We have received confirmation from Bharat Trehan, PhD, that he will also present at our May meeting. Dr. Trehan retired from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco two years ago, and has since been active with the ACLU. His focus has been on surveillance. In his presentation, he will discuss the use of drones and other surveillance devices, who should decide on whether or not to use such devices, and how they should be deployed.
Come Celebrate Loving Day, El Cerrito Style!
Sunday June 12, 2016 from 12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
City Hall Civic Plaza, Manila Avenue
Let’s celebrate Loving Day on June 12th at El Cerrito City Hall. Loving Day in El Cerrito is a celebration of racial equality, marriage equality and human equality.
Loving Day was started by a graduate student named Ken Tanabe. He had been studying the Supreme Court Case of Mildred and Richard Loving. Richard Loving was a Caucasian man and Mildred was an African American woman. Their marriage was illegal in Virginia and they were forced to leave their home after being arrested. The Lovings and their children relocated to Washington DC where they took their case to the Supreme Court and won, unanimously.
Loving Day has become a celebration of multiculturalism and is an opportunity to learn from the past while coming together to create a future of tolerance and understanding through dialogue and education. It is also noteworthy that it was the Loving case that was used as precedent to legalize Gay Marriage.
Join us on June 12th for this family friendly event! We will have music, crafts, photo booth fun, a reading corner, chalk art, food trucks and more!
Rochelle Pardue-Okimoto RN
ECDC Member
(Please contact Hilary Crosby – homehilary@comcast.net – if you want to help staff the ECDC booth at this event.)
APRIL MEETING PREVIEW
Our April 26 meeting, in two parts, will begin promptly at 6:30 in order to prepare for and vote for endorsements. After our votes have been cast, we will welcome Aimee Allison, Co-Director of the Democracy in Color campaign at PowerPAC+, who will present material from Brown is the New White, How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority.
The book by Steven Phillips, co-founder of PowerPAC+, presents a compelling description of the changing demographics of the American electorate, and how important grassroots Democratic activists will be in updating our party’s approach to reaching out to voters.
PowerPAC+ is building the political power of the multiracial majority in America in order to elect progressive leaders to public office simply because America’s politics should evolve as people of color become the majority.
Aimee Allison is a journalist, organizer, and author; her book Army of None exposed deceptive recruitment practices of the US armed forces and presented a strategy to counter military recruitment and build a better world.
Brown is the New White is an engrossing book. Even while I was engrossed in the material, I wanted to throw the book aside and get busy working to put its ideas into practice. I think this will be an inspiring way for us to begin our 2016 voter outreach. We will have copies of the book for sale at our meeting.
ENDORSEMENTS
We will be casting endorsement votes in the following races:
- President of the United States (POTUS)
- California Senate District 9 (SD 9)
- Contra Costa County Democratic Party Central Committee (DPCC) Supervisorial District 1
Since the candidates for POTUS will not be available to address our club, and all three candidates for SD 9 spoke at our January meeting, representatives of their campaigns will speak for 2-3 minutes on their behalf.
There are 8 candidates for DPCC; and each candidate will speak for 2 minutes.
To insure that we have adequate time for our main presentation, there will be NO time allotted to ask questions of any candidates or their representatives.
New club members who joined by March 12, and current members, will be eligible to receive a ballot. Any member now lapsed who was in good standing as of December 31, 2015 may pay their 2016 dues and receive a ballot as well. Ballots may be filled in and submitted for counting at any time up to the beginning of the evening’s main presentation by Aimee Allison.