Housing For All / Housing As A Human Right

Ending Mass Incarceration and Creating Re-Entry Options

Our featured speaker this month is Xavier Johnson, Director of Policy Justice for the Just Cities Institute, along with a speaker from All of Us or None, a project founded and led by formerly incarcerated advocates.

Johnson (left) is a former tenants attorney with Centro Legal in Oakland, Chair of the Berkeley Housing Advisory Commission, and elected Commissioner on the Berkeley Rent Board.

Leah Simon-Weisberg, chair of the Berkeley Rent Board, Legal Director for Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), will also join us. She will share about the landscape for housing justice including Berkeley's Proposition BB, the rent board, and creation of a new East Bay Tenants' Union PAC, among other topics.

Simon-Weisberg (right) is an expert and statewide leader on rent control, landlord-tenant law, and anti-displacement policy. She represented Moms 4 Housing in court, fighting for their right to live in an empty corporate-owned home on the grounds that Housing is a Human Right. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she organized elected officials to pass eviction moratoria, including a permanent ban on the eviction of tenants for the inability to pay rent accrued during the pandemic.

This meeting will be entirely virtual, on Zoom, so you can safely join from your home, car, tent, or ashram. RSVP below for the link.

Also on this meeting's agenda:

• • Planning our booth at the annual Solano Stroll street fair in North Berkeley on Sunday, September 8
    
    Robert and Raines are coordinating, and we've got a great location at the Top of Solano! We're planning lots of fun activities with partners. Learn more and sign up to be a part of our presence there.
    
    
  • Our September social: new host? Or cancel for this month?
    
    Neither Betsy or Carol or Raines can make the usual second-Wednesdays date, but we may have someone else to lead it.
    
    
  • The California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) Candidate Forum Tuesday, September 10 (virtual and in-person). Learn more and RSVP here.
    

• A just-scheduled in-person talk Wednesday morning, September 11, by Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price, on Fraud and Elder Abuse. Location TBD.
  
  
• Nominations for the Gray Panthers of Berkeley and the East Bay Board of Directors are now open!
  
  The Board will present a slate at our September meeting, but nominations remain open for all voting members until the elections in October.
  
  If interested or curious, please contact Co-convenors Carol Crooks or Betsy Morris to learn more or join us for a Board Meeting (we are seeking a Board Secretary).
  
  Board members serve for two-year terms.
  
  
• There will be time also for action updates and announcements.

RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Please help us spread the word.

Background info:

All of Us or None

All of Us or None is a grassroots civil and human rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly- and currently- incarcerated people and our families.  We are fighting against the discrimination that people face every day because of arrest or conviction history.  The goal of All of Us or None is to strengthen the voices of people most affected by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison-industrial complex. Through our grassroots organizing, we are building a powerful political movement to win full restoration of our human and civil rights.

https://prisonerswithchildren.org/all-of-us-or-none/