March Speaker Meeting: Women's History with Ann Squires (in person or on zoom)
Yes, we met in person AND on zoom. Video is below.


ANNOUNCEMENTS/CAMPAIGNS: Phone Banking to Save Medicaid!
AGENDA
- 1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
- Speaker
- Q&A
- Announcements
- 3 pm Adjourn
Chat:
Feb 2025 Speaker Meeting
Living Black / Making Black History
- Elder Afi Tiombe Kambon
- Elder Winston Burton (Gray Panther member)
- Sean Scott
Featured Speakers:
- No More Kings rally
- Defend Medicaid Forum
- Affordable Housing/Section 8
- Berkeley Tenants Union
- Training for Caregivers and Care Receivers
- Save the Post Office
- Action Calls, trainings and lobbying opportunities.
- Socials, and more.
Other Sources and Resources
- LTSS4ALL Coalition - Feb 28 Defend Medicaid and Medicare (Long-Term Supports and Services)
- Life and Death of CODORNICES VILLAGE (West Berkeley history)
- WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD - a video history of South Berkeley: community action to underground BART, and heroic leadership, art and displacement of the Howard family. Trailer / Full Video (28 minutes)
- African American Holistic Resource Center - community leaders have been working on this for over a decade, learn about the building and new design proposed.
- Frances Mary Albrier: Determined Advocate for Racial Equality.
Housing as a Human Right in California:2025 Update: May Speaker Meeting
(note week-earlier-than-usual date to avoid Memorial Day holiday week)
Get to know the California Social housing ecosystem through bottom-up and middle-down networking and collaborations.
The East Bay's Gray Panthers network has been hosting Affordable Housing Month events for the last 5 years. Despite heroic efforts by members of East Bay Housing Organizations --- prospects can look daunting this year.
Crippling budget cuts at HUD, California rents are still too high, the affordable housing crisis continues, more labor shortages and rising materials costs, Tenant Opportunities to Purchase initiatives failed in most parts of the state.
One bright spot - a north star! - comes from lessons learned from the international Social Housing Festival. #ISHF and the goals and federated structure of its primary organizer Housing Europe, which continue to bring together stakeholders in Housing as a Human Right and initiatives in green and inclusive cities around the world.
Invited speakers and stakeholders including Housing Justice Alliance California, Housing Now!, Tenants Together, ACCE, the California Community Land Trust Network and the Democratic Renters Caucus will discuss organizing tenant unions for voter initiatives, and coalition priorities, and the limits of short-term funding coalitions.
Opportunities for small group breakouts will round out the Q&A and discussion time.
Agenda
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
September Speaker Meeting
TOPIC TBD
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
April Speaker Meeting
TOPIC TBD
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
August Speaker Meeting
TOPIC TBD
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
July Speaker Meeting
TOPIC TBD
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
June Speaker Meeting
TOPIC TBD
1:30 Welcome and Introductions to New Members and First-Timers
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Adjourn
Open discussion zoom until 4pm
RSVP on this page to get the Zoom link. We look forward to seeing you there! Spread the word.
August 2024 Speaker Meeting
Housing For All / Housing As A Human Right
Ending Mass Incarceration and Creating Re-Entry Options
Our featured speaker this month was 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.
This meeting was entirely virtual, on Zoom, a recording is below.
Also on this meeting's agenda:
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- 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.
- Planning our booth at the annual Solano Stroll street fair in North Berkeley on Sunday, September 8
- 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.
July 2024 Speaker Meeting:Gene Slater - Freedom to Discrimate
Freedom to Discriminate author Gene Slater - July Speaker Meeting
We met July 24 to hear from Gene Slater, author of Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspire to Segregate Housing and Divide America
We dove into the documented history of the National and California Associations of REALTORS. REALTOR(r) is a registered trademark of a small but powerful group of real estate agents who have, since 1902, have conspired to drive up home prices with covert and overt tactics that continue driving our housing and homelessness crises.
Despite a belated public apology in 2021 for racist and illegal undermining of Fair Housing laws, California REALTORs continue to pour millions into public elections to limit renter protections and extract more profit from housing prices by restricting choices.
How does this tie in to Gray Panther efforts to limit damage from high wealth hedge funds and other "private equity" funds buying into affordable housing and nursing homes? After a short break, we will discuss ways to raise these issues and more.
Gene discussed his insights into the conflicting definitions of freedom created by REALTOR disinformation campaigns.
Gene Slater has 40 years experience in housing justice through housing finance. His firm, CSG Advisors, is one of the nation’s leading advisors to governmental agencies at all levels. He has designed policies and programs more than $70 billion of financing for first-time home buyers, low-income renters, mixed-income apartments, neighborhood revitalization, and improved public housing in cities, small towns, and suburbs in all parts of the US for the past 40 years. In 2020, he began speaking publicly on the history of housing segregation in the US, publishing his book in 2021 with Heydey Press. Since 2022, he has been working with Congress on policies to limit the impacts of private equity pension funds and hedge funds in local housing markets. He currently works and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.