The Western Institute for Social Research invites you to a talk by author and activist, Reverend Richard Lawrence on Reflections of Battles with Racism.
Calendar
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Mar
5
Thu
Mar 5 @ 8:00 am – 8:00 pm
Exhibit on display from March 1 through April 30, 2020
Reception in the Morrison Library on Thursday, March 5 at 5 pm
This exhibit showcases original silk screen political posters from the 1960s and 1970s on the 50th Anniversary of the Great Poster Workshop in Wurster Hall in May 1970, triggered by the killing of four students at Kent State University in Ohio. U.C. Berkeley, birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, paved the way for mass protests and prolonged student strikes across the country against the Vietnam War and the draft, for black liberation and ethnic studies, and a variety of other struggles for social justice. This legacy of protest continues to be felt in the social movements of today.
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Mar
6
Fri
OAKLAND MOVIE SCREENING
Action2020 is hosting a showing of Defies Measurement, a documentary about the wide-spread damage caused by the privatization movement in public education.https://t.co/mqs6UJctS4
March 06, 2020 at 6pm – 8pm
Red Bay Coffee (3098 E 10th Street) pic.twitter.com/KSiSmnP59x— Action 2020 Oakland (@Action2020Oak) February 19, 2020
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67797
Mar
7
Sat
Mar 7 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Finish the Civil War! For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
Speaker with discussion period.
$2 donation. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Speaker with discussion period.
$2 donation. No one turned away for lack of funds.
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Mar 7 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
he Trump presidency has helped create a climate of disorientation and crisis here and around the world. The Democrats promise to fix the broken system, or they just assume that people who are sickened by Trump will put their hopes in a Democratic candidate — no matter who it is.
Can the elections bring about the changes we need, beyond getting rid of Trump? How can we begin to organize our own forces to deal with the problems of our time? Come to a presentation and discussion about these important questions.
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Mar
8
Sun
Monthly interfaith prayer meeting, held on second Sundays, dedicated to healing.
The Bahá’í community of Oakland is organizing this gathering for the community to connect, share prayers, writings and poems from all spiritual traditions, reflect and recharge and build coalitions interested in healing.
Come share prayers, quotes, poems, and favorite passages from your scriptures with us. Refreshments will be served.
Doors open: 10:00 AM
Prayers: 10:30-11:30 AM
Refreshments and socializing: 11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
67610
Why don’t Marxists study the Soviet experience in order to learn what these pioneers of the communist movement did, and what we can learn from them?
For Marx, as for all materialists, practice was – is — primary. Theory must be tested through practice. To base theory on the basis of a false understanding of reality is as fatal to knowledge as it would be to base theory, as idealists do, on ideas alone, without regard to material reality.
The Stalin era was the heroic era of the worldwide communist movement. Indeed, the 20th century may be fairly described as the “Soviet century,” since all the important political and social events and upheavals took place with reference to the Soviet Union.
If, following Marx, we want to build an egalitarian, communist society, we must study the practice of those who came before us in this endeavor. That means studying the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, especially the period when Joseph Stalin was in the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state.
Why don’t today’s Marxists do this? My talk will explore the reasons for this fatal neglect and urge a corrective. — Grover Furr, Montclair State University
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RALLY, MARCH, and CELEBRATION for International Working Women’s Day 2020!
Join grassroots women’s organizations and allies from throughout the Bay Area for a Rally, March & Celebration on Sunday, March 8th to commemorate the 112th International Working Women’s Day anniversary in honor of the first women strikers in 1908.
Join us as we Uphold the Legacy and Power of Women’s Resistance Here & Abroad! Together, we will be lifting up the internationalist struggles and stories of women, trans, and GNC communities around the world.
Let us take the streets and RISE Up to demand an end to gender based violence against women and TGNC communities, RESIST militarization and displacement, and UNITE for self determination. Join us as we collectively protest singing “Un Violador en tu Camino.”
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Mar 8 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Green Sunday
The M arch Green Sunday will be a wide-ranging discussion of the March primary results — both locally, as well as the ‘Super Tuesday’ showings here in California and across the country. We will be looking at these outcomes to tell us first about the state of national politics and how the Green Party might respond. There are clearly a wide range of possibilities depending on who the Presidential nominees might be, and ‘Super Tuesday’ should give us a strong indication of where this situation may be heading. In addition, we will assess the local and state races and measures, including several controversial tax proposals and the 3 contested County Supervisor seats — the first time that all 3 seats have had multiple candidates running for each position, for many, many decades; that is, for as long as any of us can recall.
Our discussion will be led by Don Macleay, a three time Green Party candidate for local office, for both Mayor, and for School Board, in Oakland. Don is also a father of two, a school volunteer, machinist, network tech, polyglot, and environmentalist. Beginning last year, he was one of the main founders of the group “Action 2020”, which has been working to overhaul the Oakland School Board, that currently supports charter schools and is corporate-friendly.
Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. Snacks are potluck. Vegetarian and vegan snacks are always welcome, but we appreciate whatever you can bring! The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows, at 6:45 pm. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
PLANET PEOPLE PEACE
before profit!
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Slingshot turns 32 years old – 1988 – 2020
Meet authors from the last 32 years, learn how you can get involved in Slingshot for the next 32 years. Display of back issues.
Vegan chocolate cake, zany free raffle for door prizes, get copies of issue #131 of the paper, maybe snacks, maybe music
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Mar
9
Mon
Join us for a screening of RIGGED: The Voter Suppression Playbook, followed by a voting rights panel and Q&A with the film’s executive producer.
Narrated by Jeffrey Wright, RIGGED takes a rigorous look at voter suppression and sparks discussion on the actions needed to protect our democracy. Shot principally during the 2016 election, the film tracks a systematic, decade-long effort to suppress votes at scale and reverse the growing demographic tide of new, young, and non-white voters who helped elect President Barack Obama in 2008. It details a variety of voter suppression “plays,” or tactics, ranging from the purging of voting rolls and passing of new, restrictive voter ID laws to gerrymandering and voter intimidation. The film also includes interviews with Republican strategists detailing how the game was played as well as interviews with leading voting rights advocates, law professors, demographers and Democratic strategists.
Post-Screening panel discussion on voting rights to follow. Panelists include:
Bertrall Ross, Berkeley Law Professor
Brittany Stonesifer, Attorney, ACLU
Mac Heller, Executive Producer, Rigged
VENUE: UC Berkeley School of Law
225 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA
Room 100
Sponsored by the American Constitution Society, La Raza, Law Students of African Descent & the Native American Law Students Association.
DINNER PROVIDED.
Find out more and RSVP today: https://www.facebook.com/events/849706108831076/
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The largest strike wave in the US in decades has been occurring for the last two years, and it is not over! Teachers and other public education workers have responded to austerity politics, poor working conditions, low pay, and the erosion of opportunity for their students with a newfound militancy. From West Virginia to Oakland and Los Angeles, this is a national phenomenon. What are its roots? Who are its leaders? What does it mean for the future of public education? For organized labor?
These are the topics explored by Eric Blanc’s Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strikes and Working Class Politics (Verso Press, 2019).
Come to the reading group launch on March 9th where we will:
- Hear Oakland teachers reflect on their experiences in the OEA strike of last spring
- See a presentation on the history of California education unionism from Fred Glass
Who should join? Educators, labor activists, parents, Easy Bay DSA members, and anyone else interested in learning more about the power of working class solidarity. We will meet every other week for ten weeks (four sessions).
Red State Revolt is the second book chosen in a series of Labor Reading Groups sponsored by the East Bay DSA Labor Committee. Copies of the book will be available for a suggested donation at the March 9 event (NOTAFLOF).
To RSVP in advance, go here.
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Mar
10
Tue
Come join the Golden Gate Branch Library for an evening with Donte Clark from The North Pole web show. Enjoy the season one screening with popcorn and refreshments followed by a Q&A session.
The North Pole is a dramatic comedy about three friends born and raised in North Oakland who fight dream and plot hilarious schemes to remain rooted as their neighborhood becomes a hostile environment. Facing both gentrification and global warming they combat evil landlords crazy geoengineering plots and ultimately each other.
Directed by Yvan Iturriaga. Written and Produced by Josh Healey. Executive Produced by Movement Generation and Rosario Dawson.
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Mar
11
Wed
Mar 11 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
GRETCHEN SORIN
advance tickets: $12: brownpapertickets.com :: T: 800-838-3006 or Marcus Books, Books Inc (Berkeley), Pegasus Books (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, East Bay Books, Mrs. Dalloway’s Books $15 door, benefits KPFA Radio 94.1FM info: kpfa.org/events
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Driving While Black explains clearly how the automobile fundamentally changed
African American Life. This is the dramatic history behind the best picture-winning film.
“Gretchen Sorin has spent decades exploring this deeply researched, acutely felt, penetrating study of race, space, and mobility in America—and a lifetime thinking about the issues and experiences that underlie it. No one who reads Driving While Black can fail to be moved and wonder-struck by how far American society has come in the last century and a half in forwarding the dream of equal mobility for all, and by how far we still have to go.” —Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker and writer
The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by our entrenched racist society, and to enjoy – in some measure – the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers the forgotten history of black
motorists and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black-only hotels, and informal communication networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of
this story is Victor and Alma Green’s famous Green Book, which made possible that most
basic American right—the family vacation—and encouraged a new method of resisting
oppression. Enlivened by Sorin’s personal history, Driving While Black opens a fresh,
entirely new view of the African American experience, and shows why travel was central
to the civil rights’ movement.
Gretchen Sorin is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cooperstown Graduate
Program of the State University of New York.
Sabrina Jacobs is host and producer of the popular A Rude Awakening, aired on KPFA Radio
Monday afternoons. She covers local breaking news and global events, providing views from a
progressive vantage point. Ms. Jacobs is also currently serving as staff representative/vice
chair of Pacifica Radio’s National Board.
67794
Mar
12
Thu
Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses social. Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in EBDSA Labor Committee & learn how you can get involved.
67522
Mar
13
Fri
Mike Zint, well known and appreciated homeless rights activist died on Feb.14th after a lengthy battle with emphysema.
Mike was one of the founders of an organized, drug and alcohol free homeless camp, First They Came for the Homeless, was well known for his words and campaigns that sought to increase awareness about the issues that homeless individuals face in the city.
He was instrumental in organizing the Poor Tour, a series of encampments throughout the city of Berkeley that were repeatedly disbanded in 2016. The tour eventually settled in what became the Here There camp.
Let’s gather together to celebrate Mike’s life, share memories, food and watch footage of this beloved member of our community.
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Mar
14
Sat
We are gathering to say: Stop Supporting Family Separation, Detention and Deportation! We won’t pay our grocery money into ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) violence! We will not feed ourselves and our families on white supremacy!
Whole Foods is owned by Amazon and Amazon is profiting from major contracts with ICE and Custom Border Patrol. And ICE depends on Amazon to do its business. More info below*
Furthermore, Amazon is helping accelerate the climate crisis with its support of oil extraction and has documented worker abuses.
We will be outside Whole Foods with signs and banners. We will be handing flyers to Whole Foods’ customers, informing them of the ICE-Amazon connection, providing alternatives to using Amazon services and asking them to call the Whole Foods CEO and Amazon CEO to cut ties with ICE and stop their war on people and the planet.
Join us to say NO to the normalization of Amazon/ICE in our communities.
#CloseTheCamps, #DisarmICE, #NoTech4Ice, #FamiliesBelongTogetherandFree
*Amazon Helps ICE & Profits from Trump’s White Nationalism:
Amazon provides essential technological infrastructure to DHS and ICE, enabling the Trump administration’s raids on immigrant communities and detentions in dangerous camps on the border. Amazon Web Services is Amazon’s cloud technology that mass
hosts and stores information. The Department of Homeland Security, and ICE, use AWS cloud technology to store, sort, and share massive amounts of data to target immigrants, including through information provided states by residents for their drivers
licenses. Without Amazon’s tech, ICE cannot function. As communities in support of all immigrants, we demand Amazon cut its ties to ICE now.
Amazon Fuels Climate Change:
While there have been some recent positive changes following an employee walkout protesting their environmental policies, Amazon has been a bad climate actor, seeking to profit off increased fossil fuel extraction even as our climate and ecosystems collapse. Amazon Web Services for Oil & Gas initiative is devoted to helping fossil fuel companies accelerate and expand oil and gas extraction. Amazon generates an enormous carbon footprint through their operations, shipping millions of items and using immense amounts of power to service the data centers that run its cloud operations.
They have donated to many climate deniers in Congress. Amazon has also threatened to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies.
Amazon Exploits Its Workers:
Some Amazon workers have protested Amazon’s collaboration with ICE and said, “We learn from history, and we understand how IBM’s systems were employed in the 1940s to help Hitler…We will not let that happen again. The time to act is now.”
Many workers say that Amazon treats them like more like robots than humans, that they do not have enough time to go to the bathroom and in some cases have had to pee in bottles just to meet their goals. The company is also under fire for racial, gender, and religious discrimination, for retaliating against workers who speak out, and low wages. We demand an end to all workers’ abuses by creating a humane rate and workload, paying workers living wages, and respecting workers’ voices on the job.
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Mar 14 @ 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Stop the US War on the World!
Part of the International Days of Action against Sanctions and Economic War
Learn more at Sanctionskill.org
Sanctions Kill!
Sanctions are War!
End Sanctions Now!
Join us for a Bay Area educational forum as part of the international days of protest against US-imposed sanctions and war on Saturday, March 14, 2:30 – 5:00 p.m. at Restore Oakland, 1419 34th Avenue (at International) in Oakland. Help us build a strong movement against US-imposed sanctions and war. Sponsored by the International Action Center – Bay Area.
Speakers include:
Rhonda Ramiro-Director, BAYAN
Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee
Bilal Mafundi Ali, Black Alliance for Peace
Teresa Walsh and Nesbit Crutchfield, Venceremos Brigade – Bay Area
David Paul, Embassy Protection Collective
Local endorsers include: BAYAN-USA, Black Alliance for Peace, Task Force on the Americas, International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity, International Action Center – Bay Area, Venceremos Brigade, Bay Area, David Paul, Embassy Protection Collective, Workers World Party – Bay Area, Socialist Action, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal.
Sanctions are imposed by the United States and its junior partners against countries that resist their agendas. They are a weapon of Economic War, resulting in chronic shortages of basic necessities, economic dislocation, chaotic hyperinflation, artificial famines, disease, and poverty. In every country, the poorest and the weakest – infants, children, the chronically ill and the elderly – suffer the worst impact of sanctions.
US imposed sanctions, violate international law and are a tool of regime change. They impact a third of humanity in 39 countries. They are a crime against humanity used, like military intervention, to topple popular governments and movements. They provide economic and military support to pro-US right-wing forces.
The US economic dominance and its +800 military bases worldwide demands all other countries participate in acts of economic strangulation. They must end all normal trade relations, otherwise they risk having Wall Street’s guns pointed at them. The banks and financial institutions that are responsible for the devastation of our communities at home drive the plunder of countries abroad.
Many organizations have been fighting Sanctions and Economic War for some time. NOW is an opportunity to combine efforts to raise consciousness on this crucial issue.
This broad campaign will include protests and demonstrations, lobbying, petition drives and all forms of educational efforts.
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