“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s about time the working class won that war.”
So says Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who has a real shot at becoming president of the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America has thrown its weight behind Bernie’s campaign, which has inspired millions of working-class people to get involved in politics and to fight for a better world.
This special edition of East Bay DSA’s Socialist Night School will tackle some fundamental questions about democratic socialism and the Bernie movement. What is class warfare, and how is it related to capitalism? What do we mean by “capitalism” and “democratic socialism,” anyway? And how does the campaign for Bernie advance the cause of democratic socialism?
Join us on Tuesday, January 7 to discuss these questions, in the first of a special four-part series on Bernie Sanders, capitalism, and democratic socialism.
See the readings here: https://www.eastbaydsa.org/night-school/
Accessibility:
The venue and restrooms are wheelchair-accessible. Please message us if you have other accessibility needs such as childcare.
Due to the New Year’s Holiday the January 2nd meeting of the PAC has been cancelled. A Special Meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday January 8th from 5-7pm at City Hall in Hearing Room 1.
Agenda items of possible interest:
4. Chief Privacy Officer report – Privacy Principles status update and implementation
5. Chair/Vice Chair report – 2020 planning, PAC annual report, report tracking, agenda management
6. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – Live Stream Camera Impact Report and proposed Use Policy – review and take possible action
7. Surveillance Equipment Ordinance – OPD – UAS (Drone) Impact Report and proposed Use Policy – review and take possible action
The precarity of Black girls’ lives in school have been made visible by Dr. Monique Morris. Through her writing, advocacy, and now film, PUSHOUT, we now have the language to describe and understand what we see happening to Black girls in schools. Morris’ work has inspired debate and legislation with the recent sponsoring of the Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma (P.U.S.H.O.U.T) Act,” by representatives Ayanna Pressley (D- MA), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.). The law identifies the many students made vulnerable by race, gender, and disability positionality and outlines resources and policy recommendations to secure educational spaces for children.
Join Mills College, School of Education for its culminating Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action event: a screening of PUSHOUT and townhall panel discussion moderated by Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey. Dr. Monique Morris will provide opening remarks. In collaboration with the Mills College Black History Month programming and Ethnic Studies Department, we are proud to host this screening of PUSHOUT.
UPDATE: While this event is currently marked as “Sold Out” please join our Waitlist. As seats open up due to cancellations, individuals on our Waitlist will be contacted to secure their free ticket.
Some agenda items of possible interest:
X. Use of Force Working Group
The Use of Force Working Group will present its revised draft report and a draft of the
Oakland Police Department Use of Force Policy, Department General Order (DGO) K-03.
The Commission will vote to approve the report and the revised DGO. This is item is
continued from 12.12.19. (Attachment 10).
XI. Presentation by National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) of Proposed Pilot
Juvenile Diversion Program
David Muhammad of NICJR will deliver a presentation on the Neighborhood Opportunity
and Accountability Board (NOAB) which will be a community based, restorative, youth
diversion initiative in Oakland. This is a new item. (Attachment 11).
Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses social. Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in EBDSA Labor Committee & learn how you can get involved.
Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for their regular Beer and Roses social. Hang out with other members who are interested in the labor movement, hear about what’s happening in EBDSA Labor Committee & learn how you can get involved.
Join California Common Cause and special guest Leteefah Simon for a conversation on how we take back our democracy.
Speakers include Chesa Boudin (new SF District Attorney-elect), Aaron Glantz (award-winning journalist and author of HOMEWRECKERS), Lee Camp (political satirist, author and activist), Jane Kim (CA Political Director for Bernie Sanders Campaign) and many other great speakers and panelists! All are invited…please come join us celebrate our California progressive activism as we move forward together!!
8:30 am to 9:30 pm. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included with your ticket!
All young people under 25 have their registration fee waived. RSVP HERE for Youth Waiver.
Gar Smith (he/him), Guest Speaker
An overview of the invisible health and environmental impacts of the “5G wireless revolution” that lies behind The Internet of Things.
Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library
Speaker will be Eugene E Ruyle, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, CSU Long Beach, currently with ICSS in Oakland. Gene will discuss his forthcoming book, Socialism for Americans: A Scientific Introduction to the Global Struggle for Socialism.
Gene’s basic idea is that although socialism takes different forms in different times and places, the revolutionary core of socialism lies in those societies that have actually had socialist revolutions: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, Korea, Vietnam, China, and Cuba. But this does not mean that the struggle for socialism within the imperialist countries is not important. It obviously is, and it must be placed in its proper context. Socialists in the United States are advised to shed their parochialism and embrace a global solidarity with the surviving and thriving socialist camp countries of China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos, as well as other forms of socialism throughout the world.
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. The Supreme Court’s misguided principle failed to recognize that corporations are legal fictions and only human beings are people. The corruption resulting from this and previous Supreme Court rulings has consolidated our political system into a single party plutocracy – a single “Business Party” witt Democratic and Republican wings controlled by corporate money. Move to Amend formed in response to Citizens United. We have built a Congressional coalition around the “We the People Amendment” (HJR48) that will reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. This forum will address the history of corporate rule, including more recent consolidation of corporate power ushered in with neoliberalism, and describe how HJR48 is a good first step in revoking corporate rule and establishing that “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
Lawrence Abbott is a retired Teamster, and Wildlife Biologist working as a Seasonal Political Organizer for the AFL-CIO Alameda Labor Council, and as a volunteer Organizer for Move To Amend, MoveOn, and Indivisible SF/East Bay.
Phoebe Anne Sorgen is a delegate to the Green Party USA National Committee. A long time organizer for a nuke-free, just and sustainable world, she was 2005 Outstanding Woman of Berkeley and 2015 Tom Paine Courageous Spirit awardee. Years ago, she decided to focus on the overarching cure, getting the laws changed that gave profit-motivated corporations the power to ruin our world; so she serves on the Move to Amend Bay Area Steering Committee. She is currently also tackling 5G wireless telecom, an egregious symptom of the corporatocracy.
James McFadden is a UC Berkeley research physicist who facilitates the local East Bay Move to Amend steering committee. He is also an active member of the Green Party of Alameda County and several other political groups.
Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. Snacks are potluck. Vegetarian and vegan snacks are always welcome, but we appreciate whatever you can bring! The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows, at 6:45 pm. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
The Moms who occupied a vacant house in West Oakland on Nov 18th, owned by a development corporation, lost their court case Friday, the judge ordering the Sheriff to evict them “within five days.”
At their press conference at the house after the decision, the Moms called for people to stand with them beginning at 6:30 AM at 2928 Magnolia (one block off Adeline), Oakland. Should you be willing to risk arrest in non-violent civil disobedience the Moms and their allies have lawyers available and ready to help. Otherwise, there are plenty of roles for those not willing or unable to risk arrest, and the more bodies there are the less likely Sheriff’s deputies are to attempt an eviction.
Depending on what happens, they will need people continually throughout the day and evening and into Tuesday. Coming at any time (and perhaps bringing food or coffee…) will help.
TEXT 510-800-7810 TO SIGN UP FOR TEXT UPDATES.
Follow their twitter feed: https://twitter.com/moms4housing
Spread this ask as you think appropriate!
Their website: https://moms4housing.org/
Their statement:
No one should be homeless when homes are sitting empty. Housing is a human right. The Moms for Housing are uniting mothers, neighbors and friends to reclaim housing for the Oakland community from the big banks and real estate speculators.
Moms for Housing is a collective of homeless and marginally housed mothers. Before we found each other, we felt alone in this struggle. But there are thousands of others like us here in Oakland and all across the Bay Area. We are coming together with the ultimate goal of reclaiming housing for the community from speculators and profiteers.
We are mothers, we are workers, we are human beings, and we deserve housing. Our children deserve housing. Housing is a human right.
A statement as of 1/12/20, from https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Update-Moms-Call-Offer-For-Temporary-Housing-An-14968732.php
One of the homeless mothers who has been living in a vacant West Oakland house since Nov. 18 scoffed Saturday night at an offer by the house’s owner to pay to move them out and shelter them for the next two months, calling the offer “an insult.”
“It is deeply disingenuous for this multi-million-dollar corporation, through their multi-million-dollar public relations firm, to pretend to be concerned about the well being of black families,” said Dominique Walker, one of the mothers who has been staying at this Magnolia Street house, owned by the real estate investment firm Wedgewood Properties. “Wedgewood CEO Greg Geiser is desperate to avoid taking responsibility for how this company has contributed to the housing crisis that is causing families like mine to be homeless and for participating in an industry that has robbed Black and marginalized communities of land and wealth for generations.”
“We want to buy this home through the Oakland Community Land Trust, but Wedgewood would rather see our kids be in shelters or worse,” Walker said in her statement Saturday night. “We have seen corporations with blood on their hands try to buy public favor and this is an example. Their ‘offer’ is an insult.”
Earlier Saturday, Wedgewood said it’s offering to pay for the women’s move to a shelter run by a nonprofit and pay for them to stay there for two months.
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At the December 3 Richmond City Council meeting, after hours of public testimony, the vote on the Richmond Coal Ordinance was delayed to a later meeting. Well, that meeting is now just around the corner! On Tuesday, January 14, the Richmond City Council will finally vote on the ordinance, which would phase out current coal and petroleum coke storage and handling at Richmond’s Levin terminal. It would also prevent future coal and petcoke operations in the city. Last year Richmond’s Levin terminal handled nearly one million metric tons of coal, which is stored in massive uncovered piles on the waterfront before being shipped overseas. This is a serious threat to Richmond’s public health and the environment. City leaders can put a stop to this pollution. If you are a Richmond resident concerned about the effects of coal and petcoke dust pollution on your family’s health, now is your chance to make sure the council finally enacts the ordinance! Please join us on January 14 at 6:30 PM for the City Council meeting. Your presence will make a difference. For more information visit ncir.weebly.com. |
Additional Directions: Accessibility Info: The meeting will take place inside the City Council Chambers in the Richmond City Council Building. This building is wheelchair-accessible via a ramp near the intersection of 27th Street and Nevin Avenue. Inside the Richmond City Council Building, there is another ramp that will take wheelchair users up to the level where the doors to the City Council Chambers are located.
Stand with Alameda Mayor Ezzy Ashcraft, Albany Mayor Nick Pilch, and other elected officials to spread awareness of the need to:
These public officials, all members of the California branch of Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPCA), will highlight what cities are doing to raise awareness that local action makes a difference in curbing climate change.
Launched in 2018, EOPCA is a bipartisan network of over 250 local elected officials from a majority of counties calling to phase out fossil fuel production statewide and protect communities living next to oil and gas extraction and production sites.
“Blair Imani enlivens African American history for a new generation with her
dynamic and thoughtful account of African American migration and resilience.”
—Jamia Wilson, Publisher of Feminist Press
Over the course of six decades an unprecedented wave of Black Americans left the south and spread across the nation in search of a better life. This migration sparked stunning demographic and cultural changes throughout twentieth-century America. Through gripping and accessible historical narrative paired with illustrations, author and activist Blair Imani portrays the largely overlooked impact of the Great Migration and how it affected – and continues to affect – not only Black identity, but this nation as a whole…Making Our Way Home explores issues lsuch as voting rights, domestic terrorism and segregation, along with the flourishing of arts and culture, new activism, and civil rights. She shows how these influences shaped America’s workforce and wealth distribution by featuring the stories of notable people and events, relevant data, and family histories. The experiences of such prominent figures as James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), Ella Baker, and others are woven into the larger narrative to create a truly unique record of this magnificent journey.
Blair Imani is a critically-acclaimed historian, outspoken activist, and dynamic public speaker. The author of Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History (2018) she focuses on women and girls, global Black communities, and the LGBTQ community. She serves as the official ambassador of Muslims for Progressive Values, one of the oldest progressive Muslim organizations supporting the LGBTQ+ community, and she dedicates her platform to advocating for the rights of marginalized people around the world.In 2014, she founded Equality for HER, a non-profit organization that provided resources and a forum for women and nonbinary people to feel empowered. Blair Imani has appeared on television and at progressive conferences around the world. She has been profiled in Teen Vogue, The Advocate, Variety, the Today Show, and by Yahoo! News. From the United States to countries like Kenya and the United Kingdom, Blair Imani has inspired audiences around the world. In 2017, on national television she came out as a queer Muslim woman.
Davey D is a nationally recognized journalist, adjunct professor, Hip Hop historian, syndicated talk show host, radio programmer, producer, deejay, media and community activist. Originally from the Bronx, NY, Davey D’s been down with Hip Hop since since 1977. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley,Davey D is the co-founder and host of several of the most cited Hip Hop radio and online news journalism projects of all time. Hard Knock Radio (HKR) is an award-winning daily syndicated prime time afternoon show focusing on Hip Hop culture and politics. It originated in 1999 on KPFA 94.1 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now can be heard in Seattle, Atlanta, Portland, Fresno and is streamed live over KPFA.org, where it reaches close to a million listeners every weekday.
The Berkeley City Council soon considers installation of 5G wireless telecommunication facilities in residential & commercial areas of Berkeley. Councilmembers Ben Bartlett & Cheryl Davila co-host a community discussion – including Q &A.
For details, call 510.365.1500 or 510.919.6431.
Jan 16 in Piedmont; also Jan 19 at 12:30 pm in Oakland at The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th Street, between Telegraph and Broadway
Of all the divisions in America, none is as insidious and destructive as racism. The Appreciating Diversity Film Series’ first program of 2020 is the powerful documentary, The Long Shadow, which traces the history of slavery from the country’s founding, up through its ties to racism today.
Director Frances Causey and Producer Sally Holst, both privileged daughters of the South, were haunted by their families’ slave-owning pasts. They grew up in a time when white superiority was rarely questioned, and challenging this norm was often met with deadly consequences. Rejecting the oft-told romanticized version of early U.S. history, they embarked on a journey of hidden truths and the untold stories of how America – driven by the South’s powerful political influence – steadily, deliberately and with great stealth, established white privilege in our institutions, laws, culture and economy.
By telling individual stories—of free, enterprising blacks in Canada and of a modern, racially motivated shooting—the filmmakers movingly personalize the costs and the stakes of our continued inaction. The Long Shadow presents a startling, unrecognized history that provides much-needed context when considering the major issues affecting black/white relations in the United States today.
William Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. The past is not even past.” Or as one scholar warns in the film: “We’re still fighting the Civil War, and the South is winning.” Anti-black racism has survived like “an infection,” rigging the game against African-Americans and denying them full access to the American dream.
The Long Shadow is a masterful film that captures the disturbing but necessary story of the enduring human cost of prejudice and ignorance in the U.S. that continues to cast a long shadow over our national identity, our values, and, ultimately, our celebrated democracy.
Free/no RSVP needed.
Join SURJ’s Mobilization Committee for our annual “Wake-Up Call” during the 6th Annual Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr.’s Radical Legacy Weekend. We’ll be calling commuters in with broadcasts of inspiring MLK speeches, passing out information on alternatives to calling the police, and inviting people to come out to Monday’s big MLK Day rally and march (see https://www.facebook.com/events/747077179148170/ for more info).
