Calendar
EVERYBODY’S GOT A RIGHT TO LIVE: Education, Living Wages, Jobs, Income, Housing. ** RVSP http://bit.ly/PPCwk5 **
WEEK 5 of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. We are creating a Radical Revolution of Values by undertaking mass, nationally coordinated, civil disobedience, for six straight weeks.
12:30pm @ Rally and Direct Action launch at West Capitol steps
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50 years ago, Dr. MLK Jr. started the Poor People’s Campaign to spark a radical revolution of values across the nation. The campaign was intended to turn his dream, our dream, into a reality. Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, White, folks of every color where invited to band together across differences to build a Beloved Community across the nation. Weeks before the Campaign, King was assassinated. The original movement was unable to come to fruition.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is picking up where the movement stopped in 1968. Join us for our fourth week in a SEASON OF NONVIOLENT MORAL DIRECT ACTION. America is in a crisis of values. We must take nonviolent radical action to stand for the dignity of all people in our nation.
In the 5th week of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival we are fighting for Everybody’s Right to Live: education, living wages, and housing. In the richest nation ever to exist it is immoral for people to go cold or hungry. When 3 Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the countries population combined, we have a problem.
We can build a new American dream where everyone has a right to live a dignified life.
JOIN US MONDAY JUNE 11TH TO CONTINUE TO BUILD A MOVEMENT ACROSS THE NATION!
PLEASE NOTE: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO RISK ARREST TO JOIN THIS ACTION. We need all hands on deck!
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Schedule:
8:30am-9am: Arrive Sign-up for Nonviolent Moral Fusion Direct Action and support role training @ Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1300 N St, Sacramento 95814. If you are participating in Nonviolent Moral Fusion Direct Action, or supporting as a Marshal, Medic or Peacekeeper you must join this training. (even if you have already been trained!)
8:30am-12:00pm: Final Training for everyone planning on participating in the Direct Action or as a Marshal or Peacekeeper.
12:30pm: Rally at WEST CAPITOL STEPS
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VOLUNTEER: Are you able to help volunteer with set-up or take down of the campaign? The revolution requires the dishwashers and movers. http://bit.ly/PPCVOLUNTEER
FOR THOSE WHO NEED, FREE SIMPLE HOUSING IS OFFERED IN LOCAL CHURCHES. Fill in this form: http://bit.ly/PPCHOUSING
TRANSPORTATION
The Bay Area: Please fill out this form and local organizer will be in touch soon: http://bit.ly/2IwHBtX
Central California: Please fill out this form and local organizer will be in touch soon. http://bit.ly/2LbXt2t
As this is significantly larger zone to try and cover, we will do our best, but can’t be certain we will meet everyone’s needs. Please organize as much as you in your local communities to see what is possible with carpooling and transportation options.
If you have any questions please be in touch at california@poorpeoplescampaign.org
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Thank you for joining with us to launch a multi-year movement to transform the moral narrative of this nation!
Meet you at the Capitol!
This workshop will include:
– Know Your Rights training and how to practice your rights
– Resources specific for workers, employers, educators, students & faith groups to practice sanctuary
– What a sanctuary neighborhood is and tips & practices on how to organize your neighborhood
– Networking with others in your neighborhood
– Lawyers available for legal consultations for additional hour after the workshop (7:30 – 8:30 pm)
This training is organized by Bay Area Sanctuary Neighborhoods, a project initiated by Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Bay Resistance, Hand in Hand, Immigrant Liberation Movement, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, La Colectiva, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, PODER and Xicana Moratorium Coalition.
Sanctuary Neighborhoods brings together neighbors, schools, small businesses, workers, people of faith and congregations who have pledged to defend our communities from ICE. We are each others’ sanctuary.
Join us by coming to this workshop! RSVP here: bit.ly/sanctuary11
discussing the subject of his new book
Bullshit Jobs
from Simon and Schuster
From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences.
Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.
Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.
David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of the bestseller DEBT: The First 5,000 Years, and a contributor to Harper’s, The Guardian, and The Baffler. He was a leading figure in the OCCUPY Wall Street movement, He lives in London.
KPFA Radio 94.1FM and Marcus Books present
Advance tickets:
Marcus Books, Books Inc/Berkeley, Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s, East Bay Books
What happens to the black boys who come of age in neglected, heavily policed, and economically desperate cities that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration have created? How do they learn to live, love, and grow up? Where should they turn when history rejects their very existence? Darnell explores these questions in NO ASHES IN THE FIRE.
When Darnell Moore was fourteen years old, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they assumed he was gay, and poured gasoline on him. He barely escaped with his life. On many other occasions there were terrifying confront-ations, including some within his family…
Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer and activist, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a tireless advocate for justice and liberation. No Ashes in the Fire is his compelling Account of how that bullied, frighteneed teenager not only survived, but found such a unique calling. He traces his life from his childhood in Camden, New Jersey, a city famously scarred by uprisingsa and repression, to his search for intimacy in the gay gathering places in Philadelphia, and finally to soal movements in Newark, Brooklyn, and Ferguson, where he could openly fight for others who survive on society’s edges. An editor-at-large at the content distributor Urban One, and a columnist at Logo, Darnell L. Mooore describes his bold, candid memoir as “snapshots of my life” molded by forces of “brutality, poverty, and self-hatred.”
Darnell L. Moore (born in 1976 in Camden, NJ) is an American writer and activist whose work is characterized by anti-racist, feminist, queer, and anti-colonial thought and advocacy. His essays, social commentary, poetry and interviews have appeared ion various national and international media venues, including The Feminist Wire, Ebony Magazine, and The Huffington Post.
Moore’s scholarship focuses broadly on Black Theology and Black Christian thoought that is inclusive of queer subjectivities. He has published essays in Black Theology, Theology & Sexuality: An International Journal, and Pneuma: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies.
GREG BRIDGES is a radio dj and journalist living in Oakland. Currently he can be heard over KCSM and KPFA, where he has a weekly show and is a contributor to KPFA’s Hip Hop and social affairs show HardKnock Radio. Greg has written for various publications including Jazz Now Magazine and Bayshore Magazine.
KPFA benefit
The trial of the Berkeley 5 started today, with three witnesses for the prosecution, a cop, a fireman, and the neo-fascist Quillinan (see details below), who will take the stand again tomorrow morning. The trial is expected to last at least through the rest of the week, and possibly into early next week.
Please come out and support our antifascist comrades again tomorrow, Thursday, June 14, 9am, in Department 109 at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse at 661 Washington Street (at 7th Street) in Oakland.
The SF Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety & Neighborhood Services Committee will hold a hearing on the injunctions.
The City Attorney, Public Defender, District Attorney, and SFPD will testify. We need a strong showing of public support and as many people as possible to give public comment.
The hearing will be held at 4 pm to allow more community members to attend. Share this event widely! Meet beginning at 3:00 PM.
We need to let this committee know that gang injunctions should have never been implemented. If you can’t make it to the hearing give them a call, if you can make it,call the supervisors and urge them to oppose the gang injunctions. Share on Facebook!
At the end of April, the End the SF Gang Injunctions won a campaign milestone, compelling the SF Re-Entry Council to take a position against the gang injunctions! Thank you for supporting this action by amplifying the call, sharing the event with comrades, or attending. It’s time to keep the pressure on!
On April 24th District Attorney Dennis Herrera finally cooperated with an agreement he made over a decade ago, completing a review of his gang injunctions. Herrera announced his cooperation by issuing a press release chock full of absurd “facts” about gang injunctions. In the coming weeks leading up to the June 13th hearing on gang injunctions we expect he’ll be issuing more of his absurd “facts” on the injunctions. We need people power to set the record straight. We know that gang injunctions are a policy of sanctioned police racial profiling, oppression, and gentrification. Injunctions are unneccessary and a total waste of tax payer money.
Join us on May 30th for a End the SF Gang Injunctions press conference featuring community members from Young Women’s Freedom Center, CURYJ, public defender Jeff Adachi, and more. Come learn the truth, and support the struggle to end the injunctions! And then join us two weeks later for the next mobilization.
See the coalition’s San Francisco Gang Injunction Fact Sheet here.
Spread the word! End the SF Injunctions Flyer here.
And then don’t miss the Booklet from the No New SF Jail Coalition below.
More information here
https://www.surjbayarea.org/events/major-screening-and-fundraiser-for-tgi-justice-project
There are two entrances to Sierra Club Office building on Webster and 21st both of which are accessible for mobility devices. The building has an elevator, and the kitchen space, conference room, and restrooms can also all accommodate mobility devices. Bathrooms will be all gender.
Hey @arstechnica fans!
Our next Ars Live in #Oakland on June 13 at 7pm, with my triumphant return to the Eli's stage!
We’re breaking format this time to have @Annaleen and I interview each other about our books, AUTONOMOUS, and HABEAS DATA. Both will be for sale at the event!
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) May 31, 2018
The trial of the Berkeley 5 started today, with three witnesses for the prosecution, a cop, a fireman, and the neo-fascist Quillinan (see details below), who will take the stand again tomorrow morning. The trial is expected to last at least through the rest of the week, and possibly into early next week.
Please come out and support our antifascist comrades again tomorrow, Thursday, June 14, 9am, in Department 109 at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse at 661 Washington Street (at 7th Street) in Oakland.
TONIGHT, we will speak in San Francisco about the US government’s infamous attempt to deport Harry Bridges. Bridges was a labor leader who in the 1930s led the strike that resulted in longshoremen up and down the West Coast being unionized. As a result, the United States spent the next two decades trying to deport him. After four separate trials, and two Supreme Court opinions, they failed, and Bridges eventually became a naturalized citizen.
I am joining Peter Afrasiab, who authored Burning Bridges: America’s 20-Year Crusade to Deport Labor Leader Harry Bridges, for this exciting discussion. The panel will be moderated by famed Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky. Pre-registration is required.
Moderator
Erwin Chemerinsky
Dean of Berkeley Law and Scholar of Constitutional Law
Panelists
Peter Afrasiabi, Esq.
Partner at One LLP, Newport Beach, California
Author of Burning Bridges: America’s 20-Year Crusade to Deport Labor Leader Harry Bridges
Chip Gibbons, Esq.
Journalist and First-Amendment lawyer;
Policy and legislative counsel for
Defending Rights & Dissent, Washington, D.C.
This event is free and open to the general public!
To reserve a space, you must register online.
Tickets will not be available at the door.
The Bridges saga has wide ranging implications:
- The Bridges deportation case was never just about Harry Bridges. First and foremost, it was about smashing a successful labor union by decapitating its leadership. Following the successful 1934 strike, the ILWU grew into one of the country’s most powerful, most militant trade unions. For anti-radical ideologues, this could only be the work of outside forces.
- Since the inception of the labor movement, immigrants had been blamed for bringing “foreign” radicalism to the US and injecting discord into otherwise harmonious capital-labor relationships. Labor organizing was viewed as tantamount to disloyalty, and immigrants were suspected of working to remake the US in the image of their “un-American” ideas. All that was needed to make America great again, and roll back working-class victories, was to remove them from the country.
- The Bridges case was also a stand-in for a larger anti-immigration politics. When asked about one of the many efforts to deport the ILWU leader, Senator Robert R. Reynolds (D-NC) told the media, “Bridges should not be permitted to make the trip out of the country alone. There are thousands of others who ought to be deported or put into concentration camps until we can get rid of them.”
- Camps, mass deportations – these are the tools of those who want to “make America great again.” A xenophobic streak is unquestionably at the root of this. But make no mistake: in Bridges’ time and in our own, reactionaries’ ultimate vision of policing – and expelling – political heresy from the body politic extends far beyond the foreign-born.
Are you eager to power your home with clean electricity? At the same price (or less!) than PG&E, you finally can. East Bay Community Energy, Alameda’s Community Choice Energy provider, is already serving commercial customers in Alameda County. Residential customers will automatically be enrolled this fall. Learn about your choices as a customer, how this energy program advances climate mitigation and environmental justice efforts, and how you can get involved as an advocate for community choice energy. Light snacks and beverages provided.
Safety Is… Rethinking Violence Using a Restorative Justice Lens
The Ella Baker Center will host a panel discussion and planning session where community members can engage with advocates on how we can re-envision safety. The panel discussion will be followed by small group facilitated action planning. Dinner will be provided.
Moderated by David Muhammad, Executive Director of National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.
Panelists include:
Reverend Daniel Buford (Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action), John Jones III (Community and Political Engagement Director, East Oakland Black Cultural Zone) and Jessica Travenia (Development Coordinator, Roots Community Health Center).
Join us for SAFETY IS… panel discussion and planning session where community members can engage with advocates on how we can re-envision safety. Dinner will be provided.
The Follow-up meeting to Caring For Our Community – Responding to the Houseless is Thursday evening. So often the message to the homeless seems to be top down. The last meeting included a panel of homeless people who responded to the question of what are their most immediate needs. The responses included: access to bathrooms (or porta potties), drinkable water, showers, food, a place to store their belongings, pick-up of trash, a place to be (evictions, raids, towing of vehicles)
Agenda: 2nd Street eviction of houseless people, closure 9th Street Shelter, ongoing threat of citing and towing of RVs and campers.
The New Rulers Of The World (2001) is a documentary about how the US, UK, Dutch Neo-Colonial Corporations plotted General Suharto’s removal in 1966 of the first elected President of Indonesia, Sukarno, who had ruled from 1959 – 1966. It analyzes the corporate globalization economy and reveals that the divisions between the rich and poor have never been greater.Sponsored by BFUU Social Justice Committee’s Conscientious Projector Film Series for the 99%
Wheelchair accessible.
For occasional email notices of peace/eco/social justice alerts and related events at BFUU, send any email to:
bfuusjev-subscribe [at] lists.riseup.net
For weekly notices of BFUU services etc. go to:
http://www.bfuu.org/signup.html
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM & Marcus Books present
Michael Eric Dyson is one of America’s premier public intellectuals. The author of last year’s outstanding bestseller, “Tears We Cannot Stop,” Dyson is University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and an editor of The New Republic. Ebony magazine named him one of America’s 100 most influential African-Americans. In addition, Dyson is a uniqely outstanding public speaker, employing exceptionally deep knowledge with a talent for Immediacy, terrific wit, and an extraordinarily rich voice.
His new book, What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America deftly explores the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy— of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured landscape. Dr. Dyson examines key players today, from Jay-Z to Jordan Peele and LeBron James, from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Kamala Harris. He ends with a paean to Makanda, the all too mythical nation celebrated in the film “Black Panther”. “If James Baldwin and his glorious crew could gather again, they could hardly have a better place to reconvene and let the beautiful momentum of blackness eash over them as they sought to make America truly great. For the first time.”
What Truth Sounds Like reveals how every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in a crucial meeting convened in 1963 when Robert F. Kennedy invited James Baldwin and a few of his friends to discuss Black America’s rage: disdain for black dissent, the belief that black folk wallow in the politics of ingratitude and victimhood, and that they lack hustle and ingenuity.
Kevin Cartwright has been a radio producer, media trainer and music programmer for Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM since 1994. He has produced and contributed to a number of local and national public affairs programs that have included Living Room with Larry Bensky, Democracy Now, the KPFA Evening News, and The Morning Show. Kevin is a communications strategist who continues to work with a number of social change organizations across the country to help improve their overall communications.
KPFA benefit
Tickets: brownpapertickets.com
Marcus Books, Pegasus Books (3 stores), Books Inc (Berkeley), Moe’s, Walden Pond Bookstore, East Bay Books, Mrs. Dalloway’s
Combating Hate in the East Bay
Former white extremist Christian Picciolini will speak on Uniting Against Hate Picciolini will share his experience in addressing hatred and discrimination through empathy and conversation that can result in a more inclusive world. He will be introduced by Holocaust camp survivor, Ben Stern, who led the 1978 fierce public battle against Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, and neo-nazis at the 2017 Rally Against Hatred in Berkeley, California. The event is sponsored by the ACLU, the Alameda Labor Council, Indivisible Berkeley, Not in Our Town, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Berkeley Citizens Action, and the Berkeley Progressive Alliance.
Christian Picciolini is an award-winning television producer, a public speaker, author, peace advocate, and a former white-supremacist skinhead. After leaving the hate movement that he helped create during his youth in the 1980s and 90s, he began the painstaking process of making amends and rebuilding his life. Since abandoning white-power ideology, Picciolini has been dedicated to helping others overcome hate. He now leads the Free Radicals Project, a global extremism prevention and disengagement platform, helping people exit hate movements and other violent ideologies.
Picciolini has spoken all over the world, including Berkeleyside’s Uncharted conference and on the TEDx stage, sharing his unique and extensive knowledge, teaching all who are willing to learn about building greater peace through empathy and compassion.
Tickets may be ordered through Eventbrite and cost $12. Costs may be waived–please contact MargotS999@aol.com. All are welcome, wheelchair accessible.
“Divest From War” is an action-focused event featuring beloved author and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Codepink Co-founder and world renowed peace activist Medea Benjamin, musician Betsy Rose, brief presentations on active divestment campaigns from Idle No More SF Bay, Indivisible Berkeley Economic Justice, Fossil Free Calif., Public Bank of Oakland, as well as an organic vegetarian potluck dinner @ 6:30pm, live music, and a dessert reception with homemade pies, tea and wine to benefit Codepink Women for Peace Golden Gate Chapter.
Medea will sign copies of her new book Inside Iran.
Cosponsored by Codepink Golden Gate Chapter and the BFUU Social Justice Committee
An action of UNITY is taking place in OAKLAND this SATURDAY June 16✊️10-12PM – Meet at The Arches
Come Join #HandsAroundLakeMerritt with us!
Oakland is about unidad & protecting one another and we do I️t with love. @APTPaction @CatsCommentary @MusicNegrito @EastBayExpress pic.twitter.com/Ia0d4auUh0
— Gina Madrid (@RawwG) June 14, 2018
The housing crisis in the Bay Area and beyond is a wholly preventable disaster, created and maintained by the notion that housing is a commodity and not a human right.
Join us (DSA) in the campaign for the Affordable Housing Act — a proposed ballot initiative that that will give our cities and counties the power to adopt rent control necessary to address the state’s housing affordability crisis by repealing the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.
The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act upholds landlord interests, and — in tandem with the housing crisis — has deeply exacerbated social disparities, displaced longtime communities, driven homelessness, and dealt a blow to working-class power by making housing ever more insecure and inaccessible.
Come learn more about repealing Costa-Hawkins and then we’ll hit the streets to talk with our neighbors about housing justice and the Affordable Housing Act!
Join us for CPF's Community Celebration for Human Rights and Dignity event. June 16th 12;30 to 4:30 at Ogawa/Grant Plaza in downtown Oakland.
Invite your family and friends and help us get the word out. pic.twitter.com/qQ1FoQLTD2— California Prison Focus (@CAprisonfocus) June 1, 2018