Recommended Reading:

Caitlin Johnstone: What MSM Can No Longer Say on ConsortiumNews

  • Dissident commentary about Ukraine that was still published in major Western news media in 2014 is entirely gone now because these publications have transformed themselves into outlets for ironclad war propaganda.

Chris Hedges: Ukraine: The War That Went Wrong on Scheerpost

Patrick Lawrence: Biden’s Secret Stash on Scheerpost

John Walsh: Right & Left to Join in D.C. Protest: “Not one more penny for war in Ukraine on Counterpunch

Dave DeCamp: Poland Says It’s Ready to Send F-16s to Ukraine in Coordination With NATO on Antiwar

Our “Dialogue to Action: Addressing Racism” Book Club begins its second book in the series with a reading of  The Sum of US, What Racism Costs Everyone, and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee. 

Discussion Facilitator, Magret Nunes, is an experienced Social Justice Activist and public high school teacher. She has been organizing meetings on this topic throughout the East Bay for several years. Nunes received a grant to purchase books for loan to attendees and has an  extensive collection to share. 

We will meet on Tuesday, February 7th @ 7PM. This meeting will take place in-person, at the Peace Center at 1035 Carol Lane in Lafayette. 

If you would like more information, want to borrow the book and/or get on our discussion group mailing list, please contact us today! email: margli@ourpeacecenter.org / 925-933-7850

(Diablo Valley College) Equity Speaker Series 2022-23: The Promise and Peril of Black Grief – February 8th, 1PM on Zoom

“Grief will always be prolonged, as long as injustice is prolonged.”— Tashel Bordere Ph.D. (a scholar on Black bereavement).

Black communities in the U.S. suffer the unequal distribution of grief, vulnerability to premature death, and historic and ongoing violence. Disenfranchisement, criminalization and inequality have resulted in unequal patterns of loss, thereby producing an unequal racial burden of grief. Since 2012, the Interlocking crises of police and extremist violence, pandemic, gun violence, climate disasters, and political polarization have increased the scale of Black grief. In a time of profound loss, what can we learn from Black grief? But in the fight for racial justice, grief isn’t simply an echo of pain, it is also a beacon of promise that can accelerate fights for racial justice and strengthen democracy.

Statement by National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco:
SOLIDARITY WITH ASIAN AND LATINO VICTIMS OF MONTEREY PARK, HALF MOON BAY, AND OAKLAND SHOOTINGS: UNITING AGAINST THE STRUCTURAL ORIGINS OF GUN VIOLENCE 

We are stricken by grief and indignation as we join with our sisters and brothers in communities of Asian and Latin American origin and descent, and communities of color targeted by the recent mass shootings in California, in commemoration. We also stand in solidarity with the urgent need to struggle together against the structural origins of systemic violence everywhere around us.

The Monterey Park shooting was especially devastating for communities of Asian origin there and beyond because it coincided with celebrations of the Lunar New Year. All of the victims in Half Moon Bay were farm workers of Asian and Latin American origin, and at least three of them were Mexican citizens. The 18 year old fatal victim of the most recent Oakland shooting has been identified as Latino; at least 7 others were injured.

Please join the vigils that will be held Wednesday, Jan. 25 from 6 to 7 PM in Oakland at Wilma Chan Park, and Thursday, Jan 26 from 5:30 to 7 PM at Portsmouth Square in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Please also help mobilize support for the victims and families of the victims at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/monterey-park-lunar-new-year-victims-fund
and: https://www.alasdreams.com/

There have been at least 64 deaths nationally in 39 shootings since January 1. Monterey Park, with 11 victims thus far- 6 women and 5 women, all of Asian origin- is the worst mass shooting since the massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers (all but two of them of Mexican descent or origin) in Uvalde, Texas. 

Our chapter recently met with families of the Uvalde victims and community organizations there, to express our solidarity and support, as part of the “Journey for Justice” that we helped organize in December with Witness at the Border and dozens of partners throughout the binational U.S-Mexico border region. This is part of our ongoing efforts to connect the destructive impact of U.S immigration and border policies to our community-based work throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and its national and transnational origins and implications.

But neither the Monterey Park nor Half Moon Bay incidents, regardless of the identities of their perpetrators, should be cataloged as simply “another mass shooting”. Both instead belong to a much too often marginalized assemblage of “mass shootings” that have specifically targeted communities of color and/or women, and that are deeply intertwined with structural dimensions of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and/or homophobic or transphobic violence, which are inherent to and reproduced by dominant forms of racial capitalism. This includes notably convergent cases such as Uvalde, El Paso (2019), Atlanta (2021), Orlando (2016), and Charleston (2015).