the future of this space
Sponsored by The Gill Tract Farm Coalition, Student Organic Garden Association, UC College of Natural Resources, and UC Cooperative Extension
Friends and Comrades! Hunter-Gatherers, Anti-Capitalists and Others Fighting the Powers-That-Be to Create a Sane & Sustainable Earth… Come visit my studio and take home some art… FREE! …
Saturday April 26, 2014
Noon to Midnight
2200 Adeline St., #250A (Adeline St. & Grand Ave.)
http://www.bluejayway.net/sandys_art_not_bombs/sandys%20art%20not%20bombs.html
Sandy
- Readings and collecting testimony from lovers of the Albany Bulb.
- Acoustic Music!
- Food (Pot Luck – bring something!).
- Bring your dog and enjoy the beach because you might not be able to soon.
2014/03/16 Share The Bulb – Light Brigade Action in Support of the Homeless in Albany, California from user15944994 on Vimeo.
Gray Panthers fundraiser for Lynne Stewart, defender and fighter to free political prisoners and fight racist mass incarceration
Includes singer Red Welch (of Save the Berkeley Post Office fame)
“This is Lynne’s first trip to the Bay Area since her release from Federal prison. We’ll celebrate her life and struggle and focus on the work ahead to free all political prisoners and fight racist mass incarceration. Because of a determined people’s movement, Lynne is finally home with her family. But she has urgent medical needs and costs to fight cancer and this event is to help raise the needed money. Lynne gave a lifetime of courageous legal help to those of us who needed it the most. Now it’s our turn to help her. Please come”