Banteay Srei works to create a safe space for young Southeast Asan women, that promotes reproductive rights, women’s liberation education, community building activities and leadership development to foster cultural pride, and self-determination for women at-risk of or suffering from sexual exploitation. Banteay Srei provides social, peer and intergenerational support, healing arts, life skills-building and transformative learning. The name Banteay Srei comes from an ancient temple in Cambodia which means “the women’s temple”- built to honor female deities and representing strength, unity, and safety. This name was chosen to inspire a space that would be created to honor women and provide tools for liberation. This grant from the People’s Life Fund will allow us to meet the needs of this specific population with a culturally relevant approach; http://www.banteaysrei.org/
Mycelium Youth Network works to actively prepare youth in the Bay Area — who are most vulnerable to and already feeling the effects of environmental racism — for climate change using a merger of ancestral wisdom alongside a rigorous science technology engineering arts and math curriculum. This grant from the People’s Life Fund will allow us to build out climate resilient classrooms across select schools in the Oakland Unified School District. Check out our website at: Mycelium Youth Network.org
Before Enlisting is a group of volunteer activists and military veterans. We go into high school classrooms to share different narratives about war and the military experience than the ones teenagers usually hear. We ally with school communities in the San Francisco Bay Area to balance the information and impact of military recruitment campaigns. Our mission is to support and empower all of our youth and their families to make informed decisions about the variety of options available for creating bright and self-determined futures. We will use this grant from the People’s Life Fund to give honorariums to our veterans and to develop and expand our website. To learn more about us, go to: www.BeforeEnlisting.org
Prisoner Advocacy Network (PAN) works to provide individual advocacy for incarcerated people through correspondence, solidarity, and co-education.
This grant from the People’s Life Fund will allow us to support program development, postage, print/copy costs, and associated legal expenses for records requests and legal or medical files. https://www.prisoneradvocacynetwork.org/
Family Laundry is a community-focused laundromat in Fruitvale, Oakland. We have a dedicated Community Room where we provide services for the community free of charge – literacy programs, story time for children, ESL classes and more. In order to be responsive to the current needs during shelter in place, this grant will be used to provide food gift cards for low-income Fruitvale families who are struggling to feed their families. We are so incredibly grateful for the grant funds. They will help our community during a crisis time.
https://www.familylaundry.com/
East Bay Sanctuary Covenant provides legal services, community organizing, and transformative education to low-income immigrants and people fleeing violence and persecution. This grant from the People’s Life Fund will support the Bay Area TPS (Temporary Protected Status)/DACA Committee to train and mobilize TPS holders to advocate for a path to permanent residency. For more information, see our TPS Campaign web page.
Fairmount House Co-op is a 4,600 square foot mansion, built in 1908. It has been converted to 10 studio apartments. The long-time owner had a close relationship with the residents and when he passed, his daughter donated the property to Bay Area Community Land Trust. The diverse, lower income residents were very concerned that if the property were sold, they would all be displaced. Instead, BACLT formed a co-op with the residents who now self-manage the property. Prior to the creation of the co-op, the residents had casual relationships with each other. Working together to form a co-op has brought them closer together and created new friendships. Thanks to the $1600 grant from Peoples Life Fund, BACLT can provide training to the residents as they are learning new skills to take control of their housing and to become a self-managing, resident-controlled cooperative. http://bayareaclt.org/
Tri-Valley CAREs monitors nuclear warhead programs at Livermore Lab and throughout U.S. nuclear weapons complex the while working tirelessly for their abolition globally. We are based, since 1983, in the frontline communities surrounding Livermore Lab, and we work to expose and remedy the health and environmental impacts of nuclear development. We are honored to win a $1,000 grant from The People’s Life Fund. This grant will enable Tri-Valley CAREs and a consortium of Northern California peace and justice allies to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan with a major event that will shine the light of truth on ongoing nuclear weapons work at Livermore Lab. Circumstances permitting, we invite everyone to a rally, march and nonviolent direct action at Livermore Lab on August 6th at 8 AM. If gathering in large groups is still unsafe in August, please check www.trivalleycares.org for alternative plans, including a creative virtual commemoration and protest with Hibakusha (survivors) and other guests.
Northridge Coop Homes Community Garden works to promote health and wellness among our children,teens and young adults through opportunities to learn how to grow fresh produce from feeding the soil to feeding the soul. This grant from People’s Life Fund will allow us to provide paid work for more youth and supplement that which we may receive from other youth program. https://www.facebook.com/NCHcommunitygarden/
Anti Police-Terror Project:
On April 25, Anti Police-Terror Project’s Ride for Justice for Steven Taylor drew hundreds. Steven Taylor, a 33-year-old Black father of three, was shot to death by a San Leandro police officer as he struggled with a mental health crisis in a local Walmart. Demonstrators practiced social distancing from their vehicles adorned with signs that read “Justice for Steven” and “Compassion Not Cops” as they caravanned, circling the Walmart parking lot chanting and honking horns. Afterward they headed to San Leandro Police Department—cars spanned the distance of several blocks in front of the department on E.14th Street and brought traffic to a standstill on side streets surrounding the station, in a “Noise Protest” that was difficult for passersby to ignore.
We are so grateful to the PLF for supporting this work.http://www.antipoliceterrorproject.org/
The Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative (ISFC) empowers faith communities to increase access to and production of healthful, local food. People’s Life Fund is supporting ISFC’s work to embolden local food systems and local farmers, as well as to increase food access through low-income nutrition incentive programs. The People’s Life Fund will be aiding our 8th Annual 2020 Conference scholarship program and speaker honorarium, as well as an Advocacy Internship position with the Collaborative. The ISFC is thankful for People’s Life Fund’s vision, principals, and generosity. http://interfaithfood.org/
Prison Activist Resource Center is a longstanding collective in the Bay Area supporting people caged in prisons. We are a prison abolitionist group committed to exposing and challenging all forms of institutionalized racism, sexism, able-ism, heterosexism, and classism, specifically within the prison industrial complex. We believe in building strategies and tactics that build safety in our communities without reliance on the police or the PIC, and seek to work in solidarity with prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends and families
Folks in prison do not have direct access to the internet, and the government is failing to provide basic human services to the people it incarcerates. Its rehabilitation programs are failing.
Our directory contains 18 categories of organizations and vendors that offer legal resources, prisoner support groups, innocence projects by state, book and magazine vendors, rehabilitation and reentry projects, higher education schools, health care, women’s organizations, LGBTQ contacts, religious programs and an excerpt from the UN Minimum Rules for treatment of prisoners on the back page.www.prisonactivist.org
Incarcerated Worker’s Organizing Committee – Oakland Chapter
To aid prisoners and people impacted by the prison system in advocating to build their own power.
“Our most essential service is the ride to bart for late night releases at Santa Rita Jail. Our rides save people from a 45-minute walk in the dark at night alone. Predatory behavior is unfortunately very high in that area, and has resulted in deaths and assaults. We see ourselves as the front line of defense so people have the best chance in succeeding in getting home. We support prisoners to build power for themselves through critical material support and non-incarcerated capacity. For Santa Rita, we go out once a week to provide support for people being released. Pretty similar to other jail support efforts, except we aren’t there for any particular person or group. We provide pizza, cigarettes (that IWOC buys), donated clothes, rides to BART, phone calls or recharging, and sympathetic ears/a welcoming environment for people in a shitty situation. For various prisons, we do medical advocacy, basic program advocacy, a listening ear, outside research and forms, sending letters to policymakers on behalf of groups of prisoners, and sometimes help provide funds for commissary or books and legal materials (but not legal funds). In my experience, making a safe space for the people we meet means being present and engaged without prying. We try to be creative and meet as many needs as we can.
For all of our approaches, we provide political/ IWOC literature and will talk politics, prison abolition, and IWOC with people if they are interested, but we aren’t out there to recruit people or push a political line on people who are in a vulnerable place.”
https://iwocoakland.wordpress.com/