Calendar

Dinner: 6:30 PM

Movie: 7:30 PM

Striking to Survive records workers’ views of their ongoing strikes in Pearl River Delta.

There is also a new movement of idealistic party youth in China for who are looking to Marxism to align with workers’ own aspirations. They have been rounded up by the party-state machine.

What future comes from “handling contradictions among the people” according to the “thought of Mao” or now the “thought of Xi Jinping”?

What is Marx’s philosophy of liberation in distinction from the party-state? How does it speak to the new movements in China and to the world facing a rise of fascism?

Don’t miss this riveting report on the state of the world and what’s being done to back away from the nuclear brink.

A Slide Show & Talk by John Steinbach, Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area

Edging toward nuclear war, the world remains balanced precariously on the knife edge of nuclear annihilation.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Committee.

What are the origins of the racial wealth gap and how can we leverage wealth to undermine, rather than support, the structures of white supremacy? SURJ’s Fundraising Committee will provide historical context, map the limitations of existing institutional financial support for racial justice, and engage participants to rethink their own access to wealth, networks, and other resources in an effort to develop a “reparations mindset.”

All proceeds go to support one or more of our partner organizations led by people of color.

Laney College’s Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee is hosting a teach-in. Data suggests that at least 14 percent of students at Peralta community colleges are homeless. The number of those who worry about housing stability each month is even higher. The teach-in will discuss: What’s the role of our government in meeting the basic needs of the people, such as housing?  Does voting make a difference?

The Teach-In is co-sponsored by the Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee, the Women’s Economic Agenda Project, Associated Students of Laney College (ASLC), and the Umoja-UBAKA Student Success Community at Laney.

The Poor Peoples Campaign Teach-In Committee at Laney is made up of faculty, students and community members.  The group holds teach-ins each semester on social and political issues affecting the Oakland community, including Peralta students, faculty and staff.

Required Readings

Additional details and readings will be added shortly.

Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission Agenda:

4. 5:15pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – discussion with staff and take action to adopt sequence of impact analysis and use policy writing for existing Fire Department equipment

5. 5:20pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – Unapproved Use of UAV by OPD during exigent circumstances – presentation of staff report and take possible action

6. 5:30pm: Review and discuss Federal Task Force MOU with Drug Enforcement Agency – take possible action

7. 5:50pm: Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – Cell Site Simulator Impact Analysis and draft Use Policy – review and take possible action.

OPAC meetings

Agenda packet for this meeting

Cindy Sheehan and gg Winter have a slide presentation and report from their recent trip to Cuba, including a celebration with four of the released Cuban 5 where Cindy was honored for her work in helping get them released. It was an amazing musical and dancing program put on for her and our group. Nice pictures of the occasion, and many others of the trip will be shown. Please attend and enjoy.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Social Justice Committee.

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

CSLS Book Event with Issa Kohler-Hausmann on Fri., Nov. 2 from 2-3:30p (reception to follow) pic.twitter.com/Pxz8D2x8R9

— CSLS at UC Berkeley (@CSLSatBerkeley) October 5, 2018

Donations for the 13 people directly impacted by the encampment fire @ e12th & 23rd can be dropped at Omni Commons on Saturday and Sunday, 11/3 and 4, from 10 am-3 pm.

Contact T (512) 663-8871 if you have stuff to drop but need to find another time. https://t.co/TdhBWtOklV

— ellie hwa (@spectralsex) November 2, 2018

Come help us rebuild Daniela’s home. No more leaky roof for her Monica her mom age 43 and her younger brother.
In fine barn raising fashion we will also be rebuilding several shelters for her unhoused neighbors.

11 am
Opening remarks by encampment resident and project cooridinator Derrick Soo

1pm Community potluck lunch. Please bring food to share

2 – 5 pm finish rebuilding shelters

Suds, Snacks, & Socialism at the Starry Plough

The Peace and Freedom Party presents

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

In 1850, in an essay on Chinese Socialism, Karl Marx wrote:
It may well be that Chinese socialism is related to European socialism just as Chinese philosophy is related to Hegelian philosophy. But it is an amusing fact that the oldest and most unshattered Empire on this earth has been pushed, in eight years, by the cotton ball of the English bourgeois toward the brink of a social upheaval that must have most profound consequences for civilisation.
When our European reactionaries, on their next fight through Asia, will have finally reached the Chinese Wall, the gates that lead to the seat of primeval reaction and conservatism, who knows, perhaps they will read the following inscription on the Wall:
République Chinoise
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

We are putting together a group of knowledgeable comrades to discuss the contemporary relevance of Marx’s words, including David Ewing, US-China People Friendship Association;, Al Sargis, founder of the Friedrich Engels Institute of Marxist War and Military Analysis (FEIMWAMA); and Gerald Smith, Oscar Grant Committee.

This is part of our on-going Socialist Forum Series on the first Saturday of every month. Doors open at 2 pm and the program will start promptly at 2:30 pm. The forum will end by 4:30 pm, but folks can stay and talk afterwards. The opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not reflect official views of the Peace and Freedom Party.

The Peace and Freedom Party, born from the civil rights and 
anti-war movements of the 1960s, is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism, racial equality, and internationalism.

Zahra Billoo on Racisim, Islamophobia and Empire. She is a civil rights attorney and the ED of the SF Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Food Not Bombs will prepare a delicious vegetarian dinner.

Donations for the 13 people directly impacted by the encampment fire @ e12th & 23rd can be dropped at Omni Commons on Saturday and Sunday, 11/3 and 4, from 10 am-3 pm.

Contact T (512) 663-8871 if you have stuff to drop but need to find another time. https://t.co/TdhBWtOklV

— ellie hwa (@spectralsex) November 2, 2018

Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library

How the US Left Can Resist the New Forms of US Imperialism

What is common to LBJ’s “Falling Dominoes,” Carter’s “Humanitarian intervention,” Reagan’s “Shining City,” G. H. W. Bush’s “What We Say Goes,” G. W. Bush’s “God’s Mission,” Obama’s “Indispensable Country,” and Trump’s contradictory statements? It is imperialism in different garbs, adopted to the decaying capitalism over the past 40 years.
ICSS Members Raj Sahai, Rick Sterling, and Roger Harris will speak, Charles Andrews will be our moderator.

Seating is limited, so plan to come early. We start promptly.

About Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
A weekly discussion series inspired by our respect for the work of Karl Marx and our belief that his work will remain as important for the class struggles of the future as they have been for the past.

Come on out to learn more about democratic socialism and get involved in our local activities here in the East Bay. New members and not-yet-members are welcome!

If you like, stick around for the canvassing event launching nearby! These back-to-back events are the perfect opportunity to jump into East Bay DSA!

Join the Ecology Center for a theatre screening of the new documentary film Abundant Land, followed by a rich discussion and Q&A about traditional Hawaiian land management practices with the film’s director, Natasha Florentino, and Makena Silva, Native Hawaiian, social worker, and advocate.

Abundant Land is a one-hour documentary about the Hawaiian community on Moloka’i opposing the biotech industry’s use of the island’s land, water, and other resources to test genetically engineered seeds. The film shows the rich legacy of traditional Hawaiian land management and farming self-sufficiency– as well as the vital forces of resistance upheld by indigenous communities. Abundant Land also offers a historical look at the intrusion and political underpinnings of chemical-intensive farming in Hawaii while portraying the power of the heritage and traditional ecological knowledge in the fight for clean and safe air, water, and land.

Protest the towing and impoundment of otherwise homeless people’s RVs from the streets of Oakland.

Sponsored by United Front Against Displacement, the Landless People’s Alliance, and the Here and Now Collective

Decades Long Oakland Residents had the RVs they live in towed in mass on Tuesday, October 23. At least 15 were seized at the time from the area bordering Raimondi Park. In the last two weeks many have been forced to live on the street. Join them in demanding the city return the RVs.

As police towed the RVs last week, they told several residents “Don’t Let Us See You in Oakland Again.”

The residents are demanding a return of RV-Homes, an apology from Mayor, and a freeze on the city’s offensive against unhoused people.

Given minutes to leave their RVs and vans, residents tried to grab what they could before the vehicles were towed. Like refugees fleeing for safety, the RV owners were forced to throw possessions out of their doors and windows onto piles on the sidewalk. Many did not have time to secure key material, including at least one resident, who lost his identity papers in the towing.

Following the towing, residents camped out in the surrounding park were warned that OPD would be coming for them in subsequent weeks.

For a video of the tows in progress see: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qBIz8vory3g

More info:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/541837129562482/permalink/561249587621236/

Co-Sponsored by the United Front Against Displacement, The Landless
People’s Alliance, and the Here and There Collective

In front of Oakland City Hall, 14th Street between Washington and Broadway

Who: Residents living in at least 15 RVs in West Oakland, many of whom have lived and worked in the surrounding community for decades, saw their vehicles impounded by the police last Tuesday. Others are being threatened by police to leave encampments in the area. Together they have formed a group “United Front Against Displacement.”

Decades Long Oakland Residents now forced to live in RVs because of skyrocketing housing prices were told last Tuesday by Oakland PD “Don’t Let Us See You in Oakland Again” as the cops towed their vehicles.

Given minutes to leave their RVs and vans, residents tried to grab what they could before the vehicles were towed. Like refugees fleeing for safety, the RV owners were forced to throw possessions out of their doors and windows onto piles on the sidewalk. Many did not have time to secure key material, including at least one resident, who lost his identity papers in the towing.

On the previous Friday, city workers had placed stickers on the RVs demanding that they be moved by the following Tuesday. This presented a problem for many vehicles which did not have working motors.

So the residents came up with a plan. Those without working motors would get a tow Tuesday morning out of the site by a neighbor with a working RV and with a fifth wheel hitch on the back.

However, police prevented this from happening by targeting and towing away the working vehicle first. They justified doing so on the grounds that the driver did not match the person on the vehicle’s registration. The message then to crestfallen residents was clear—OPD was intent on seizing their effective life lines, rendering them homeless in the process.

Following the towing, residents camped out in the surrounding park were warned that OPD would be coming for them in subsequent weeks.

The residents are demanding a return of RV-Homes, an apology from Mayor, and a freeze on the city’s offensive against unhoused people.

At a smaller protest last week on Monday, mayoral spokesman Michael J.
Hunt told protesters he would try to release the RVs. Without concrete
results however, residents pledged to be back the following afternoon.

This incident is the latest in a new trend of stepped up attacks on the city’s unhoused and homeless in the area by city authorities. On Friday, October 20, prompted by complaints by the owner of neighboring Soundwave Studio (two blocks from the site of the RV towing), eight police officers arrived at the Wood Street homeless encampment. Several residents in the encampment demanded to see legal notices from police, and then chanted at them “Hell No We Won’t Go.” The cops left that time.
“They’ll be back” several residents remarked however.

For more information, contact: Kelly at 925-413-5244

email: WeWontGo@riseup.net