Calendar
Oakland City Council will discuss creating our local public bank. To review: On September 11, the four-member finance committee looked at the feasibility study, heard from the community, and decided to send the whole matter to the full Council. Now, to make sure the Council keeps moving forward, we need to show up once more. Please attend if you can; we’ll be there with t-shirts and signs for you.
The financial crisis that erupted a decade ago in the U.S. subprime mortgage market has had immense political and economic ramifications. Ten years after the bail out, the austerity imposed by capitalists and their politicians has made increasing inequality and hardship the norm. The classical meaning of crisis is turning point. Did the crisis mark the decline of the established political consensus? Did it contribute to the rise of Trump one hand and the DSA on the other? How should democratic socialists organize knowing there’s always a next crisis with capitalism? Find out the answers to these questions and many more at the next installment of Night School.
Required Readings
See the readings that we’ll be discussing after a brief introduction from our members.
Meeting of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors’ Ad Hoc Committee on Urban Area Security Initiative.
Agenda:
Revised Meeting Schedule and Meeting Protocols
Learning Goals and Data Needs
Urban Shield Guidelines, Adopted by Board of Supervisors and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office
UASI Overview and 2019 Plan
Alameda County Emergency Management
Discussion on Criteria to Weigh Recommendations
Public Comment
Hear from @CatherineNCrump discussing the recent SCOTUS Carpenter ruling, and from Darlene Flynn – Dept. of Race & Equity, on how to measure (and mitigate) disparate impact.
Agenda:
4. 5:15pm: Election of vice-chair
5. 5:20pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – discussion with Director Darlene Flynn – Dept. of Race & Equity about measuring and mitigating disparate impact; take action on Surveillance Technology Acquisition Questionnaire (STAQ)
6. 5:50pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – discussion with staff and take action to adopt sequence of impact analysis and use policy writing for existing equipment7. 6:00pm: Special presentation and Q&A with UC Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Crump: Carpenter v. United States (2018)’
The Role of Women in The Great Depression
A conference, Women and the Spirit of the New Deal, will bring authors, scholars, historians, and activists together at UC Berkeley to fill in a significant gap in our understanding of the 20th Century – the role of women in the nation’s economic recovery, social welfare, and cultural life during the crisis of the 1930s Great Depression. A limited number of seats are open to the public to attend the presentations on Friday and Saturday at Maude Fife Room. Donations to the Living New Deal would be appreciated. Registration is required. Lndconference.eventbrite.com
With pivotal national elections just weeks away and unprecedented numbers of women running for office, taking power, and leading change, the topic is especially timely. Co-hosts are The Living New Deal, Frances Perkins Center, and the National New Deal Preservation Association.
UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, will speak. He is author of The Work of Nations; Saving Capitalism; and the documentary, Inequality. Reich will receive the Intelligence and Courage Award at the Women’s Faculty Club on Friday, Oct 5, 6:30pm. The award ceremony and Dr. Reich’s speech are open to the public on a donation basis. Registration is required to attend. Lndconference.eventbrite.com
Dr. John Roosevelt Boettiger, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a former professor of psychology and a founding faculty member at Hampshire College, will lead off the conference on Friday morning, Oct 5. Boettiger lived in the White House as a boy, and traveled with his grandmother during her work at United Nations while she authored the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
The program includes
Kirstin Downey, co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize while a reporter for the
Washington Post, and award-winnng author of several books including
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins,
FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience.
Susan Quinn, autthor of two books about women of the New Deal:
Eleanor and Hick, Furious Improvisation, about the embattled
Federal Theatre Project and its director Hallie Flanagan.
Dyanna Taylor, granddaughter of Dorothea Lange. Lange, who lived in Berkeley,
chronicled the Great Depression as a New Deal photographer. Dyanna produced the
documentary, Grab a Hunk of Lightning, about Lange’s life and work.
Robin Gerber, <author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way,
an attorney and former labor leader who helped found the James MacGregor Burns
Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Eileen Boriis, Professor of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara, co-author of
Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State.
See the full schedule and list of presenters here: : https://lndconference.eventbrite.com
The conference cosponsors include: the City of Berkeley, East Bay Regional Park District, Friends of the Berkeley Rose Garden, Frances Perkins Center, National New Deal Preservation Association and UC Berkeley Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Geography, History, and Sociology.
CONTACTS:
Susan Ives,
susan@susanivescommunications.com,
415-987-6764
Harvey Smith,
harveysmithberkeley@yahoo.com
510-684-0414
The Role of Women in The Great Depression
A conference, Women and the Spirit of the New Deal, will bring authors, scholars, historians, and activists together at UC Berkeley to fill in a significant gap in our understanding of the 20th Century – the role of women in the nation’s economic recovery, social welfare, and cultural life during the crisis of the 1930s Great Depression. A limited number of seats are open to the public to attend the presentations on Friday and Saturday at Maude Fife Room. Donations to the Living New Deal would be appreciated. Registration is required. Lndconference.eventbrite.com
With pivotal national elections just weeks away and unprecedented numbers of women running for office, taking power, and leading change, the topic is especially timely. Co-hosts are The Living New Deal, Frances Perkins Center, and the National New Deal Preservation Association.
UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, will speak. He is author of The Work of Nations; Saving Capitalism; and the documentary, Inequality. Reich will receive the Intelligence and Courage Award at the Women’s Faculty Club on Friday, Oct 5, 6:30pm. The award ceremony and Dr. Reich’s speech are open to the public on a donation basis. Registration is required to attend. Lndconference.eventbrite.com
Dr. John Roosevelt Boettiger, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a former professor of psychology and a founding faculty member at Hampshire College, will lead off the conference on Friday morning, Oct 5. Boettiger lived in the White House as a boy, and traveled with his grandmother during her work at United Nations while she authored the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
The program includes
Kirstin Downey, co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize while a reporter for the
Washington Post, and award-winnng author of several books including
The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins,
FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience.
Susan Quinn, autthor of two books about women of the New Deal:
Eleanor and Hick, Furious Improvisation, about the embattled
Federal Theatre Project and its director Hallie Flanagan.
Dyanna Taylor, granddaughter of Dorothea Lange. Lange, who lived in Berkeley,
chronicled the Great Depression as a New Deal photographer. Dyanna produced the
documentary, Grab a Hunk of Lightning, about Lange’s life and work.
Robin Gerber, <author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way,
an attorney and former labor leader who helped found the James MacGregor Burns
Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Eileen Boriis, Professor of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara, co-author of
Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State.
See the full schedule and list of presenters here: : https://lndconference.eventbrite.com
The conference cosponsors include: the City of Berkeley, East Bay Regional Park District, Friends of the Berkeley Rose Garden, Frances Perkins Center, National New Deal Preservation Association and UC Berkeley Departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Geography, History, and Sociology.
CONTACTS:
Susan Ives,
susan@susanivescommunications.com,
415-987-6764
Harvey Smith,
harveysmithberkeley@yahoo.com
510-684-0414
In the now extremely likely event that Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, we will gather at 5pm on the day of the vote to show that #WeDoNotConsent to the appointment of yet another sexual predator into a position of power in the US govt. Join us to express our collective outrage and to continue the process of healing for survivors of the ‘justice’ system.
Bring silver duct tape and chapstick if you are able. We will continue to update on this page as details about the vote are released.
Resilience for Renters: Grow Your Own Food
WHAT: Growing your own food is a key resilience strategy lowers your grocery bills, makes healthier eating easy and fun, and helps combat climate change! No yard? No extra money? No problem! In this hands-on workshop at our lush outdoor classroom, you will learn many ways to grow food as a renter. Instructor Lori Caldwell, a long-time renter herself, will demonstrate creative solutions and cover topics such as:
- Container gardening, indoors and outside
- Vertical gardening (hanging pots and peats, pallets and trellises)
- From concrete to food: creating temporary raised beds (wattle, hugel, strawbale)
- Plant selection, crop rotation, and maintaining soil fertility
- Landlord incentives for lawn conversion
- Free resources (seed libraries, cuttings, crop swaps, compost giveaways)
- Other creative strategies (yardshare, funky containers, etc.)
WHO: Instructor Lori Caldwell – a renter herself! – is an avid edible gardener, Master Composter, and Bay-Friendly Qualified Landscape Professional. She has been teaching sustainable gardening classes all over the Bay Area since 2007.
(This workshop is part of the “Resilience for Renters” series the Ecology Center is developing for the thousands of renters in the East Bay.)
FROM DETENTION TO FREEDOM-REUNITED FAMILIES SPEAK! Join us for a community celebration of the past 7+ years of Interfaith Prayer Vigils at WCDF with people who have been freed and come home, and the Joyful Noise! Gospel Singers, a nonprofit community choir dedicated to social justice and human rights. www.joyfulnoisegospelsingers.org
Fan Shigang discusses Striking to Survive: Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China. In conversation with Li Wen.
What is the meaning of the thousands of strikes in China? Do these strikes add up to a “labor movement”? How can solidarity between Chinese and American workers be built?
Countering the popular myth that Chinese workers are “stealing American jobs,” Striking to Survive documents a recent wave of factory closures in China’s Pearl River Delta and struggles by workers there to hold onto their jobs, their pensions, and their livelihoods.
The struggles of these workers in China’s industrial centers are shaping the future of labor and democracy not only in China but throughout the world. These vivid stories of workers at factories that supply multinational corporations Walmart and Uniqlo, compiled by worker-activists and circulated underground, provide a unique, on-the-ground perspective on the most recent wave of militancy among China’s enormous working class.
Striking to Survive includes a uniquely fine-grained account of the strike organized by “Delegate Wu” – a worker activist who served more than a year in prison after the strike ended. The New York Times produced a video about Delegate Wu, which gives a sense of his work.
—
Fan Shigang was born into a family of workers for state-owned enterprises in a northern Chinese city. He has worked as a basic-level employee in several machining factories. He is a contributor to the underground labor periodical, Factory Stories, conducting interviews with factory workers in southern China, documenting their lives, work, and struggles.
Li Wen has worked in electronics and jewelry factories in southern China. She interviews and documents the experience of factory workers who’ve joined collective struggles, and pays particular attention to issues of occupational injury and disease.
The Contra Costa Racial Justice Coalition will host Aaron Zisser, a civil rights lawyer who served as Independent Police Auditor in San Jose.
As IPA, Zisser reviewed internal investigations of alleged officer misconduct and issued policy recommendations. He served in this role for about a year before an intense political campaign, waged by the police union, forced him out. South Bay police accountability activists believe that the campaign against Zisser was the police union’s way to trying to put the brakes on efforts to give the Auditor more powers to hold the agency to account. (As the Mercury News put it, a “veiled opposition to community demands for expanded reach for the IPA, including increased access to internal misconduct investigations – and officer-involved shooting probes.”)
Now that the CCC Racial Justice Task Force is trying to increase accountability over the CCC Sheriff’s office, Zisser will be attending the next CCRJC meeting to help thr group understand various models of independent oversight for law enforcement. Some of these models are described in “Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement Bodies,” a report which describes the pro’s and con’s of different ways that cities oversee their police departments. Options range from civilian police commissions (such as we have here in Richmond) to Independent Auditor models, like the one in San Jose. To find out more or get involved, please attend the meeting on the 10th!
Editors Mateo Hoke (’14) & Taylor Pendergrass discuss their new oral history collection, SIX BY TEN: STORIES FROM SOLITARY, with narrator Mohammed “Mike” Ali. Featuring a reading and Q&A with Mateo, Taylor, and Mohammed, as well as a journalistic reversal in which Mohammed will interview the editors. This event is hosted by the Berkeley Oral History Center and is co-sponsored by Voice of Witness, Haymarket Books and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
About the book
Six by ten feet. That’s the average size of the cell in which tens of thousands of people incarcerated in the United States linger for weeks, months, and even decades in solitary confinement. With little stimulation and no meaningful human contact, these individuals struggle to preserve their identity, sanity, and even their lives.In thirteen intimate narratives, Six by Ten explores the mental, physical, and spiritual impacts of America’s widespread embrace of solitary confinement. Through stories from those subjected to solitary confinement, family members on the outside, and corrections officers, Six by Ten examines the darkest hidden corners of America’s mass incarceration culture and illustrates how solitary confinement inflicts lasting consequences on families and communities far beyond prison walls. [MORE]
Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary is published by Haymarket Books. Click here to purchase the book before the event.
RSVP: https://goo.gl/KSYYeU
We’re so excited to have Mutual Aid Disaster Relief stop in Oakland during their West Coast tour!
Come hear about MADR’s work including their formation during Hurricane Katrina, solidarity efforts in Puerto Rico, and all the way to their current training program.
This evening will be an introductory presentation: “Protectors v. Profiteers: Communities in Resistance to Disaster Capitalism.”
Free admission – all are welcome!
This event is in OMNI’s Ballroom which has wheelchair accessibility.
Posters from Beehive Collective and other merch will be on sale as a fundraiser for the tour. Please bring cash and support this impactful tour!
If you have any questions contact Susan: susanpark13@gmail.com
THEN, join them on Sunday in SF for a deeper, participatory workshop for affinity groups and individuals who are ready to get involved, “Giving Our Best, Ready For The Worst: Community Organizing as Disaster Preparedness.”
https://www.facebook.com/events/2584142935057711/
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The Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADRelief) Training Team is visiting our community. Currently MADRelief is on a national capacity-building and educational tour. They will explain how natural storms turn into unnatural disasters through dangerous new forms of “disaster capitalism” and “extreme resource extraction,” and train diverse affinity groups on principles of grassroots direct action humanitarian aid and crisis response, covering a wide range of topics such as “Principles of ‘Solidarity, Not Charity,’” “Using Privilege to Break Down Barriers,” “Building Power in Collaboration,” and “Overcoming Trauma Together.”
Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a decent(ralised) secure gossip platform. Imagine if Facebook or Twitter was run by its users, could be extended by anyone, offered cryptographic security, and required no centralized infrastructure!
Come by and learn more about SSB, ask questions, get set up on one of the several client programs, and be free from oppressive centralized social networks.
Read more at https://www.scuttlebutt.nz
Katya Cengel discusses Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back.
“Exiled” traces the story of violence through three generations of Cambodian-Americans by profiling a handful of families. It begins with the grandparents, the elderly who will soon be too old to tell their stories of survival. The violence they endured is recognized as the most brutal, a genocide that killed an estimated 20 percent of the Cambodian population. In Cambodia, the criminals have never fully been brought to justice and the victims remain largely silent. The silence is the same in the United States, where survivors have tried to leave their memories of random killing behind. But trauma like that cannot be escaped so easily, and it followed them, seeping back into their families through their children. The guidance, support and care they were often too traumatized to give their children left those same children vulnerable to gang recruitment. The second generation came of age amidst the violence of the past and the present.
The U.S. deported the criminals who did not hold citizenship, sending them back to a homeland their parents had given up everything to escape. They had neither the practical nor emotional skills to cope and their home country offered little help. In Cambodia they succumb to addiction and mental illness in large numbers. Then there is the third generation, the children, the ones still in America growing up without fathers and mothers, subjected to the violence of loss and longing. This is a story about how regimes as brutal as the Khmer Rouge and as benign as the United States have kept alive a legacy of violence and loss. There are no easy answers here, just the words of survivors and their descendants.
Katya Cengel is a freelance writer based in San Luis Obispo, California, and lectures in the Journalism Department of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She was a features and news writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal from 2003 to 2011 and has reported from North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Marie Claire, and Newsweek. She is the author of Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life (Nebraska, 2012).
advance tickets: $12 : Books Inc (Berkeley), Pegasus Books (3 sites), Moes, Walden Pond Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloways. East Bay Books, $15 door, KPFA benefit.
Cary McClelland is a writer, filmmaker, lawyer, and rights advocate. His book is an eye-opening portrait of San Francisco transformed by the tech boom. Famously home to artists and activists, the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movementin recent decades the Bay Area has been reshaped by Silicon Valley, the engine of the new American economy. The richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes. Cracks in the citys facaderapid gentrification, an epidemic of evictions, rising crime, atrophied public institutionshave started to appear. Cary McClelland spent several years interviewing people at the epicenter of the recent change, from venture capitalists and coders to politicians and protesters, from native sons and daughters to the citys newest arrivals. We hear from people who have passed through Apple, Google, eBay, Intel, and the other big tech companies of our time. We meet those who are experiencing changes at the grassroots level: a homeless advocate in Haight-Ashbury, an Oakland rapper, a pawnbroker in the Mission, a man who helped dismantle and rebuild the Bay Bridge, and many fascinating others.
Richard A. Walker is professor emeritus of geography at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught from 1975 to 2012. He has written on a diverse range of topics in economic, urban, and environmental geography, with scores of published articles to his credit. He is co-author of The Capitalist Imperative (1989) and The New Social Economy (1992) and has written extensively on California, including The Conquest of Bread (2004), The Country in the City (2007) and The Atlas of California (2013). Walker is currently director of the Living New Deal Project, whose purpose is to inventory all New Deal public works sites in the U.S. and recover the lost memory of government investment for the good of all.
Sasha Lilley is a writer and radio broadcaster. Shes the host of KPFAs critically acclaimed program of radical ideas, Against the Grain, and the series editor of PM Press political economy imprint Spectre. Her books include Capital and Its Discontents and Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Political Collapse and Rebirth.
Film screening followed by Q+A with Director Laurie Coyle and Maria Moreno’s daughters, Olivia Portugal and Lily DeLa Torre
In Adios Amor, the discovery of lost photographs sparks the search for a hero that history forgot — Maria Moreno, a migrant mother driven to speak out by her twelve children’s hunger. She was the first farmworker woman in America to be hired as a union organizer and became an outspoken leader in an era when women were relegated to the background.
In 1961, UC Berkeley students invited farmworker labor leader Maria Moreno to speak on campus, where she received a standing ovation. A trailblazing activist who paved the way for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Maria was forgotten and her legacy buried. Now she’s back to tell her story in an inspiring new documentary.
This event is free and open to the public. Food and drinks will be provided. The MCC is ADA accessible.
Please register for the event by visiting us on Eventbrite or through our Facebook event page.
Co-sponsored by Chicanx Latinx Student Development, Center for Latino Policy Research, and Ethnic Studies Department
To learn more about the film please visit Adios Amor webpage: https://www.adiosamorfilm.com/
Attica – a documentary film by Cinda Firestone
This film documents the events that began on September 9, 1971 when inmates at Attica State Prison seized the prison for four days after months of protesting inhumane conditions. The uprising resulted in the death of 43 people after state troopers were called in to put down the rebellion
This event is the opening night of a three day Revolutionary University
Join us for three days of presentations and discussions to help us understand our current conditions and the problems we face under capitalism. Most importantly, we will talk about the kind of organizing necessary in order to change these conditions and create the kind of society that we need.
For more info:
https://revolutionaryworkers.org/revolutionary-university-fall-2018-oct-12-14/
