Calendar

Come hang out with us at First Friday!  We’ll be somewhere near the Alan Blueford Center 4 Justice between 24th and 25th streets on Telegraph. We’ll have literature, a slide show, maybe a movie and people to tell you all about the DAC and Stingray, OPD’s latest gadget to spy on everyone in Oakland.

Everyone is invited to a Cal Berkeley event  on Spoken Word /Prison Stories:

All Of Us Our None will have a full hour to talk with and engage the audience by sharing their personal stories, organizational campaigns, and victories.  The goal of this event is to build relationships with other formerly-incarcerated students, others students, and explore ways that educational institutions, such as CAL, can help empower/ be in solidarity with formerly incarcerated people.

The Alan Blueford Center For Justice is gonna be open for 1st Friday on April 4th, 2014….Fresh Juice Party is gonna be our special guests performing their original blend of justice beats….and because we love The People of Oakland, the show is FREE!!! Come on by 2434 Telegraph Ave & help us celebrate Alan Blueford‘s life, AND DON’T FORGET, YOU CAN GET YOUR #EndPoliceTerror STICKER!

**DOOR OPENS AT 8PM FOR THE SHOW, BUT #ENDPOLICETERROR STICKERS & OTHER INFO WILL BE AVAILABLE STARTING AT 5PM**

Facebook event & RSVP.

Come to find others taking action…

Meet other tenants fighting displacement…

Resist the proliferation of surveillance…

Combat racist development…

Come to plan actions with others.

In Honor of Lil Bobby Hutton

“SPEAKING UP AGAINST VIOLENCE”

Come enjoy FREE BBQ w Music, Family Entertainment & Speakers

Every year the Black Panthers commemorate their fallen warriors. It’s held on behalf of Bobby Hutton, “Lil” Bobby was murdered by OPD prior to him having an event at Defremery park, which involved Feeding The People. We as community members in 2012 organized a Take Back the Town BBQ at what is known today as “Lil” Bobby Hutton park.

The theme of the event is “SPEAKING UP AGAINST VIOLENCE”, not just police brutality but all forms of violence. There will be a wide range of speakers, food, music and kid entertainment.

Facebook & RSVP.

Speakers from Criticial Resistance, Oakland Privacy Working Group, Justice 4 Alan Blueford.  Also speaking: Dan Siegel, Elaine Brown.

Community Medics will give instruction on binding wounds.

We are having an assembly to plan direction actions from April 22nd to May 1st to raise awareness about the intersections of labor, immigration and environmental issues. You can propose actions or events. Examples include film screenings, sit-ins, tree-sits, guerrilla gardening, pickets, marches, blockades, strikes, etc. After the proposals are voted on we will have a discussion about strategies to unite workers and environmentalists against the bosses.

Following this will be a screening of he file “Rocking the Foundations,” about the Builders Labourers Federation of Australia.

Facebook event and more info.

The KPFA Community Advisory Board is sponsoring an information and proposal sharing event. We invite listeners, community members, volunteers, media activists, programmers, board members and staff from KPFA and the Pacifica Network to participate. We will be using a non-hierarchical group process to address the urgent need for expanded listener sponsored free speech radio.

Please come and contribute:
Bring material for our information sharing table
Write and post YOUR concerns. (Please bring a felt pen or marker).

Proposed topics include:

• Financial sustainability
• Quality programming
• Equality and inclusion
• KPFA community activism. and participation
• Pacifica Network
• KPFA and Pacifica Governance

Share in a small group on a self-selected topics,
Participate in our large group summary and plan for how we use the information
gathered                                                                                                                                       ______________________________________________________________________________

The KPFA Community Advisory Board is charged with assessing and reporting the needs of the community served by KPFA to the governing board and management of KPFA.                                                                                                    

ATTENTION ALL FAMILIES WHO HAS BEEN A VICTIM OF POLICE TERRORISM join us as we march on State Capital Sacramento during Crime Victim Day April 8, 2014. Please organize your communities and unite with us as we speak out against State Attorney General Kamala Harris for turning a blind eye under the Color of Law. Let’s organized now to address the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, Police Terrorism, and failure to resolve gun violence in our communities. Those families harmed by Gun Violence that are still seeking justice and an investigation into the killing of your Love one, please join us. Lack of forensic labs or non efficient labs must be addressed. Please share this with your network. “We are only as strong as our UNITY”

 Families United March on State Capital Sacramento

The  State Capitol in Sacramento, California  for the United Families of California at the fifth annual Victims’ Rights March is a call to action for victims and their supporters to come together as they do every year on the steps of the California State Capitol to have their voices heard by their elected officials. This event is not considered a memorial, but rather a rally in which we encourage victims to visit their legislator’s offices and let them know how you feel about public safety issues. The California Coalitions and one of the leading organizers is the Oscar Grant Foundation,  and their Executive Director: Cephus ‘Uncle Bobby’ Johnson and will be joined by over 21 families of victims murdered by Police and most of the “Police Brutality” murders are in question and have current investigations.

For more information.

Article on rally and co-rally in Florida.

The Oakland-based Institute of Urban Homesteading is hosting an urban agriculture night at the New Parkway Theater. The main event is a screening of the urban agriculture documentary Growing Cities, and filmmaker Dan Susman will be on hand. Other festivities include a jam tasting and jam swap (participants should bring a jar for tasting and another to swap), and various door prizes. Doors open at 6 p.m.; the movie will start at 7. Tickets ($8, plus a service fee) are available here.

April 2014 – The 7th Annual Privacy Lecture

Bancroft Hotel

For more information and to register, visit the event website.

Presented by Professor Ross Anderson with responses by Carl Shapiro, James Aquilina, and Anupam Chander.

The Snowden revelations teach us that many of the world’s governments share intelligence behind the scenes. Thirty years ago, a non-aligned country like India could happily buy its military aircraft from Russia; nowadays, although it still buys some planes from Sukhoi, it shares intelligence with the NSA. A rational actor will join the biggest network, and the Russians’ network is much smaller.  This points us to a deeper truth: that information economics applies to the public sector,  just as it applies to private business. The forces that lead to pervasive monopolies in the information industries – network effects, technical lock-in and low marginal costs – are pervasive in the affairs of states too, once we look for them; they are just not yet recognized as such. There are many significant implications, from international relations through energy policy to privacy. Network effects make regulation hard; the USA failed to protect US attorney-client communications from Australian intelligence, just as Australia failed to protect its own citizens’ personal health information from the NSA. There are some upsides too; but to identify and exploit them, we need to start thinking in a more grown-up way about what it means to live in a networked world.

Event Schedule
Registration 3:00 – 3:30 PM
Presentation 3:30 – 5:30 PM
Reception 5:30 – 6:30 PM

STOP STAPLES SCABS. STOP THE PRIVATIZATION OF THE POST OFFICE!

Join American Postal Worker Union members protesting against Post Office counters in Staples stores staffed by low wage Staples employees instead of living wage Postal Union members.

Tickets via Brown Paper Tickets or at Pegasus Books (3 locations), Marcus Books, Mrs. Dalloway’s, Moe’s Books, Walden Pond, DIESEL a Bookstore. SF: Modern Times 

Hot news!  Matt Taibbi has left Rolling Stone and just joined Pierre Omidyar’s group of original, independent journalists to produce a second digital magazine. The first is The Intercept, with writing by Glen Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and other fearless journalists.

From the award-winning investigative journalist and bestselling author of The Great Derangement and Griftopia comes another devastating portrait of American values in our polarized age, a galvanizing exploration of how our growing wealth gap is not just warping our economy, but transforming the meaning of rights, justice, and basic citizenship.

THE DIVIDE: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap is a probing investigation of one of the most pressing issues facing us today: the increasing wealth gap and how it is affecting our system of justice. “The Divide,” reveals our two most troubling trends – enormous wealth inequality on one hand and an increasingly punitive, intrusive state on the other, resulting in our basic rights now being determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime.

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the author of five previous books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Great Derangement and Griftopia.

Donald Goldmacher, Producer/Director of Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?,  is a longtime filmmaker, labor activist, and community psychiatrist with decades of experience.
His first film, “Do No Harm,” exposed the controversial marketing and research practices of the pharmaceutical industry. His recent feature documentary “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House”, won over 20 festival awards and aired on HBO and television around the world.

KPFA Benefit

The Robin Hood Committee needs your help gathering signatures to place two initiatives on the November ballot. The initiatives will create $4.5 million for affordable housing and other city services in Berkeley by taxing the windfall profits of large landlords. Right now, Berkeley tenants are paying more than $100 million a year in excess rent, wealth that is taken out of our community. We can recapture a fraction of that by putting these measures to a vote of the people.

Join us this Sunday to pick up petitions and a partner for signature gathering.

Cant make it Sunday or want petitions earlier? Call us at 1-510-548-FAH-1. The Robin Hood Committee is supported by the Green Party of Alameda County, Councilmembers Worthington and Arreguin, Rent Board members Stephens, Harr, Soto-Vigil and Townley, the Berkeley Tenants Union and many others.
The Windfall Profits Tax on High Rents Initiative will raise the business license tax on residential rental units by 1.9%, but exempts small live-in and low-income landlords with less than 10 units. It also reduces the tax for units occupied by long-term tenants with moderate rents. In order not to discourage new construction, it allows a 20 year exemption from the increase starting with initial occupancy of the building. This is expected to raise $4.5 million annually for the City’s general fund to start with, rising as units occupied by long-term tenants turn over, as 20 year exemptions expire and as rents continue to rise. The tax cannot be passed on to tenants, since current tenants are protected by the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance.
The Affordable Housing Initiative will require the City Council to set aside at least $3 million annually for the Housing Trust Fund, which is used to develop affordable housing for low-income people either through new construction or acquisition and rehabilitation of existing housing by non-profit organizations. Once passed by the voters, Council will have 120 days to do a fiscal analysis and determine whether to accept the measure or to reduce or veto the allocation. The $3 million set-aside is expected to derive from the windfall profits tax revenue described above. Activists consider passage of the tax measure to be the best means of ensuring that the City can invest in affordable housing without reducing other needed services.
Background: Rents in Berkeley are rising to record highs, bringing windfall profits to most landlords while tenant incomes remain stagnant. Rents are going up because Berkeley is a very desirable place to live, not because landlords have so greatly improved the buildings they own. A strong Bay Area economy and public investments in the University, transit, parks and other public services all make Berkeley an attractive place to live. When public activities increase the value of private property it is only fair that the public recapture a small fraction of the value we the people create and use it for public benefit rather than allowing it all to be taken for private profit.
Before 1999 Berkeley had a strong rent control system that only allowed landlords to raise rents enough to provide a constitutionally required fair return on their investment but did not allow windfall profits at the expense of tenants. In 1999 the State legislature imposed �vacancy decontrol�, which now allows landlords to raise rents without limit whenever a new tenant moves in.
As a result, 85% of Berkeley’s older rentals have had vacancy increases. Tenants are now paying more than $100 million annually in additional rent, over and above what is needed to provide landlords with a fair return on their investment. Real, inflation-adjusted rents have gone up by more than 50% yet Berkeley’s landlords are taking out permits for building renovations equal in value to less than 3% of their massive annual rent increases. This transfer of wealth from Berkeley tenants to landlords, the majority of whom live outside of Berkeley, drains money from the community and increases demands for public services of all kinds, from social services to subsidized housing to public safety.

P.S. We only have until May 10 � we need you today!