[Apr 28] Workers Memorial Day speak-out to protect health and safety on the job (SF)

April 28, 2009 Workers Memorial Day
Speak-Out To Protect
Health And Safety On The Job

3:00 PM - Press Conference
At front of Pfizer Research Facility
455 Mission Bay Boulevard South at 3rd St.
San Francisco
(Next to the New UCSF Biotech China Basin building)

7:00 PM Speak-Out
At ILWU Local 34
2nd St/Embarcadero on the left side of AT&T Park
Free Parking at ILUW Local 34

Speakers including: Shiela Davis, Executive Director Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition, Daniel Berman, author of Death on The Job, Becky McClain, injured Pfizer molecular biologist, Dina Padilla injured Kaiser worker, Carl Bryant, NALC Local 214, Mike Daley, Iron Workers Local 377 on 9/11 NYC First Responders, also representatives from the ILWU and other unions, injured workers and their families.

California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day (CCWMD)
P.O. Box 720027, San Francisco, CA 94172
www.workersmemorialday.org
(415) 867-0628

Workers Memorial Day was established to commemorate and defend workers injured and killed

on the job. This year, the California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day (CCWMD) will also focus on the need for health and safety protection, regulation and standards for new industries such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. These industries are not properly regulated with strong health and safety standards. The CCWMD is calling for national Congressional hearings on these issues and also for the defense of injured workers who face a deregulated workers comp system in which seriously injured workers are not able to get proper healthcare and compensation. We need to get the insurance industry out of healthcare, so all workers can get healthcare.

The elimination of all doctors at Ca-Osha is another dangerous threat that threatens the health and safety of 17 million workers of California particularly those facing the use of new technology in the workplace. Many dangerous toxic sites in Northern California and around the country have been privatized and labeled “Brownfield” sites. Workers, veterans and community people have also been sickened by the failure to clean these sites.

[APR 27] Blackfire & Jeremy Goodfeather

Urban Rez Productions Presents

Saving the Legacy

A Benefit for the Intertribal Friendship House

Featuring:

Blackfire

Jeremy Goodfeather

Food Sale

Special Guests

Vendors & More!

All proceeds go towards renovating the IFH silk screening studio and gift shop!

$7-10 sliding scale

No Drugs or Alcohol

No one ever turned away for lack of funds. 

[Apr 25] “Love Yo’ Mama” Environmental Justice Earth Day Celebration

Join Communities for a Better Environment for our
First Annual “Love Yo’ Mama” Environmental Justice Earth Day Celebration
in East Oakland
April 25, 2009

There will be local talent, entertainment, live music, speakers, poets, food, vendors, free health screenings and more. The parade stars at Tassafaronga Recreation Center (975 - 85th Avenue) at noon, and ends at ACORN Woodland Elementary (1025 81st Ave), where the festivities go on from 1PM until 6 PM. To get involved, contact our Community Organizer, Nehanda Imara, nimara@cbecal.org, 510-302-0430 x21

For more info: http://www.urbanhabitat.org/node/3604

[Apr 25] Ama a tu Mamá: evento para el Día de la Tierra

Sábado, 25 de abril

Comunidades para un Medio Ambiente Mejor
en colaboración con ACORN Woodland escuela primaria
y Tassafaronga centro de recreación
presenta

“Ama a Tú Mamá”

el primer evento anual del Día de la Tierra
con el tema de justicia medioambiental

Habrá talento de grupos locales, entretenimiento, música en vivo, oradores, poetas, comida, vendedores, pruebas de salud gratis y más! El desfile empieza en el Centro de Recreación “Tassafaraonga” (975 – avenida 85) a las 12 PM y termina a la Escuela Primaria “ACORN Woodland” (1025 avenida 81) donde las festividades siguen desde la 1 PM hasta las 6 PM.

Para patrocinar este evento, o ser vendedor, o para participar, favor de llamar a Ana Orozco, Organizadora Comunitaria
(510) 302-0430 x12, aorozco@cbecal.org.

[Apr 24] 19th Annual Statewide Latino Social Work Network Conference (Sacramento)

19^th Annual Statewide Latino Social Work Network Conference

Statewide training conference on Immigration
Starts: 8 AM Friday, April 24^th

Sierra II Arts & Community Center
2791 24^th St.
Sacramento, CA. 95818.

8:00 A.M. Continental breakfast
9:00 A.M. Opening Remarks by Bishop Soto, MSW, is FREE & Open to the Public for that hour.

Scholarships to attend the conference are available

The 5:30PM Gala Reception is Free & Open to the Public.
Come and have some snacks and bring your guitar or musical instrument.

[Apr 24] Encuentro Xican@ 2

U.C. Berkeley's Xican@ Culture Working Group is proud to announce

encuentro xican@ 2,

or, xican@ love and the new familia: gender, sexuality, and alliance

University of California, Berkeley

April 24, 2009

"Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered on women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, even more than women, are fettered to gender roles. Women at least have had the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside them and to challenge the current masculinity. I've encountered a few scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of a new breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexist behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate. We need a new masculinity and the new man needs a movement." Gloria Anzaldúa

The California electorate recently voted to uphold traditional gender roles by passing Proposition 8. The controversy over the role played by voters of color in passing this anti-gay measure has raised some questions full with the possibility for both tension and alliance. At the heart of this inquiry is love as responsibility, the ability to respond to one another. Does the Chican@ community have love for its gays, lesbians, queers and transgenders, and do gay, lesbian, queer, and transgender Chican@s have love for their community? Familia has always been an important value for Chicana/os, and familia seems to be the central value or the advocates of gay marriage. How can familia be redefined without the fetters of gender roles?

For our second encuentro xican@, we wish to explore tensions and alliances among queer, straight, male, female, transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA. What does it mean to be a ChicanO/A feminist? What does it mean to be a Chican@ feminist? In this 21st century, do we see Anzaldúa's new breed of “gentle straight men”? What is at stake with this critical dialogue is the possibility of re-articulating thoughts and practices, decolonizing the present as well as articulating a future where gender and sexuality are re-inscribed into the dynamics of power, society at large, and the Chican@ community in particular. We are fully aware that alliances are subject to betrayal, even self-betrayal. An alliance must be both mutual learning and referenced positionality, which means recognizing one's own privilege. True meaningful alliances between Chicanas and Chicanos--across genders, sexual orientations, generations, classes, and political ideologies--is an ethical demand we must forge together and must not be taken lightly. How can alliance be redefined as familia, with all its tensions and all its loves?

We invite presentations (in English, Spanish) that explore and interrogate various conflicts/alliances among gay, queer, straight, male, female, transgender, ChicanO, and ChicanA, and their relations to labor history, youth culture, indigeneity, migration, spirituality, performance studies, visual and popular culture, policy, and violence against people of color. Cultural arts centers, community workers, students and faculty from all levels are all invited to participate in our encuentro. We are open to receive individual or panel proposals that might work differently than a ‘traditional’ conference paper and encourage academic-artist-activists to integrate different aspects of your work and talents that may take the form of exhibit, performance, workshop, roundtable discussion, academic criticism, or any rasquache combination of these.

Submit 300 word abstracts via email as word documents or PDF files by March 27th, 2009. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to encuentroXWG@gmail.com

[Apr 23] Crimes without Punishment: Gender-Motivated Killings in Guatemala

At the University of California, Hastings College of the Law

Crimes without Punishment:
Gender-Motivated Killings in Guatemala

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Guest Speakers:
Carmen Aída Ibarra Morán, Mónica María Leonardo Segura and Professor Karen Musalo

Reception: 5:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Program: 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.

UC Hastings College of the Law, Alumni Reception Center
200 McAllister Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94102

Violence in Guatemala, particularly violence against women, has risen to epidemic proportions. Those who beat, maim or kill women are rarely held accountable for their actions, and enjoy almost total impunity. In the last eight years almost 4,000 women have been killed in gender-motivated killings, known as "femicides," and less than 2% of these crimes have been investigated and prosecuted. On April 23, representatives from the Myrna Mack Foundation, a Guatemalan organization which is internationally known and respected for its work on issues of justice and the rule of law, will come to U.C. Hastings to discuss impunity and violence in Guatemala.

Join us for a discussion on the issue of violence-and courage in the face of violence.

To RSVP for this event visit the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies website at: http://cgrs.uchastings.edu/

[Apr 18] Community Report on the Zapatista Festival of Dignified Rage

Saturday, April 18
The Chiapas Support Committee presents
Community Report on the Zapatista Festival of Dignified Rage

Program starts at 3:00 PM and ends at 6:00 PM.

Fresno City College, Forum Hall
1101 E University Ave
Fresno, CA 93741

Hosted by Sustainable Action. Free Admission!

[Apr 17] La Otra Educacion/The Other Education

HOMEY Movie Nights Presents
La Otra Educacion, The Other Education

April 17, 2009, 6pm-9pm
HOMEY Office: 1337 Mission St. (9th & Mission)
San Francisco

Food & Refreshments Served

We will be hosting Patricia Hernandez, a professor and sociologist from Mexico's University, UNAM. Specializing in "popular education" that connects theory with practice, she has helped indigenous communities in Mexico's southern states, with the aim of sustaining autonomous communities and teaching self-determination.

Bring your youth to dialog, learn, and network how we can reclaim education for our communities in the Bay Area to serve the needs of the people.

• What is "popular education"?
• How do we create alternative spaces to learn our communities struggles, history, and distinct cultures?
• What does autonomy look like in an urban environment like the Bay Area?

[Apr17] Gold, Greed, & Genocide

Film Screening and Panel Discussion!!!

Film: Gold, Greed, and Genocide

Date: Friday, April 17, 2009

Time: 7pm-10pm

Location: Eastside Arts Alliance (2277 International Blvd @ 23rd Ave, Oakland)

Donation: $5-$5,000, 000 (no one will be turned away for lack of funds, serio)

One Struggle! Una Lucha!

The Native Delegation Collective is having this film screening to fund raise for a delegation of local indigenous community members to Chiapas, Mexico, which will be taking place late this summer. The delegation is an opportunity for the Indigenous communities in Chiapas and the Indigenous communities in the California Bay area to exchange knowledge, culture, histories, and experiences in order to find the connections in the work that we are doing as a way to support each other and strengthen our struggles.

About the Film:

Over 150,000 Native Americans lived sustainably in California prior to the gold rush. They had existed for many centuries, supporting themselves mostly by hunting, gathering and fishing. This life changed drastically in 1848 when James Marshall discovered the yellow metal in the American River at Coloma, in Northern California.By 1870, there was an estimated native population of only 31,000 Californian Indians left. Over 60 percent of these indigenous people died from disease introduced by hundreds of thousands of so-called 49ers. However, local tribes were also systematically chased off their lands, marched to missions and reservations, enslaved and brutally massacred.

In 1851, the California State government paid $1 million for scalping missions. You could still get $5 for a severed Indian head in Shasta in 1855, and twenty five cents for a scalp in Honey Lake in 1863. Over 4,000 Native American children were sold - prices ranged from $60 for a boy to $200 for a girl. The gold miners dug up 12 billion tons of earth - excavating river beds and blasting apart hillsides in their greed. In addition, they used mercury to extract gold from the ore, losing 7,600 tons of the toxic chemical into local rivers and lakes. The amount of mercury required to violate federal health standards today would be equivalent to one gram in a small lake. Although this gold rush ended in the late 19th century, a new gold rush began in the 1960s. In California, Nevada and around the globe, multinational companies have begun to use giant earth movers and new technology using deadly cyanide to extract gold from indigenous lands.

[Apr 16] Bay Area Native Reports on his Year in Colombia

Bay Area native Chris Courtheyn will discuss the year he spent on the Fellowship of Reconcilliation (FOR) team providing accompaniment in a remote rural community in a conflicted region in northwest Colombia. His assignment was in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, which three years ago established a sister city relationship with Fairfax, Marin County. This community of 1200 peasants farmers and children has suffered more than 170 killings at the hands military and paramilitary forces who accuse them of being allied with the FARC guerrillas.

John Lindsay-Poland, co-director of the FOR Task Force on Latin America, will discuss the larger US policy concerns in Colombia. He has written extensively on US militarism in Latin America.

The presentation will be held at the First United Methodist Church, 9 Ross Valley Drive, San Rafael, on Thursday, April 16 at 7:30 PM. A $5-10 donation is requested. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. For more information contact the Task Force on the Americas, 415/924-3227, mitf@igc.org or www.mitfamericas.org.

[Apr 16] Neoliberalism & Self Determination Spring 2009 Tour

“Neliberalism and Self Determination” Spring 2009 Tour 

Thursday, April 16^th, 7pm

AK Press Warehouse: 674 23^rd Street, Oakland (between MLK Blvd & San Pablo)

Donations: $0-$100 

Simon Sedillo offers perspectives on the global implications of the Oaxacan people’s struggle for communities in the United States. Through this multimedia presentation, Sedillo helps open a powerful space for dialogue on the effects of neoliberalism on indigenous communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color in the US and Mexico.

Sedillo is a Chicano community rights defense organizer and a documentary film-maker whose work has centered on placing skills, cameras and editing equipment in the hands of communities in resistance so that they may be able to document their own histories of struggle. Sedillo has spent the last 6 years documenting and teaching community based video documentation in Mexico, in immigrant communities in the US, and with youth of color across the US. For more info, please check out: http://elenemigocomun.net/banda/simon. 

***All the money collected at the door will go directly to the Native Delegation Collective, a grassroots, Zapatista-inspired affinity group who are in the midst of organizing an Indigenous delegation to Chiapas, Mexico slated to take place late this summer. This delegation is an opportunity for the Indigenous communities in Chiapas and the Indigenous communities in the California Bay area to exchange knowledge, culture, histories, and experiences in order to find the connections in the work that we are doing as a way to support each other and strengthen our struggles. For more info, contact xhastalavictoriax@yahoo.com***

[Apr 4] Benefit for the Oakland 100

Start Time:	Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 10:00pm
End Time:	Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 2:00am
Location:	Thee Parkside (accessible via the 22 Filmore, or walking/biking 10 blocks from 16th street bart)
Street:	1600 17th Street (at Wisconsin)

Email:

Oakland100@gmail.com

Description

Dancing! Rocking! Politikin!

DJ's :
Vinyl Abuser
Public Frenemy

Rock Rock Rock From:

Light Leaks
Year One
Santa Sangre
Suspect, Suspect

and MORE (Like you need it)

Can't drop a banner or smash the state right now? How about doing some dancing, listening, reflecting, (okay, okay, maybe some drinking)? All to the same end - DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST THE OAKLAND 100!!!

Support the many people of Oakland who, in the early weeks of January, 2009, took a strong stand against the continuing legacy of police terrorism in Oakland!

In the aftermath of the January Rebellions, there are still about 140 people with various charges still looming over their heads. While the DA declined to charge several demonstrators and by-standers "at this time", he still has a year to do so. Add to that the 6 people with fabricated felonies proceeding toward trial. There is a real need for funds to help out some of the folks who may be facing lengthy, expensive trials.

Come have fun while showing solidarity with the struggle to END POLICE TERRORISM!

[Apr 3-4] Quebrando El Silencio de Mis Manos / Breaking the Silence of my Hands

Presentado por/Presented by El Teatro de La Colectiva de Mujeres
Quebrando El Silencio de Mis Manos
(Breaking the Silence of My Hands)
Abril/April 3 y/and 4, 8:00 PM

Boletos/Tickets $5 - $15
Teatro Misión/ Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts
2868 Mission Street (entre calles 24 y 25) en San Francisco

An urban fable about the risks that immigrant women workers face day in day out, and the need to understand the rights that protect them. An original creation by the Teatro de la Colectiva de Mujeres!, a theater company of Latina immigrant women day laborers, based on real life stories. Quebrando El Silencio reveals the abuses and dangers immigrant sisters confront doing domestic work, and how to solve them by demanding their rights.

***

Una fábula urbana sobre los riesgos que día a día enfrentan las trabajadoras inmigrantes, y la necesidad de conocer los derechos que las protegen. Una creación original del Teatro de la Colectiva de Mujeres!, una compañía teatral de trabajadoras inmigrantes Latinas, basada en historias de la vida real. Quebrando El Silencio nos muestra como nuestras hermanas inmigrantes se enfrentan a los abusos y peligros en el trabajo doméstico y la forma en que se pueden resolver, exigiendo sus derechos.

Desarrollo y Presentación por miembras de La Colectiva de Mujeres, incluyendo/
Developed and performed by members of La Colectiva, including
Esther Gress, Guillermina Castellanos, Libia Estrella, Lorena Carrillo, Maria Arroyo, Mireya Arroyo, Nancy Arroyo, Raquel Botello, Tomasa Zepeda Sanchez, y Alex Luján.
Dirección de/Directed by Violeta Luna
dramaturgia de/dramaturgy by Roberto Varea
creación visual de/visual art by Víctor Cartagena
composición musical de/music by Ricardo Torres y/and El Coro Jornalero.

Funded in part and supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, La
Raza Centro Legal, and the University of San Francisco

In Spanish, with simultaneous English translation
Para más información o para reservar boletos llame a/ For more
information or to reserve tickets call
(415) 553-3406