Each day, bikeshare workers at Facebook climb in an unmarked van and set out to recover bikes ridden off the company’s sprawling campus. Their recovery missions are one of the few real interactions between the hyper-wealth of the tech giant’s headquarters, where the median salary is $240,000, and the surrounding impoverishment of East Palo Alto and the Baylands’ homeless encampments. After a coworker was assaulted on a recovery mission, bikeshare workers decided to begin organizing, tired of being asked to put themselves in danger for poverty wages.
Their fight to change the power structure in their work place spanned more than six months, drew international media attention, and found organizers facing off against social media’s biggest tech titan and every union busting trick in the book. Now that they’re finally past the bureaucratic hurdles and welcoming a union into their shop, the campaign rank and file have insights to share on what the frontline of the labor movement looks like in the heart of Silicon Valley’s stratified caste-based tech economy.
We’re excited to host the lead organizers from Bike Workers United to hear their story of struggle and organization in conversation with journalist Padmini Parthasarathy.
Help us imagine the next decade of social transformation with food, dance, and art.
For the past ten years, Sustainable Economies Law Center has been supporting movement changemakers with the legal expertise needed to transition from destructive economic systems to innovative and cooperative alternatives. Our story is the story of our partners, clients, volunteers, and staff. It is the story of the movements we uplift for a more just, joyful, and resilient world. It’s the story of you! It’s the story of us!
And the next ten years are even more important. We believe we have the tools, resources, and communities needed for social transformation! This celebration is about the spirit, wisdom, and solidarity that already exists and will continue to deepen over the next ten years. Come celebrate with us and imagine the future that we need, together!
We want all of our communities to join us! If you are unable to afford a General Admission ticket and would like to request discounted admission, please email Ricardo at ricardo@theselc.org. We have a limited number of reduced price tickets. Also, children under the age of 5 get in free!
Meet us in the sunshine on the 7th West patio for delicious Filipino food by Jeepney, drinks, games, art, and a dance party courtesy of DJ Baagi!
Join us on October 12th to celebrate 10 amazing years of cultivating people power and community resilience.
Beginning on August 10th, the Strike Debt Bay Area Economics Book Group began discussing Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. We tackled the introduction and first chapter, available through the ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon, for the August 10th meeting.
For our September 7th meeting, we will be discussing the rest of the first section, Chapters 2-6.
For our October 12th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 7-9, the first part of the second section.
For our November 16th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 10 – 13.
For our December 14th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 14 and through to the end.
All are welcome!
The Economics Book Group began with Doughnut Economics and continued with Take Back the Economy. We read a few chapters every month.
“Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.”
“In Banking on the People, attorney Ellen Brown provides a much-needed roadmap for reforming monetary and credit systems and the central banks now strangling our common human future. More lucidly that any other expert I know, she shows how we can break the grip of predatory financialization now extracting value from real peoples’ productive activities all over the world. Her in-depth research and systemic overview of the global and local politics of money-creation and credit allocation include all the viable proposals of global experts and reformers. She reviews many of these reforms: from financial transaction taxes, to a universal basic income to provide purchasing power for the cornucopia of goods and services now produced, to expanding the public banks she so ably promotes via the Public Banking Institute, to returning the Fed and all banks to serving the public utility functions that economies require. This book is a must read for citizens in all societies who see the promising future as we seek to widen democracies and transform to a cleaner, greener, shared prosperity, based on the renewable abundance of free daily energy from our sun.” – Hazel Henderson, CEO of Ethical Markets Media and author of Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age and other books.
Dream Farm Commons, ProArts and Xiquihuitl Media invite you to an evening of free outdoor video celebrating the roots, cultures, and contributions of our indigenous communities. Featuring documentaries and narratives from across the Americas, these videos show us how strength and resistance shape our histories, present, and future. De-colonizing our imagination one video frame at a time, we invite you to reimagine future possibility as we project a selection of videos onto the graffitied walls into the evening. As a part of the current exhibition Subterranean Borders: Colonialism, Extraction and Defiance, Dream Farm Commons is hosting a series of events, or Encuentros, to decolonize our imagination or as practical border action. Please visit the exhibition and the related programs thru October 27th. Photo credit: Robert Gomez Hernandez. Design credit: Stacey Goodman.Hands off Venezuela, Support the Venezuelan Embassy Protectors Collective. Welcome Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese.
In April-May, 2019, Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective (EPC) members, at the request of the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro, defended the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C. for 37 days. Citing U.S. and international law (the Geneva Convention), they rejected the Trump administration’s imperial “appointment” of coup leader Juan Guaido to the Venezuelan presidency. The EPC members inside were cut off from receiving food, electricity and water. EPC members who tried to deliver food were physically assaulted. All EPC members were subjected to loud noises, strobe lights, harassment, threats and intimidation.
On May 16, federal agents raided the embassy and arrested the four remaining EPC members, who are now faced with felony charges, to wit, “interfering with U.S. government operations.” Government attorneys have demanded that the protectors pay $100,000 fines and serve one year in prison. Join us in demanding that all charges be dropped. Meet courageous defenders Kevin and Margaret.
Our democracy is in grave danger, and Congress needs to hear from the people before they return to DC after their undeserved recess. Wear RED to reclaim the #ColorOfLove from hate-mongers. #ImpeachNow
Our speakers and acts will focus on bravery in the age of Trump.
1. Lea Jones, producer of Hang On, Ruthie! will be traveling from Oregon to perform his hit original in support of Justice RBG. We’re looking for individual singers or a local choral group willing to show up in black robes and lace collars to accompany them for the interactive parts. Please email vigilfordemocracy1@gmail.com if you’re interested.
2. Dr. Amy S. Morgenstern, known as the Feminist Devil, will highlight the story of whistleblowers like the current Ukraine one, and Reality Winner. Reality is an Air Force veteran who first alerted us to Russian election interference in 2017, and is serving 63 months in prison for it.
3. Regina Fletcher, the comedian who does Regina Monologues, will be speaking on the topic of the first amendment, and about Justice Ginsburg as well.
#ImpeachNow
After this event, if you want to be inspired some more, please head over to St. Paul’s Towers in Oakland to a lecture by Pennie Opal Plant, an indigenous grandmother. It’s titled “Let Us Save The World Together”!!
2-4PM, 100 Bay Pl, Oakland
Join the annual gathering of East Bay Peace Action to hear Pennie Opal Plant, indigenous grandmother, founder of Idle No More SF Bay, and signer of the Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth Treaty.
Her keynote address, “Let us Save the World Together,” will connect our work for the environment, climate, justice, and peace.
There will also be a program and EBPA board elections.
Light refreshments. Wheelchair accessible.
More info here
Join APTP in sharing hot food, drinks, and solidarity with folks visiting loved ones at and getting released from Santa Rita Jail!
Let us know you’ll be there by sending us a text at (510) 686-3284.
Prisons function to repress, warehouse and extract labor from primarily those of us who are Black or poor. We believe that solidarity is a weapon of resistance, and that we must respond to the basic needs of our community while also confronting state terror.
In honor of Dujuan Armstrong Jr. who entered Santa Rita Jail for a weekend sentence and never came home, APTP is providing material support and direct care to folks at Santa Rita Jail as a small but meaningful way to address the harm caused by incarceration in our community. We do not positively engage with the racist pigs who work at the jail, as they are willing agents of the state that criminalizes and incarcerates us.
We’d love to see you there! Meet APTP outside of the Lake Merritt BART Station at 4pm – we’ll drive out to the jail together from there. All are welcome, no experience required.
The ecosystem, the political system and the economy are all in crisis, yet the 99% seems powerless to influence the ruling class which continues on a path toward disaster. The panel will address some of the following questions:
America’s leading scholar of high strangeness, Erik Davis celebrates release of High Weirdness, a study of the new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the 1970s counterculture writings of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality. But how did their writings reflect and shape the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America? Davis and R.U. Sirius discuss these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences.
Bringing sustainable energy, low carbon emissions, and green jobs to low-income people is the passion of Zach Franklin of Bay Area nonprofits Grid Alternatives and Rising Sun Center for Opportunity. Join us for stories of struggle and success that illuminate why these efforts matter — for workers, volunteers, and all of us affected by global warming.
Free Bay Currents talks on Bay Area natural history and environmental issues, with emphasis on positive solutions, are at St. Alban’s Parish Hall, 1501 Washington (at Curtis, one block north of Solano), Albany.
Refreshments 7 PM, talks 7:30 PM.
Howie Hawkins, candidate for the Green Party Nomination for President, will speak on
“What an Ecosocialist Green New Deal Would Look Like.”
Luis Gongora Pat, a Mayan indigenous man, was murdered by San Francisco police officers on April 7, 2016 on Shotwell near 19th Street in the Mission. His murder came in the wake of other homicides by police of Black and Brown communities members. His family pursued every legal avenue available, including a civil case which was settled in January 2019. Three and a half years later, the story of this brutal murder is at risk of being buried because the primary family eyewitnesses never got their day in court. But their story must be told.
Two primary eyewitnesses–Christine Pepin and S. Smith Patrick–will present their foregone testimony in an open setting, getting the facts onto a public record even if they couldn’t provide it in court. Adante Pointer, the family civil rights lawyers, will attend to support the narrative with facts on the record. In connection with the San Francisco Public Library One City One Book program .
Rebels around the world have taken to the streets to demand climate action. Today and tomorrow, the Bay Area will join the global rebellion.
Join us in calling for Net-Zero Carbon Emissions in California by 2025. This is the message we’re bringing into the streets as part of the Global Climate Rebellion.
This week’s events:
Join us this evening as we kick off Wednesday’s actions with guerrilla projections from the San Francisco Projection Department. We’ll be singing songs of rebellion and projecting our message onto the SF State Building. Meet by the State Building at McAllister & Van Ness in San Francisco. We hope to see you there!
Paul Butler, Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center, will discuss what would replace prisons, how people who cause harm could be dealt with in the absence of incarceration, and why abolition would make everyone safer and our society more just.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Read more about this lecture at https://gradlectures.berkeley.edu/lecture/prison-abolition-mule
The Bancroft hotel is wheelchair accessible.
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Paul Butler is the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a legal analyst on MSNBC. He frequently consults on issues of race and criminal justice. His work has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Nightline, and The ABC, CBS and NBC Evening News. Butler lectures regularly for the American Bar Association and the NAACP, and at colleges, law schools, and community organizations throughout the United States.
Professor Butler is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. He holds an honorary Doctor of Law Degree from City University of New York. Butler served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, where his specialty was public corruption. His prosecutions included a United States Senator, three FBI agents, and several law enforcement officials. He currently serves on the District of Columbia Code Revision Commission as an appointee of the D.C. City Council. He was elected to the American Law Institute in 2003.
Butler’s most recent book Chokehold: Policing Black Men, published in July 2017, was named one of the 50 best non-fiction books of 2017 by The Washington Post. The New York Times described Chokehold as the best book on criminal justice reform since The New Jim Crow. It was a finalist for the 2018 NAACP Image Award for best non-fiction.
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ABOUT THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL LECTURES
In 1944, the Jefferson Memorial Fund was established by the will of Elizabeth Bonestell in her name and the name of her husband, Cutler L. Bonestell, for the study and promotion of a loyal and enlightened adherence by young people to the basic principles of American democracy as embodied
in the Constitution. The fund supports an annual series of lectures on topics concerned with Jefferson or his times, with the development of the American governmental system, or with civil liberties and the Jeffersonian tradition.
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This lecture is also part of UC Berkeley’s commemorative events spotlighting African American history after the passage of the 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act.
Learn more at https://400years.berkeley.edu.
When Trump first announced his “Muslim Ban” in January 2017, J.J. Mulligan Sepúlveda was one of the lawyers who protested. His new book No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney on the Front Lines of the Immigration War pulls back the curtain on the ingrained inhumanity found in the immigration reform currently coming to fruition in the United States. Readers are taken into the often-times merciless courts of New York City and San Francisco, the frightening detention centers on the U.S./Mexico border, and the overburdened offices of legal defense organizations. In conversation with Steven Mayers. FREE, $5 suggested donation
Venezuela: Embassy Protection Collective to Speak at BFUU in Berkeley
Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese from Baltimore and David Paul from San Francisco will be touring Northern California to speak about the latest on Venezuela and what local activists can do to oppose the US blockade against the South American country. After 37 days of struggle protecting the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC, Kevin Zeese, Dr. Margaret Flowers, Dr. Adrienne Pine, and David Paul were arrested by federal agents and are currently fighting the charges against them. The fight to protect the embassy reinvigorated the struggle for justice in the United States. Join us to hear from three of the Embassy Protection Collective in person.
RESCHEDULED FROM 10/9 to 106 BECAUSE OF POWER OUTAGE
SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TIME.
From your inbox to the ballot box, how do we keep misinformation from destroying democracy? A recent bipartisan Senate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election confirmed that Russian agents used social media and other means to help the Trump campaign. Fake events, rampant misinformation, and other techniques were designed to sow discord and pit neighbor against neighbor. One group singled out in the report is African Americans, who were targets of the Russian agents. The Senate report recommends sweeping changes. Hear from Renee DiResta and Matt Mitchell on what’s required from Washington, DC, Silicon Valley and us to safeguard elections in 2020 and beyond.
Renée DiResta is a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.
Renée regularly writes and speaks about the role that tech platforms and curatorial algorithms play in the proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories. She is an Ideas contributor at Wired. Her tech industry writing, analysis, talks, and data visualizations have been featured or covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, Politico, TechCrunch, Wired, Slate, Forbes, Buzzfeed, The Economist, Journal of Commerce, and more. She is a 2019 Truman National Security Project security fellow and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.
Renée is the author of The Hardware Startup: Building your Product, Business, and Brand, published by O’Reilly Media.
Matt Mitchell is the Director of Digital Safety and Privacy at Tactical Tech. He is a hacker, security researcher, operational security trainer, developer and data journalist who founded and leads CryptoHarlem, impromptu workshops teaching basic cryptography tools to the predominantly African American community in upper Manhattan. Matt trains activists and journalists (as an independent trainer for Global Journalist Security) in digital security. His personal work focuses on marginalized, aggressively monitored, over-policed populations in the United States.
