Calendar
KPFA:
Is It the End of Our Local
Independent Community Radio Station?
Come to a Discussion about How to Keep It Going
Thursday, November 14, 2019, 7pm
Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM)
819 A Street
San Rafael, California
Equity, social justice and access for every community voice may soon end at KPFA and its sister stations in Pacifica’s national radio network.
After years of turmoil, an internal selection process – proposed as “new bylaws” – may hand power over to a self-selected few on the Pacifica network board.
Please join us as Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director of Media Alliance, and Peter Franck, former Pacifica president, discuss the future of Pacifica in a panel discussion. Radio host Peter B. Collins will moderate, fielding audience questions.
It is no secret that KPFA and the Pacifica network are struggling. Panelists will address the many concerns and factions at KPFA including:
- Information about recent dramatic radio network conflicts, resulting lawsuits, and proposed new bylaws
- The shut down and lock out of staff at New York affiliate WBAI
- The elimination of various independent programs at KPFA
- The truth about the Pacifica network’s financial state
- “Why can’t we all just get along?”
Whether you are a member or an occasional listener, Pacifica’s survival is essential to everyone’s free speech.
Please come and learn more if you value free independent media. Join us in protecting the fierce independence of KPFA’s local and Pacifica’s national programming, which speaks truth to power.
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A substantial debate on single payer:
The pro side will be represented by a professor from the UC school of Public Health.
The con side will be represented by Sally Pipes from the Pacific Research Institute. She used to work for the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada.
Training Overview
This is an intermediate to advance level restorative justice circle training focused on gaining proficiency in facilitating Conflict Circles.
At minimum, all participants must have already completed an Introductory RJ training and/or have equivalent experience in facilitating Community Building Circles.
Participants in this 2-day training will review RJ theory, practice, data and protocols for facilitating community-building Circles; and be introduced to, learn protocols for, and gain skills in facilitating conflict Circles.
The 2-day training will emphasize interactivity, relationship-building, and skills-building. Much of the second day will be devoted to simulated exercises to acquire skills in facilitating Conflict Circles.
Tamarack and Commune Magazine invite you to a video presentation by the Vitalist International:
BE WATER : WORLD
Lessons from the freedom movements in Hong Kong and Catalonia
Magic and Technology In the Revolution of Our Times
Umbrellas, laser pointers, and cardboard boxes, black blocks using encrypted platforms to vote live on escape routes and designers quitting their day jobs to make Pepe memes full time: The movement in Hong Kong is a signal fire showing us the future of resistance in an increasingly digital world.
From low tech solutions against the most advanced surveillance state on Earth to mesh networks and live mapping software, two participants in the movement will discuss the revolution in Hong Kong, from a user’s perspective.
Catalunya Fall 2019
After the Spanish Supreme Court convicted 9 Catalans of “Sedition” for their roles in the 2017 independence referendum, a wave of revolt crashed over the region. Drawing on lessons from the laboratory in Hong Kong, millions of people have built a movement that goes beyond its nationalist framework and questions the meaning of democracy in our time.
The USF Center for Applied Data Ethics will be hosting a Tech Policy Workshop the weekend of Nov 16 to 17. Systemic problems, such as increasing surveillance, spread of disinformation, concerning uses of predictive policing, and the magnification of unjust bias, all require systemic solutions.
We invite anyone working in the tech industry or in public policy, and to community members concerned about the impact of misuses of tech on society to attend. By hosting a Tech Policy Workshop, we hope to facilitate collaborations between those in tech and in policy, as well as highlight the need for policy interventions in addressing ethical issues to those working in tech. The workshop will include a mix of talks, workshops and breakout sessions.
s the week of actions around houselesness is approaching (November 16th-24th) Liberated Lens will conduct a Citizen Journalism training where you can learn how to do on the street media, simple streaming, vlogging, phone security etc.
Bring your cell phone or any recording device you intend on using.
Part II that will happen on November 24th will cover simple editing and post production tools.
Beginning on August 10th, the Strike Debt Bay Area Economics Book Group began discussing Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. We tackled the introduction and first chapter, available through the ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon, for the August 10th meeting.
For our September 7th meeting, we will be discussing the rest of the first section, Chapters 2-6.
For our October 12th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 7-9, the first part of the second section.
For our November 16th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 10 – 13.
For our December 14th meeting, we will be discussing Chapters 14 and through to the end.
All are welcome!
The Economics Book Group began with Doughnut Economics and continued with Take Back the Economy. We read a few chapters every month.
“Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.”
“In Banking on the People, attorney Ellen Brown provides a much-needed roadmap for reforming monetary and credit systems and the central banks now strangling our common human future. More lucidly that any other expert I know, she shows how we can break the grip of predatory financialization now extracting value from real peoples’ productive activities all over the world. Her in-depth research and systemic overview of the global and local politics of money-creation and credit allocation include all the viable proposals of global experts and reformers. She reviews many of these reforms: from financial transaction taxes, to a universal basic income to provide purchasing power for the cornucopia of goods and services now produced, to expanding the public banks she so ably promotes via the Public Banking Institute, to returning the Fed and all banks to serving the public utility functions that economies require. This book is a must read for citizens in all societies who see the promising future as we seek to widen democracies and transform to a cleaner, greener, shared prosperity, based on the renewable abundance of free daily energy from our sun.” – Hazel Henderson, CEO of Ethical Markets Media and author of Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age and other books.
You are cordially invited – please bring friends!
The End of Policing
A conversation with Alex Vitale
Sponsors – Northern California Communist Party, Harry Bridges Club, CPUSA and People’s World/Mundo Popular
Alex Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 25 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. He also serves on the New York State Advisory Committee of the US Commission on Civil Rights and is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics.
In his recent work, The End of Policing, Vitale gives a scathing critique of police reformism and presents realistic alternatives to policing, such as restorative justice and harm reduction programs implemented in various departments around the world.
The book is a means to spark a public discourse: telling the racist and anti-labor origins of modern policing as a tool of social control, in which police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice and public safety – so the event will be organized as a conversation with local activists Cassie Lopez and Nicole Evelyn Leopardo.
Lopez is an activist in Oakland and one of the principal directors of the Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library. Leopardo is a lecturer of Race and Resistance Studies at SFSU; where she teaches critical thinking, focusing on the basic skills involved in understanding, deconstructing, and creating sound arguments using materials and theoretical concepts that center people of color.
Copies of The End Of Policing will be available for sale or signing for $15.
Communist Party USA | Radical Ideas. Real Politics.
The USF Center for Applied Data Ethics will be hosting a Tech Policy Workshop the weekend of Nov 16 to 17. Systemic problems, such as increasing surveillance, spread of disinformation, concerning uses of predictive policing, and the magnification of unjust bias, all require systemic solutions.
We invite anyone working in the tech industry or in public policy, and to community members concerned about the impact of misuses of tech on society to attend. By hosting a Tech Policy Workshop, we hope to facilitate collaborations between those in tech and in policy, as well as highlight the need for policy interventions in addressing ethical issues to those working in tech. The workshop will include a mix of talks, workshops and breakout sessions.
Sun, Nov 10, 2019
Open Mic/Political Karaoke
What’s bugging you, politics-wise? Here’s your chance to talk about any and every thing from the PG&E Power Shutdown to Brexit, from Nancy Pelosi to Greta Thunberg, maybe even the riots in Chile. Sign up for 5 minute slots!
Sun, Nov 17, 2019
Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter.
Representatives of the Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression have been invited to discuss their position on this matter.
Awaiting better blurb..
Sun, Nov 24, 2019
Women and War
Women have a long association with violent intergroup conflict and war going back to early human times. This presentation will survey women in the highly genderized institutions of war and the military in various periods and types of societies. Although women have been impacted in multiple ways and played many roles, the focus of this talk is on women’s role as fighter/combatant and direct supporters of this activity. Also covered are women in some of the revolutionary wars and militaries in the past two centuries. The fighter/combatant perspective on women is usually omitted or “hidden” in accounts by both conventional and feminist analysts who stress women as victims, survivors, peacemakers and supporters of men who fight. Women as fighters not only redresses this imbalance but indicates a role whose impact is as significant as the other roles that are more widely promulgated.
Presented by Al Sargis, Founder/Director of the Friedrich Engels Institute of Marxist War and Military Analysis (FEIMWAMA).
The workshop is 2-6pm.
ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP
Building alternatives to policing include equipping our communities with the skills to respond to mental health crisis and physical emergencies, including overdose. Too often calling 911 for a mental health or physical emergency brings police attention along with it. In this workshop we will cover mental health crisis intervention, first aid, CPR, and overdose intervention.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
The Oakland Power Projects (OPP) are an initiative of Critical Resistance to engage Oakland residents in building community power and wellbeing without relying on cops. CR Oakland has been fighting against the violence of policing for more than 10 years, and we hope you’ll join us in this next phase.
ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP SERIES
A growing coalition of organizations in the Bay Area is coming together to explore alternatives to calling the police to our campuses and into our neighborhoods. Over the coming year, we will be offering a series of workshops to explore alternatives to calling the police. Some of these workshops will provide deepening analysis and a grounding in alternative ways of thinking about community safety. Others, like this one, will provide practical skills. All of them will lift up a transformative justice framework and emphasize the importance of self care.
The Coalition includes First Congregational Church of Oakland, Kehilla Community Synagogue, Qal’bu Maryam, Jewish Voice for Peace, Skyline Community Church, Oakland Peace Center, Oakland LBGTQ Community Center, and the Omni Collective. We are eager to partner with additional organizations so please contact us if you are interested!
Join us for our National Day of Action to #FreeRodneyReed. Join other members of your community in solidarity with Rodney and his family as we join the national movement to demand Justice for Rodney.
Sign up here
“As many of you know, I favor strong First Amendment protections for journalists and protesters and especially students. But I’m also very much against the President of the United States’ and his followers’ repeated attempts to get Congresswomen of color harmed or killed.
Legally, these two ideals appear to be in conflict. Would you like to see me try to square them? Would you like to hear a fully thought-through articulation of why free speech does not, or at least should not, include personal threats made against any person who dares to oppose Donald Trump? Would you like to hear an expert in First Amendment law tell me why I’m wrong?
If so, please join me and Ken White (aka @Popehat) at Berkeley Law on Monday, November 18th at 5:30 p.m. We will be having a spirited debate about what free speech does mean, should mean, and must mean in the age of Donald Trump. We’ll be playing some of our old hits like: Can a gun store suggest killing Congresswomen if it didn’t actually threaten them? And some new ones like, well, whatever dangerous, hateful thing Trump says in the next 10 days, probably.
We’re being hosted by Director Catherine Crump of the Samuelson Clinic for Law, Technology, and Public Policy. We will try very hard not to break any of the technology or public policy lying around.
Click here to RSVP. Especially if you agree with me! But, even if you don’t. I will defend forever your right to oppose me… just so long as you don’t think you can use the n-word without catching some hands.”
Join immigrants and their allies in fighting for a pathway to permanent residency for over a million longtime U.S. residents who are at risk of losing their legal status under the Trump administration’s attacks on programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and Deferred Enforced Departure(DED).
The El Cerrito City Council will hear and vote on a proclamation titled “In Support of Protections from Deportation and a Path to Permanent Residency for Beneficiaries of DACA, TPS and DED” at its November 19 meeting in City Council chambers, 10890 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. The meeting begins at 7:00 PM. Read the entire draft proclamation at this pdf link. The City Council’s agenda isn’t available yet, but will appear at this link closer to the date of the meeting, and should include a final draft of the proclamation.
Local community organizations El Cerrito Progressives, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant,and NorCal TPS Coalition will hold a rally/vigil outside City Hall before the meeting, from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Come hear local speakers tell their stories and explain how we can all work to keep families together and our communities intact. El Cerrito Mayor Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto is also slated to speak at the beginning of the rally. Come even if you live outside of El Cerrito! TPS Coalition has been working with several cities on the issue; you can read the Berkeley City Council’s 10/15/19 resolution,
We already know that we desperately need single payer for health care. But the recent failures of PG&E show how we need a single-payer system for our energy grid, too — to stop the reckless, dangerous behavior of private companies getting rich off what should be a public good, and to fight climate change. Only one of the Democratic candidates running for President has unequivocally called for bringing PG&E under public control. Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal proposal isn’t just the boldest proposal to save the planet that any candidate has made yet. It also includes the United States moving to 100 percent public ownership of our power grid.
How can the growing democratic socialist movement win demands that stave off the worst of the climate crisis and move us towards a more sustainable future? Solving the ecological crisis requires a mass movement to take on hugely powerful industries. Yet the environmental movement’s base in the professional-managerial class and focus on consumption has little chance of attracting working-class support. The seminal essay by Matt Huber included in the class readings argues for a program that tackles the ecological crisis by organizing around working-class interests.
The readings for the upcoming Night School class can be found here: https://www.eastbaydsa.org/night-school/
This important discussion between two major American whisteblowers will focus on the urgent need to end unaccountable government power.
Daniel Ellsberg is an American activist and former United States military analyst formerly employed by the RAND Corporation. He precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. In1973, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Due to governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, all charges against Ellsberg were dismissed. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. He is also known for voicing support for Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. Ellsberg was awarded the 2018 Olof Palme Prize for his humanism and exceptional moral courage.
Jeffery Sterling is a former CIA agent convicted under the Espionage Act for talking to a New York Times reporter. He was released from prison after serving more than two years of his 42-month sentence. Sterling’s case drew nationwide attention because the Obama-era Department of Justice unsuccessfully tried to force the reporter, James Risen, to divulge the identity of his sources for “State of War,” his book that revealed just how the CIA had botched a covert operation against Iran’s nuclear program. Risen reported that instead of undermining the Iranians, the CIA had provided them with useful information on how to build a nuclear bomb. The case had a racial dimension, as Sterling was one of the few black undercover operatives at the CIA. After several years of what he believed was discriminatory treatment, he filed a complaint against the agency, followed by a lawsuit. The CIA fired Sterling in 2002. His lawsuit was blocked by the courts after the government argued successfully that proceeding with the suit would expose state secrets. As a whistleblower, Sterling subsequently met with Senate investigators about the mismanaging of a classified program he worked on at the agency.
Norman Solomon is the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is also the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he coordinates the ExposeFacts.org program for whistleblowers and press freedom. He is co-founder of RootsAction.org. Kevin Cartwright has since 1994 handled many important positions for Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM. He is a communications strategist who continues working with various social change organizations across the country to help improve their communications.
Give Us Something to be Thankful For
A Visit to Governor Newsom, to Expedite Healthy California for All Commission for Single-Payer Healthcare!
- -We are providing a charter bus – capacity 56, first come,, first served – that will pick up at the Larkin Street main libraryy in San Francisco and then at Ashby BART before heading to Sacramento. We ask for those able to carpool to please do so! We will also have box lunches once we arrive. So that we have a headcount to submit the lunch order in time, and to know who will be on the bus and who will need to carpool, the deadline to RSVP is November 8th. (You are welcome to complete the RSVP after the 8th, the more the merrier, but we cannot then guarantee a ride or a lunch.)
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin St.
10:30am
Ashby BART
3100 Adeline St.
11:00am
Governor’s Office
1315 — 10th St.
12:30pm
Meeting at Gov’s Office at 1pm // Rally on North Steps at 2pm
Bus capacity is 56; carpool caravan
encouraged! RSVP and info: tinyurl.com/HCN-Newsom
Sponsored by ACCE, Berkeley Tenants Union, EBHO, Community Land Trust, Gray Panthers.
Gray Panthers Berkeley East Bay is co-sponsor of this Housing Justice Week rally They will share how they fought an illegal Ellis Act conversion/eviction. Learn how Prop O funds and nonprofit community land trusts could be used to help create self-governing cooperative communities. Hot cider, snacks, and music.
What will it take to truly address the systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism, and war economy plaguing our country today? The answer is presented in the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Budget, which lays out the policies and investments to address the widespread and systemic injustices we face.
We invite you to come together with other supporters of the Poor People’s Campaign to learn more about these solutions through our Moral Budget Reading Group. This will be a space for us to develop our collective understanding of the policies we’re working towards and how they will affect the lives of the people in our communities.
We’ll be discussing the pages 31 through 50, “Investments in Domestic Tranquility.”
You can view the Moral Budget on your computer here: http://ppcbayarea.org/moral-budget. If you’d like to purchase a physical copy for $10, please email info@ppcbayarea.org and let us know.
We hope you’ll join us to be part of this reading group. Forward together, not one step back!
In this era of “reconciliation”, Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidimt’en Territory, (Gidimt’en checkpoint) and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people.
The Unist’ot’en Camp has been a beacon of resistance for nearly 10 years. It is a healing space for Indigenous people and settlers alike, and an active example of decolonization. The violence, environmental destruction, and disregard for human rights following TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) / Coastal GasLink’s interim injunction has been devastating to bear, but this fight is far from over.
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INVASION is a new documentary on the Unist’ot’en struggle for sovereignty against industry giants. This film is a collaboration between Sub.Media founder Franklin López, AJ+ reporter Michael Tol, and documentary filmmaker Sam Vinal. Learn more at: http://www.unistoten.camp/invasion