Dec 11 Adult Ed: Please join us this week for adult education as we watch the second half of “Alice Street”, “… a film about two Oakland artists, Pancho Peskador, a Chilean studio painter, and Desi Mundo, a Chicago-born aerosol artist, who form an unlikely partnership to tackle their most ambitious project to date, a four-story mural in the heart of downtown Oakland. Chinese and Afro-Diasporic communities face the imminent threat of displacement and gentrification. the mural faces numerous obstacles: complex negotiations with profit-minded property owners, satisfying a community of diverse residents, and resolving the artists’ own aesthetic conflicts. As the mural takes shape on the wall, Oakland’s unique cultural legacies come to life through historical flashbacks. Past exclusionary policies replay themselves in the present as gentrification threatens to uproot long-term residents. The mural is fraught with its own challenges. A disgruntled neighborhood resident launches a vendetta against the artists, unleashing a blizzard of letters to city officials and newspapers. Simultaneously, the property owner of the mural site schemes to demolish it and construct the city’s largest luxury condo.”

After the film we will be having a discussion about how gentrification affects our own community and the ways we can get involved on a local level.