Calendar
The recent incident that took place at Lake Merritt surrounding charcoal grilling is not only an example of how the police are used to control African Americans, it also exemplifies the growing tensions for how Black Oakland experiences a changing city.
Join us in solidarity to protect Black Oakland and to push elected officials to do something about the abuse of city resources. We don’t want more meetings, forums or empty gestures – we want action so this doesn’t happen again.
“It is not enough to say we are a Sanctuary City. We must also act like one.”
Deport ICE Richmond !
On May 15, the City of Richmond is going to vote on a sanctuary city law to prohibit contracts with ICE data brokers.Press Conference at 6pm. Council meeting starts at 6:30pm.
Bloomberg: CA Cities ICE Out Contractors Helping Feds Track Immigrants
LA Times: TechnologyTurns Our Cities Into Spies for ICE
SF Gate: Immigrant Activists Ask Livermore’s Vigilant Solutions To End ICE Contract
In Richmond, the bill sponsors are Councilmember and AD 15 candidate Jovanka Beckles and Councilmember Ada Recinos.
This will be the first Deport ICE ordinance in the Bay Area, but more are coming in Alameda, Berkeley and Oakland.
We need to support our elected officials all over the Bay Area in standing up with our immigrant communities to the deportation machine.
Please come to the press conference Tuesday, May 15 at 6pm at Richmond City Hall and reach out to friends and colleagues. You can RSVP on PeoplePower or on Facebook. Or just show up.
To write or call the Council Members :
Tom Butt, Mayor 510-620-6503 tom.butt@intres.com
Melvin Willis, Vice Mayor 510-412-2050 melvin_willis@ci.richmond.ca.us
Ben Choi 510-620-6565 ben_choi@ci.richmond.ca.us
Jovanka Beckles (sponsor) 510-620-6568 jovanka_beckles@ci.richmond.ca.us
Eduardo Martinez 510-620-6593 eduardo_martinez@ci.richmond.ca.us
Ada Recinos (sponsor) 510-620-5431 ada_recinos@ci.richmond.ca.us
Jael Myrick 510-620-6636 jael_myrick@ci.richmond.ca.us
#DeportICE is a coalition of advocacy groups striving to make sanctuary protections real in cities and counties across California.#DeportICE welcomes fellow advocacy groups to join the coalition and accepts submissions of information regarding additional data brokers for ICE. We have a Signal Tip Line set up for anonymous contributions.
Share your thoughts on our #DeportICE hashtag
twitter feed. Join the conversation.
More details at www.deportice.org
Making Sanctuary Real continues in the Bay Area. The Sanctuary City Contracting and Investment Ordinance will cut the data pipes to ICE by prohibiting municipal contracts and investments with data brokers that sell information to ICE to track and profile immigrants. This gets public money out of subsidizing the Trump deportation machine.
Press Conference at 6pm, Council meeting starts at 6:30pm.
In Richmond, our bill sponsors areCouncilmember and AD 15 candidate Jovanka Beckles and Councilmembers Ada Recinos.
This will be the first Deport ICE ordinance in the Bay Area, but more are coming in Alameda, Berkeley and Oakland.
We need Richmonders to turn out, but all of us in the Bay Area are in the sanctuary city battle with the Trump Administration. We need to support our elected officials all over the Bay Area in standing up with our immigrant communities.
More at www.deportice.org.
Hello we are here to Save the Internet!
Join us every Tuesday in the Omni Commons mezzanine to help build a community-owned and -operated wireless mesh network in the East Bay!
Every Tuesday night, we meet to discuss on-going projects, technical bugs, community and media outreach, finances and budgeting, and upcoming events, such as node mounts, office hours, and workshops. Newcomers are encouraged to come on the last Tuesdays of the month for general orientation, but are welcome at any meeting.
A wireless mesh network is a network where each computer acts as a relay to other computers, such that a network can stretch to cover entire cities.
Our goal is to create a wireless mesh network that is owned and operated by the community.
Want to help create an alternate means of digital communication that isn’t governed by for-profit internet service providers? Join us for the mesh hacknight! We need people of all backgrounds to help with everything from community involvement and grant writing to mounting antennas on buildings and developing software!
Learn more at https://peoplesopen.net and http://sudomesh.org/
Join Oakland Privacy to organize against the surveillance state, police militarization and ICE, and to advocate for surveillance regulation around the Bay.
We fight against “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” spy drones, facial recognition, police body cameras and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones, to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government.
We draft and push for privacy legislation for City Councils, at the County level, and in Sacramento. We advocate in op-eds and in the streets. We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and believe no one is illegal.
Oakland Privacy originally came together in 2013 to fight against the Domain Awareness Center, Oakland’s citywide networked mass surveillance hub. OP was instrumental in stopping the DAC from becoming a city-wide spying network.
Our major projects currently include local legislation to regulate state surveillance, opposing Urban Shield and pushing back against ICE with local legislation.
If you are interested in joining the Oakland Privacy email listserv, coming to a meeting, or have questions, send an email to:
contact@oaklandprivacy.org
Check out our website: http://oaklandprivacy.org/ Follow us on twitter: @oaklandprivacy
“WATCHING YOU WATCHING US”
Oakland Privacy works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. This month Oakland Privacy will be preparing for the passage of transparency ordinances in Oakland and Berkeley and kicking off new processes in Richmond and Alameda County, To help slow down the encroaching police state all over the Bay Area, join us at the Omni.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz talks about her latest book
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
Introduced by James Tracy
From the author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Loaded is a deeply researched and deeply disturbinghistory of guns and gun laws in the United States. From Daniel Boone and Jesse James, to the NRA and Seal Team 6, gun culture has colored the lore, shaped the law, and protected the market that arms the nation. In Loaded, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz peels away the myths of gun culture to expose the true historical origins of the Second Amendment, revealing the racial undercurrents connecting the earliest Anglo settlers with contemporary gun proliferation, modern-day policing, and the consolidation of influence of armed white nationalists. From the enslavement of Blacks and the conquest of Native America, to the arsenal of institutions that constitute the “gun lobby,” Loaded presents a people’s history of the Second Amendment.
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Loaded is like a blast of fresh air. She is no fan of guns or of our absurdly permissive laws surrounding them. But she does not merely take the liberal side of the familiar debate.” – Adam Hochschild, The New York Review of Books
“Her analysis, erudite and unrelenting, exposes blind spots not just among conservatives, but, crucially, among liberals as well. . . . As a portrait of the deepest structures of American violence, Loaded is an indispensable book.” -The New Republic
The most interesting man in the world
— Business Insider
One of the greatest political memoirs of all time.
—The Guardian
In this blistering memoir and expose, Varoufakis blows the lid off the world’s deep establishment, exposing what actually goes on behind the scenes through the corridors of real power. He offers a fascinatingly candid I-was-there account of his meetings with Barack Obama, Lawrence Summers, and European leaders.
He exposes the hypocrises, power plays, and frustrated good intentions that control the fate of nations large and small. While he was finance minsiter of Greece, Varoufakis sparked one of the most spectacular and controversial battles in modern political history when he fought to renegotiate his country’s relationship with Europe’s banks and governments. Despite the mass support of the Greek people and the logic of his arguments, Varoufakis succeeded only in provoking the fury of both the political and media establishment.
The future of the world economic order now hangs in the balance. As Varoufakis argues, the only way it can survive is if the truth is known, ushering in a new era of radical transparency and accountability.
One of my few heroes. As long as people like Varoufakis are around, there is still hope.
—Slavoj Zizek
Riveting… An extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece’s 2015 financial bailout…Varoufakis is a motorcycling, leather-jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class… An admirably believable depiction of a Greek and European tragedy.
— The Guardian
Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and cofounder of an international grassroots movement campaigning for the revival of democracy. He is the author of “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, The Global Minotaur, and Talking To My Daughter About the Economy, in which Varoufakis sets out to answer his daughter Xenia’s deceptively simple question. Drawing on memories of her childhood and a variety of well-known tales – from Oedipus and Faust to Frankenstein and The Matrix — Talking To My Daughter About the Economy explains everything you need to know in order to understand why economics is the most important drama of our times.
Join us as we live stream the world premiere of a series of short videos produced by Common Justice of people who have survived or committed violence, followed by a panel discussion that will explore healing, safety, and accountability after violence.
This event is being hosted by UnCommon Justice and Restore Oakland partners.
Please RSVP here.
Recently, Phil Tagami announced plans to host the 2018 East Bay Innovators Awards on behalf of his childrens’ school, East Bay Innovation Academy. But Tagami is completely draining Oakland of its resources, and threatening our health and climate with a toxic coal terminal, targetting a predominantly low-income community of color with environmental injustice, and was planning to honor DA Nancy O’Malley, who has a record of protecting police, not youth of color.
After plans were announced for a youth-led protest, the venue and tone suddenly changed. But we we are still calling on Tagami to stand up for all youth and drop his coal-powered lawsuit. We want to educate the community on what is going on in our city and how this coal terminal will affect all of us.
Youth Vs Apocalypse will be attending the event to speak out with art, drumming, poetry, chanting, information and solidarity. We invite allies to stand behind youth activists while being mindful of the school venue.
We need innovators that help our city, not destroy it. We want youth voices to be more heard. We want a thriving earth, equal rights, kindness, compassion and common sense. We say no to environmental racism, no to police racism, and no to climate chaos.
Join us to hear more about our work to #FreeThemAll! Whether you’ve been following our work for a while or are new to what abolition is, this is a great opportunity to learn the why we’ve been organizing to decriminalize survival, how we plan to continue, and how you can participate.
Our evening will include a screening of the TEDTalk featuring Ny Nourn, a survivor who spent 17 years in prison, was put into deportation proceedings upon her release and then freed after community mobilized on her behalf. Afterwards, stay for a panel with Ny and Aminah, two powerful formerly incarcerated survivors and organizers discussing the importance of fighting for decriminalization for survivors.
There will be some light refreshments. Venue is not scent free, and we ask for attendees to come low-scent/scent-free if possible. There are no steps required to enter the space.
Many thanks to Red Bay Coffee for hosting us. Red Bay Coffee is a black-owned, community-minded coffee shop in Fruitvale. Do come back to try their coffee, and pop up brunch on the weekends!
We face a current political and social climate that continues to belie black humanity – where, without impunity, a young black man can be followed into his grandmother’s backyard and shot in the back six times out of the 20 shots fired at him.
Will we stand on the sideline or will we join the important struggle that Black Americans & many others daily endure to live free from racism, violence & terror?
We believe we are called to lean into a ministry and theology of resistance, reclaiming the hope and power inherent in our prophetic faiths, giving us courage and healing for the days ahead.
There are many different ways that your congregation and community can enter into solidarity with us.
There will be a time of celebration and fellowship, and training around resisting State Violence, ICE Raids, 2018 Election, Digital Organizing, and the Poor Peoples Campaign Workshops.
We are inviting you to wrestle with the principalities and powers that manifest themselves in racial prejudice, systemic evil and violence, and religious apathy and complicity.
We need you here; it is our duty to firght for freedom!
Register today! Space is Limited.
(Childcare and Food provided)
Indigenous Women Inspire the World! – A panel of women that attended the Zapatistas’ 1st International Gathering of Women That Struggle will present video footage from the Gathering, share their experiences, answer questions and encourage discussion about that amazing event, which some 7,000 women attended!Facebook:
Get ready for the Richmond People’s Assembly! The 2018 Richmond People’s Assembly aims to bring a voice to the community, gather neighborhoods together to organize for collective power, and empower residents to engage in political activities that create the change and solutions we need. It’s inspired by the Richmond People’s Convention of 2004, organized by Richmond Progressive Alliance, Just Cause Richmond, ACORN, and others, which drew over 300 people,
The Assembly is sponsored by the Richmond Our Power Coalition, a collection of local community organizations including the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and Urban Tilth.
In the weeks leading up to the Assembly, coalition canvassers will go door to door to listen to and take inventory of community members’ needs. Please save the date!
More information on Facebook.
The Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival is an all day, free neighborhood festival that celebrates jazz, America’s classical music and the Black musical tradition that has transcended the U.S. to reach all corners of the globe, and the legacy of Malcolm X, who believed in the self-determination, self-respect and self-defense of Black and oppressed people throughout the world. This event is a celebration of our Third World communities in the San Antonio district and includes music, speakers, community organizations, local arts & crafts vendors, live mural painting and delicious food.
The 19th Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival is May 19th, the actual date of Malcolm’s birthday 🎉🎈
We invite you to support our programs, including the Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival, aimed at strengthening a social justice agenda that advances the vision and voice of the communities we serve. As Malcolm said, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
https://www.eastsideartsalliance.org/contact
In California, the face of climate change is fire. So many of us were impacted by the Northern and Southern California wildfires. Now, we’re holding a rally to make the N95 Particulate Respirator Mask into a powerful symbol of climate change. The mask is uncomfortable, it changes the wearer’s face, and more than anything it means that the air surrounding the wearer is no longer safe to breathe.
The megafires California is facing are the result of climate change. Shorter, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers turn formerly healthy forests into kindling. We need to look this problem in the eye and talk about what it means to maintain healthy forests in the face of an unpredictable climate.
Join San Francisco’s first fully masked rally, in Japan Town’s Peace Plaza. Dance, learn from climate scientists, listen to the words of poets, make yourself heard, and wear your mask!
Masks will be provided at the event.
Robert Parry was instrumental in exposing the truth about the Nicaraguan Contras, the Cocaine shipments into the US and Ronald Reagan’s “October Surprise”. For breaking these stories, instead of winning a Pulitzer Prize, he was slowly but surely pushed OUT of mainstream media.
Parry then founded Consortiumnews which continues today as one of the best sources of analysis about international events.
Guest speakers at the event will include:
* Sam Parry, son of Robert
* Joe Lauria, new editor of Consortiumnews
* Natylie Baldwin, contributor to Consortiumnews
* Dennis Bernstein, KPFA Flashpoints
* Norman Solomon, co-author with Robert Parry
* Ann Wright (by video), contributor to Consortiumnews
This event will honor the great journalist Robert Parry and discuss the importance of Consortiumnews going forward.
Tickets are available at the door or in advance via brownpapertickets.com
Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee.
Panel Description:“Recent school shootings and the ever-recurring instances of police brutality pose acutely the question of gun control today. Should the Left take up the demand for gun control, and if so, how? If not, why not? How is gun control related to the struggle for socialism?”
Panelists:
Gloria La Riva (Party of Socialism & Liberation)
Urzula Wislanka (News & Letters Committees)
K. Khan (International Marxist Tendency)
Please come to our Inequality Seminar on Sunday, 4/29 at 11:00 AM at the OMNI!
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
- Presenting debt and inequality related topics at forums, workshops and in radio productions.
Our next seminar/workshop will be on April 29th. Check it out and make sure to come! - Promoting single-payer / Medicare for All to end the plague of medical debt
- money bail reform and fighting modern day debtors’ prisons and exploitative ticketing and fining schemes
- Tiny Homes and other solutions for the homeless.
- Student debt resistance. Check out the Debt Collective, our sister organization
- helping out America’s only non-profit check-cashing organization and fighting against usurious for-profit pay-day lenders and their ilk
- Working on debarring US Banks that have been convicted of felonies from municipal contracts, and divesting from the Wall St. banks
- Promoting the concept of Basic Income
- Advocating for Postal banking
- Organizing for public banking in Oakland! We made the first steps happen… now there’s a spinoff group
- Bring your own debt-related project!
If you are new to Strike Debt and want to come early, meet one or two of us and get a briefing on our projects before we dive into our agenda, email us at strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com .
Strike Debt – Principles of Solidarity
Strike Debt is building a debt resistance movement. We believe that most individual debt is illegitimate and unjust. Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: health care, education, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.
We also oppose debt because it is an instrument of exploitation and political domination. Debt is used to discipline us, deepen existing inequalities, and reinforce racial, gendered, and other social hierarchies. Every Strike Debt action is designed to weaken the institutions that seek to divide us and benefit from our division. As an alternative to this predatory system, Strike Debt advocates a just and sustainable economy, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence.
Strike Debt is committed to the principles and tactics of political autonomy, direct democracy, direct action, creative openness, a culture of solidarity, and commitment to anti-oppressive language and conduct. We struggle for a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of oppression.
Strike Debt holds that we are all debtors, whether or not we have personal loan agreements. Through the manipulation of sovereign and municipal debt, the costs of speculator-driven crises are passed on to all of us. Though different kinds of debt can affect the same household, they are all interconnected, and so all household debtors have a common interest in resisting.
Strike Debt engages in public education about the debt-system to counteract the self-serving myth that finance is too complicated for laypersons to understand. In particular, it urges direct action as a way of stopping the damage caused by the creditor class and their enablers among elected government officials. Direct action empowers those who participate in challenging the debt-system.
Strike Debt holds that we owe the financial institutions nothing, whereas, to our friends, families and communities, we owe everything. In pursuing a long-term strategy for national organizing around this principle, we pledge international solidarity with the growing global movement against debt and austerity.
We face a current political and social climate that continues to belie black humanity – where, without impunity, a young black man can be followed into his grandmother’s backyard and shot in the back six times out of the 20 shots fired at him.
Will we stand on the sideline or will we join the important struggle that Black Americans & many others daily endure to live free from racism, violence & terror?
We believe we are called to lean into a ministry and theology of resistance, reclaiming the hope and power inherent in our prophetic faiths, giving us courage and healing for the days ahead.
There are many different ways that your congregation and community can enter into solidarity with us.
There will be a time of celebration and fellowship, and training around resisting State Violence, ICE Raids, 2018 Election, Digital Organizing, and the Poor Peoples Campaign Workshops.
We are inviting you to wrestle with the principalities and powers that manifest themselves in racial prejudice, systemic evil and violence, and religious apathy and complicity.
We need you here; it is our duty to firght for freedom!
Register today! Space is Limited.
(Childcare and Food provided)
There’s more to history than you might think!
In two films, Prime Suspects: Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.? (Court TV, 2000, 37 min.) and Truth At Last: The Assassination of Martin Luther King (James Corbett, 2018, 51 min.), the official story of the murder is convincingly disproved – James Earl Ray did not kill King – through the decades-long work of William F. Pepper, attorney, investigator, and author, an influential friend of Martin King in the last year of his life, and attorney for the King family. Pepper, in his third and final book on King’s 1968 murder, The Plot to Kill King (2017), revealed the disturbing truth with startling and explosive conclusions largely ignored by the media.
A discussion will follow the screening of the films.
Presented by the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee sf911truth.org