Along a stretch of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way where bars on the windows aren’t going out of style anytime soon, a little congregation met and prayed on Monday night, as it has every night in recent weeks.

Flanked by an entrance to Highway 24 and a liquor store, the Lighthouse Mosque opened its doors just before 9 p.m., and those who had just broken their daily fast trickled in to pray and hear a little piece of the Koran sung in Arabic.

Muslims in Oakland are in the last third of the month of Ramadan–its most intense part, as observers continue to fast during daylight hours, declining both food and water until the sun sets. Fasting can be more challenging when Ramadan falls during the summer months, as it does this year. Daylight, and with it the Islamic obligation to fast, lingers long in August.

Like the Christian observance of Lent, Ramadan is a period of spirituality, purification, and self-reflection. It’s also supposed to be philanthropic period, during which Muslims donate money or time to charitable purposes. Many Muslims decline to eat, drink, smoke, or have sex during daylight throughout the month. The obligation doesn’t extend to young children, or those who are pregnant, diabetic, or have other limitations.

“You definitely get hot and thirsty, but you learn to pace yourself,” said Jenny Mattheson, a Lighthouse Mosque member, about giving up food and water on hot summer days. “It’s really a wisdom, because when you’re fasting, you can’t spare the energy to get upset or get all worked up about something.”

The month of Ramadan is the ninth in the Islamic calendar, which is based on 12 lunar cycles. This lunar “year” is shorter than the earth’s rotation around the sun, and therefore Ramadan isn’t tied to a particular season. It happens a little earlier every year, beginning and ending with a new moon.

At Lighthouse, the congregation is ethnically diverse. Blond Nordic types pray alongside those of Asian and African descent. However, most have at least one thing in common.

“Our mosque is probably 90 percent converts,” said Abdul Latif Finch, the imam here. Many, including Finch, are Americans who were raised in other faiths and still have non-Muslim family members. Evidence for its members’ local heritage piles up in the doorway as people arrive: Crocs, Converse All-Stars, flip-flops and Adidas, cell phones and eco-friendly BPA-free water bottles.

Unlike other mosques in the area, which often cater to a single ethnicity or nationality, Lighthouse services are held in both English and Arabic. The mosque’s few hundred members—men, women, and children—pray together in the same small, cream-colored room. “There are no barriers out there, so why would there be in here?” Finch said.

Lighthouse is three years old, but it replaces another mosque, Masjid al-Iman, which outgrew the small space and moved to Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. Finch, 35, was in the first class of graduates from the newly-established Zaytuna College, an Islamic seminary in Berkeley.

On Monday, there’s no food, only a little socializing and “Tarawih,” the singing of one thirtieth of the Koran’s thirty parts. Lighthouse worshippers break their daily fasts together only on the Saturdays during Ramadan. Other days they eat at home, after the sun sets.

Before Tarawih, a few members of the Lighthouse mosque met early, sitting on the carpeted floor and reflecting on what makes Ramadan valuable to them.

“A sense of intimacy and closeness, because everybody’s fasting together,” said Mattheson. She smiled and turned to Finch, the imam, who had been quietly listening. She pointed mischievously.  “Now you!” she said.

Finch’s answer reflected his recent trips to the East Coast and Arizona for various speaking and teaching engagements. “It’s not just happening here, this sense of heightened spirituality, where people aren’t feeding the base self,” Finch said. “It’s the same thing in Pennsylvania, the East Coast, the desert southwest.”

“The whole entire community across the globe, there’s a real beauty to that,” added member Ally Alexander.

“Fasting also really makes you appreciate the fact that you have access to fresh, clean drinking water and great food,” Mattheson later wrote in an email. “And makes you much more empathetic for the people who don’t.”

Ramadan begins with the appearance of a new moon. Some Islamic traditions calculate its arrival mathematically, while others rely on local sightings with the naked eye. The month begins when someone—any member of any age from any mosque—sees the first sliver of new moon. Each community determines how and when its members will begin observing.

Before this Ramadan began, some worshippers from Lighthouse headed to the hills to try to spot the new moon firsthand, getting away from the city’s light pollution and looking out into the sky from the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. The first night they went, before predictions suggested the moon would be visible, it was also too foggy. “The next day we could see it,” Finch said, and for Lighthouse, Ramadan began.

But this year’s observance has encountered some awkward timing. The month of self-denial is usually followed by a big three-day party, called Eid al-Fitr. “Eid, that’s more like Christmas,” said Zahra Billoo, director of the Bay Area chapter of Council for American-Islamic Relations. “Ramadan is more like 30 days of Thanksgiving. You’re doing a lot of reflecting and introspection.”

However, the last day of Ramadan 2010 could fall on September 10^th, depending on when the new moon appears.  Some in Muslim leadership worry that celebrating anything on September 11^th could be misconstrued.

“The idea is all you need is one video of someone smiling on 9-11 and you have the potential for backlash,” said Billoo, explaining some Muslims’ anxiety.

Eid’s also arriving on the tail end of a stream of anti-Islam incidents nationwide, including a brick thrown through the window of a mosque in Madera, California, the stabbing of a Bengali Muslim cab driver in New York, various attacks on Muslims in the South Bay, and the well-publicized protests of the construction of a community center near Ground Zero in New York City.

“We always have to be careful about how others perceive us,” said Jason Hamza Van Boom, a spokesman for the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland. “On the other hand, during Ramadan, we’re able to concentrate on the spirituality and focus on prayers and community togetherness.” Van Boom added that there had been discussion by several clergy to make this year’s Eid celebration on September 11 into a day of national unity and healing across faiths.

“The current wave of nativist xenophobia is certainly grating, but it’s clearly coming from a fringe of nut cases and Klu-Kluxer types,” wrote Rashid Patch in an email to Oakland North. Patch directs the Alalusi Foundation, a non-profit fund for international humanitarian aid.

“Well, during Ramadan, besides giving up food, drink, smoking, and sex during daylight hours, Muslims are also supposed to give up getting angry,” he wrote, explaining the attitude he tries to maintain, despite concern over anti-Muslim sentiment.

He noted that, as a counterbalance to an anti-Muslim element, there’s been a lot of interfaith support coming from Christians and Jews, and interfaith dinners have been held across the Bay Area. Patch said he’d been to one on Sunday at Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley and another will be held at the Berkeley United Methodist Church on Saturday, September 4.

And as with any observance based on community and eating together, Ramadan is observed with traditional foods. Many break their daily fasts with a small bite, perhaps some milk and dates.   Then comes prayer and a larger meal, sometimes shared with relatives or the entire congregation.

Persians and Turks commonly have soups made from lamb, bean, and grain, Patch wrote, while North Africans may eat lentils and barley.

“Every Muslim grandmother from West Africa to the China Sea has at least three recipes for a special soup for breaking fast in Ramadan, and every single recipe is the only real, authentic one for the special Ramadan soup,” he wrote.

For Lighthouse members, it’s a bit different. Its communal meals reflect the cross-section of its constituency.

“You have your cornbread with your chapatti,” said member Ally Alexander. A recent meal included chicken and macaroni and cheese—Oakland soul food.

Ramadan meals, called “iftar,” are publicly available throughout the month in Oakland. On Wednesday, Masjid Al-Islam in East Oakland had a chicken and waffles night, according to Mattheson, and the Oakland Islamic Center in North Oakland has free food every night. Lighthouse has free meals Saturday nights.

Our own Dara Kerr reports on a current ban that’s not working as well as law enfocement officers might hope: cell phones in prison. Leaders of the Nuestra Familia gang have allegedly made calls and sent texts to members on the outside ordering killings and directing business, according to Kerr’s story. It is against federal law to jam cell phone signals in and out of prisons, but California Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown said he is looking for ways to change this.

A coalition of law enforcement agencies has arrested four Nuestra Familia gang leaders and 30 gang members, California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced at a press conference in Oakland on Tuesday. Several of those caught were allegedly given orders to commit murder and other violent crimes by imprisoned gang leaders who sent them encrypted messages via cell phones.

Many of the crimes were allegedly ordered by “incarcerated inmates that are supposed to be serving their time and out of circulation,” said Brown, who served as Oakland’s mayor from 1998 to 2006. “But because of the introduction of cell phones these individuals in prison are maintaining their role, their hierarchical position in the gang.” Brown explained that the imprisoned leaders of Nuestra Familia are ordering the crimes from prison and the crimes are happening out on the streets.

Attorney General Jerry Brown announces the arrest of Nuestra Familia gang members at a press conference on Tuesday.

Cracking down on violent street gangs, like Nuestra Familia, is one of Brown’s priorities as he launches into the final few months of his run for California governor. He has supported creating gang-free zones in Los Angeles and backed the Oakland Police Department in the 2008 investigation of the Acorn Gang during which over 40 suspected gang members were arrested in West Oakland.

Nuestra Familia is one of the most powerful of the seven prison gangs in California. It got its start in Folsom Prison in 1968 and its members are mostly Mexican-American or Chicano. With tens of thousands of members throughout the state and hundreds of members inside state prisons, according to the attorney general’s office, Nuestra Familia operates with a strict chain of command and has allegedly been responsible for murders, drug trafficking and weapons charges.  The attorney general’s office said some of the members have ties to the Norteños gang, which is active in the Bay Area.

In operation “Street Sweeper,” during which these most recent arrests were made, 250 law enforcement agents, including several Bay Area agencies and the FBI, spread across several California counties looking to take down the leaders at the top of the Nuestra Familia gang. Dozens of people have been arrested, the majority from Visalia and Salinas. In the course of the operation, agents realized that many of the gang members were taking orders from their bosses who were serving time in Pelican Bay State prison, which is near the Oregon border.

“We are up against some very serious criminals, very sophisticated and with nothing else to do in prison than foment more crimes,” said Brown. “When they go to prison, they don’t miss a beat—they continue their associations, their communication and their criminal behavior.” Brown was not clear on how the inmates get the cell phones, but suggested they might be smuggled in by visitors or guards. “Prison is supposed to punish, it’s supposed to be a place where people put their lives back in order and when it becomes, literally, the college of crime, our system fails,” he said.

The attorney general’s office is looking at stopping this type of communication by building certain cell phone towers that would block messages going in and out of prisons. “I believe we can take serious steps to curb this cell phone abuse and the abuse of this technology to foster crime,” said Brown. He said his office is also exploring cell phone jamming technology, but that utilizing this method would be more difficult because the Federal Communications Commission does not allow prisons to jam communications and introducing cell phone jamming would require a change in federal law.

Although the majority of people caught in operation “Street Sweeper” were from central California, Brown warned that Nuestra Familia gang activity is widespread and could include the Bay Area. “I don’t think any place is safe from this type of criminal enterprise,” he said. “It’s only safe if the prisons get better control of the inmates and we engage in greater control of the streets.”

Robert Moeller III, a former curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, had initially said the negatives came from Adams, but recently told The Bay Citizen that the images are instead probably the work of an unknown photographer named Earl Brooks.

Moeller’s reversal came after reviewing photographs furnished by Earl Brook’s niece, 87-year-old Marian Walton of Oakland.

Walton came forward with the photos after she saw a news report about the lost negatives and recognized one image that resembled a picture by her Uncle Earl.

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It’s a mixed blessing to get a letter from the government that says your house is worth less than it used to be. Nobody wants a reminder about depreciating home values, but on the other hand, you’ll pay less in property taxes, which are based on the county’s assessment of your home’s worth.

This July, the owners of more than 110,000 properties were sent a letter telling them that appraisers at the Alameda County Assessor’s office judged their properties to be worth less than they were last year. That decision slashed $2.9 billion from the collective value of properties in Alameda County and lowers the value of nearly one quarter of the county’s roughly 440,000 properties. It will be applied to tax bills issued later this year to be paid next year.

Oakland, the city with the highest net property value in the county, lost $1.3 billion, down 3 percent from 2009, as calculated excluding tax-exempted properties.

It’s the second fiscal year in a row that the county halted its normal routine of gradually increasing the value of most properties, a standard real estate philosophy. During the 2009-10 fiscal year, Alameda County lowered the valuation of almost 99,000 properties, according to Russ Hall, chief deputy assessor for the county.

Hall explained the county’s 50 real estate appraisers concentrated on properties that were purchased—and were subsequently reassessed—during a period when prices were rising rapidly. “Pretty much most of these fall in a time period where their assessment period happened since January 1, 2001,” Hall said.

It’s no simple task to standardize the process of valuing properties en masse. For approximately the last 30 years, counties figured out how much to tax houses by resetting the value of each property at the time of purchase, pegging the value to the purchase price. The most accurate market-rate assessment of a house, the theory goes, is the price someone agreed to pay for it.

For all the other properties—the ones that weren’t bought recently—the government tacks on a bit of value every year, something a little over 1 percent. The precise percentage differs geographically, because of various fees and bonded debt. “In general, property values increase, most years, about 2 percent a year,” Hall said of Alameda County.

But figuring out how calibrate home values after a real estate boom and bust is difficult. “Those guys have a hard problem,” said John Quigley, an economics professor at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy. He said that the county has to make “a good faith attempt” to reconcile prices assessed in boom times with today’s market, because the law requires it. But with 50 appraisers and 440,000 properties to assess in a shaky market, the process could be difficult to get right.

There’s no generic algorithm for a widespread downward reassessment, particularly in a market like Oakland, where property values vary block-to-block, and neighbors who bought comparable properties ten years apart from each other pay wildly different taxes.

“It’s an imperfect system to say the least,” Quigley said, but he gave the county assessor credit for being preemptive rather than waiting for property owners to fight unfairly high taxes. “It’s clear they’re trying to responsive,” he said.

Hall couldn’t define exactly how the county’s appraisers figured out how to calculate the home values, saying they make independent decisions. “We gather all the information we can, present the properties in our review segments, in ordered fashion, to appraisers generally familiar with the neighborhoods we’re reviewing,” he said.

Because the county’s lost billions in property value, fewer tax dollars will come in from property taxes next year, as they did last year. These property taxes get shuffled around to several parties, like the county itself and the state of California, which uses the money for schools.

As a result of the drop in property values, officials expect that the county’s general fund will only collect approximately $290 million in secured and unsecured property taxes next year. That’s down almost 2.5 percent from the previous year’s—approximately $298 million—and almost 9 percent lower than what was collected the year before that, about $319 million. Those declines mean less cash in city coffers.

“We have taken a hit because of the assessed value has decreased,” said Cheryl Taylor, director of the City of Oakland Budget Office.

For Oakland, it means the city government will count on about $125 million in property tax revenue next year, a downgrade from the originally budgeted $130 million, according to a report issued by the city in April. The city took in almost $130 million this year and a little more than $134 million last year, according to the same report.

Declining revenues from property taxes are only part a widespread financial crisis here. Oakland’s also taking in less cash from hotel taxes and utility consumption tax, because people are traveling less and using less electricity. They’re also shopping less, cutting into city revenue from parking meters and sales tax, particularly related to auto sales, according to Taylor.­­

Transfer tax revenue, collected when properties are sold, has also plummeted. Taylor said the city would bring in around $70 million in transfer tax during boom years. “Now, I think we’re probably lucky to get $25 million,” she said.

For homeowners wondering why the county has decided to reassess so many properties now, Hall points out they have no choice. “We do as the law bids assessors to do,” he said. “There’s ample evidence that property values have declined,” he said, adding that because home sales are down, the appraisal staff have enough time on their hands to take on such a major project.

Reassessing properties downward preemptively, before homeowners start complaining about their taxes, also has the beneficial side effect of reducing the number of assessment appeals that the county has to process, and owners have been appealing their tax bills a lot lately.

“Normally we get around 2,500, maybe 3,000 appeals,” said Crystal Graff, clerk of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. Last year Alameda received more than 11,800 assessment appeals from property owners who thought the county had it wrong, she said. In 2008 the clerk’s office received more than 11,500 appeals, more than doubly 2007’s count of approximately 4,500, according to figures provided by Graff.

Even after the assessor lowers a property value, the owner can still appeal. The county sends every owner a notice in July explaining what to expect during the next tax cycle, regardless of whether or not the county thinks a property’s changed in value. Owners have until September 15 to appeal.

“If we didn’t send these notices out, people might not be able to file their appeals in time,” Hall said. “Not every county sends out these notices to every taxpayer.”

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Oakland North’s 16 new reporters (you’ve seen their bylines all weekend) are in Multimedia Boot Camp this week. They will emerge ready to plan a video, shoot a photo slideshow and or record a radio piece with the best of them. But last week, we found that some of our incoming reporters had a jump start on their tech skills.

During the three hour long scavenger hunt we sent them on, Nicole Jones recorded her team’s BART ride, visit to City Hall and exploration of Chinatown. She both recorded and edited the movie on her iPhone and we’ve shared it with you above.

The new reporters said they loved exploring Oakland and meeting new people all day. They came back with lots of story ideas and some new research skills. The only downside? We editors thought Jones and the rest of the team would take five hours to finish what they completed in just three. Next year, we’re going to have to make this harder.

So tell us: what would you put in an Oakland scavenger hunt if you were hoping to stump a smart, enterprising new reporter?

The reporters shown in the video are Whitney Pennington, Teresa Chin, Terria Smith and Nicole Jones.

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Fine wine, microbrews and delicatessen chocolate never tasted so good with a little bike grease.

In conjunction with the Eat Real Festival last Saturday at Jack London Square, 13 two-wheeled foodies pedaled along Oakland’s waterfront to meet the neighborhood’s culinary artisans and sample their creations. Riders ranging from ages 20 to 60 spent the balmy afternoon meeting others who shared a passion and palette for local, sustainable chocolate, tea, beer and wine.

Nancy Finkle, one of the 13 bikers who pedaled along Oakland’s waterfront as part of Eat Real bike tour, samples the Urban People's Common Lager at Linden Street Brewery.

At $40 a person, or $30 for members of East Bay Bike Coalition and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, the bikers were invited to share what tour organizer Karen Hester says are three of her greatest loves: eating, biking and drinking.

There’s a lot of exploring to do in Oakland, Hester said, who considers this tour, now in its second year, “like going on a little day vacation in my own backyard.”

Throughout the four-hour bike ride that began and ended at Jack London Square, riders pedaled for a total of six miles.   They dismounted at their first stop before they could break a sweat, and were welcomed to Linden Street Brewery with pitchers of cold microbrew lagers.

Located in a historic 1890’s brick warehouse near the Port of Oakland, Linden Street Brewery makes beers native to the West Coast. By using a lager yeast fermented at ale temperatures, Liden produces a similar recipe to the European lagers early immigrant gold seekers tried to recreate in the warmer Bay Area climate. The brewery is known for its Burning Oak Black Lager, a roasty, slightly sweet light-bodied black beer, which debuted at last year’s Eat Real Festival.

A self-defined “neoindustrialist,” owner and beer architect Adam Lamoreaux says he’s committed to the revitalization of Oakland by bringing high quality food and drink manufacturing back to the city.

Lamoreaux delivers most of his beer via bicycle, and told the bikers he’s trying to source all his ingredients within 100 miles of Oakland and keeping the end product 80-90% organic. “If you see a guy carting two kegs of beer behind him,” he said, “that’s probably me.”

Beer and chocolate seemed like a strange combination, but at Vice Chocolates, the second stop of the tour, the unusual combination of unlikely ingredients is emphasized. I-Li Brice, a one-woman chocolate-crafting machine, sells at her online store and at the Oakland Temescal Farmers’ Market.   One step into Brice’s chocolate-producing kitchen and the decadent aromas ensured the riders that they would have no problem following Vice Chocolate’s motto–Just Give In.

Eat Real bike tour riders made a pit stop a Vice Chocolates to sample candies like the "Domina" (left), dark chocolate ganache with earl grey tea creme fraiche and orange and the "Rasgasm" (right), dark chocolate ganache and raspberries.

The Vice product uses fair trade chocolate from Venezuela, and is loaded up with unlikely ingredients, like lavender, chipotle, garlic, merlot and lychee.   A favorite of one rider, Nancy Finkle, was the “Vixen,” a Dark chocolate ganache, passion fruit and chili pepper chocolate that gave a spicy edge to the inherit sweetness of the fruit.

Finkle, an Oakland resident, was on the tour with her husband, who was managing the drinking and chocolate-eating while riding a unicycle “This is a way for us to get in a little bit of a ride,” Finkle said. “We’re tasting some really great local food and getting to know the producers, and can still join in later at the Eat Real Festival.”

With beer and chocolate fresh on the tongue, riders staggered onto their bikes and cleansed their palette with the wind off the bay before landing at their third destination, Urban Legend Cellars. Owner and producer Steve Shaffer poured his biodynamic, organic wine, starting with a crisp 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, progressing to a deep and smooth 2008 Teroldego.

The grapes are brought down from a couple of different Northern California wineries, he said, and are fermented at the Shaffers’ Jack London-district warehouse space and tasting room, which opened in March of this year. Even the glass is made in Oakland, and all the pre-material that is part of the process is composted, he said. “We think this helps lower our carbon footprint by not trucking our product and materials around,” Shaffer said. “We’re aimed at catering to locals.”

Steve Shaffler introduces Eat Real bikers to his winery, Urban Legends Cellars.

The final destination on the tour was the tearoom and warehouse of Numi Organic Tea. By this time, there was no hiding the barrage of yawns. Nearly four miles, five wine tastings, two beers and enough chocolate to work off for the next week, it was time to indulge in simpler refreshment. While sampling Numi’s iced teas, the crew continued to enjoy one another’s company.

“These are old traditions that we lose track of,” Hester said. “If you go to the Arabic world people spend a lot of time drinking tea and sharing tea.” As she hugged some riders, now new friends, goodbye, she continued, “I love that about this tour. We just spend time hanging out, drinking and eating together.”

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs,” knowing the source of your meat, and two days of street food gluttony.

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And to pump our own stories a bit today – the new team has been churning out copy after a long weekend spent all over town. From recording the mini-drama of a sit-in at the Golden Gate Childhood Development Center to learning about scraper bike safety from Oakland’s own scraper bike king, Baybe Champ, they have left no stone unturned.

Our new team is spending the week at a multimedia boot camp – the better to bring you slideshows and videos all year long – so if you have any thoughts on issues they should cover, let us know now!

If you want to ride with the scraper bike king, you better wear a helmet.  Tyrone “Baybe Champ” Stevenson Jr., known around Oakland as the “king” and creator of the scraper bike movement, announced his new rule of the road Saturday near Oakland City Hall.

“Everybody is riding without a helmet, but once they see us wearing them more frequently then it will be cool,” said Stevenson Jr., who now requires anyone who rides with him to wear a helmet.  “They’re going to start pimping them out just like our bikes.”

About thirty riders showed up with their tricked-out bicycles as part of a bike ride and festival organized by Stevenson.  After a safety talk from the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety, the group rode—with their bike helmets—to Arroyo Viejo Park for a day of food and music.

The event was the latest of about twenty over the past three years organized by Stevenson and his group, Original Scraper Bikes.  Last year, hundreds of riders circled Lake Merritt to take a stand against gun violence.  Saturday’s theme was bike safety, a mission that Stevenson is taking on with Oakland Parks and Recreation.  With funding from the city, he has given out 250 free bike helmets at parks around Oakland. The helmets are white—all the better for riders to customize just like their bikes.

“These young men and women don’t have the appropriate safety equipment,” said Stacey Perry, of the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety.  “They think helmets look kind of dorky. They’re beautiful bikes, so we came up with the idea of letting them decorate their helmets.”

Most riders Saturday agreed that if you have foil on your rims, there is little chance of seeing a helmet on your head.

“No one wears helmets in East Oakland,” said Jamesha Creer, Stevenson Jr.’s cousin.  “They don’t want to because it cramps your style.  It’s good that he’s promoting safety.  They’ll follow what he does.”

Stevenson is credited with inventing the scraper bike: a customized bicycle decorated with cheap materials like aluminium foil and food wrappers.  Riders at Saturday’s event showed up with foil, Cheetos bags and even beer cans on their spokes.  Stevenson said he would love to see Oakland bikers channel their creativity from their rims to their helmets, but, he said, “They have to wear them, customized or not.”

All photos by Carl Nasman except for the third picture in the slideshow, which was taken by Teresa Chin.

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With speeches, signs reading “Make Big Oil Pay,” and lessons on useful protest tactics, Frank H. Ogawa Plaza was converted into a training ground Sunday afternoon for 50 environmental activists and organizers.

The public teach-in, hosted by the group Mobilization for Climate Justice West, was part of a two-day event that includes a march scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Monday in San Francisco. The “Make Big Oil Pay” protest is set to start at Justin Herman Plaza, at the Embarcardero end of Market Street. Participants, including many who were at Sunday’s teach-in, are then expected walk to the offices of British Petroleum and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.

Ellen Choy, an organizer with Mobilization for Climate Justice West, said Sunday’s activity — with speeches and a hip-hop performance in addition to the teaching groups — is part of a larger effort for the group. “We decided this year that we would be targeting big oil,” she said.

Mobilization for Climate Justice West, an umbrella group of about a dozen Bay Area environmental organizations, focuses on coordinating demonstrations and offering the organizations’ view of public education concerning climate change. The local group received national attention Dec. 7, 2009, when about 30 people were arrested during a protest in front of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon.

Monday’s demonstration takes place during the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Gulf of Mexico region. The storm, which hit Aug. 29, 2005, displaced 800,000 people, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The severity of the Category 5 storm has been said by some scientists to be a byproduct of global warming.

The gulf is now suffering the environmental impact of the fire and explosion on a British Petroleum oil rig last April, which spilled oil at a rate of 210,000 gallons a day over a course of 3 months. “Those oil companies, we would say, are our obstacle toward clean energy and renewable energy,” said Mobilization organizer David Solnit. The decision to schedule the two-day demonstration during the anniversary of the hurricane and five months after the spill was to “show solidarity with the communities of the Gulf Coast,” he said.

Solnit helped lead a teach-in civil disobedience workshop in which participants were taught such as strategies how to link arms and keep their fingers protected when the police arrive to disperse them. They were also told that once handcuffed, they can still shout their message if media is present. “I think direct action and protest, along with education, are the most effective things we can do,” Solnit said.

Carla Perez, program coordinator with an ecologically focused organization called Movement Generation, said she has found that concentrating on local immediate concerns is a good way to interest people in governmental decisions and policies. “It really starts with calling attention to the things that are the most concerning to people,” she said. “The first issue is their health.” Respiratory problems, cancer and immune deficiencies may be related to environmental health, she said.

Perez led a workshop on building community strength and resiliency during the aftermath of natural disaster. Participants sat beneath the trees on the north end of the plaza, trading ideas about how to store water–filling bathtubs, for example, or tapping into full water — as well as how to store non-perishable foods.

During Solnit’s workshop, organizers also suggested options on managing possible confrontations with police as well as with local workers who might be frustrated with obstructing demonstrators. Participants were instructed to remain calm, keep stressing the nonviolent nature of their demonstration, and tell workers, “The police have been called. They’re on their way.”

The intent of the demonstration is to “hold the oil industry’s feet to the fire, so that they pay for the damage and the impact to the community,” Solnit said.

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