Speakers

May 18: MACRO

Josh Hayes of the Oakland Fire Department (OFD), Medical Services Division shares with us the important work of Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland (MACRO), an alternative response program in the OFD for non-emergency, “quality of life” calls for service. 

MACRO responds to non-violent, non-criminal community disturbances or when there is initial concern for a person’s mental health or well-being. The earlier a MACRO team can begin an intervention, the better. MACRO delivers a compassionate care first-response model grounded in empathy, service, and community in order to reduce responses by emergency services (Fire & Police) and increase access to community-based services and resources for impacted individuals. 

Do not call 211, 311, or 911 to request a MACRO response—go to their website.

(May 2025)

Maureen Forney

Defending Earth and Our National Democratic Experience

Maureen, a self-described elder activist, is a grassroots organizer with Third Act, an organization of Climate and Democracy Defenders for people over age 60, founded by Bill McKibben. She works to collaboratively organize and inspire other elders to boldly use the wisdom and experience of their first two acts of life to defend Earth and our national democratic experience. (April 2025)

John Berger

Solving the Climate Crisis

What it is, why it's an emergency, what we can accomplish as a society to mitigate it when ordinary people organize and work together. Also, what approaches won't be productive. John Berger is Bay Area’s esteemed Environmental Science and Policy Specialist, and prize-winning author of 11 books. His journalistic work has appeared in Scientific American, Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, and many others. He has been a consultant to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Congress. (March 2025)

Danny Hirsch

The Problem with Wildfires

Our fellow member Danny Hirsch explores the question of whether wildfires are the problem, or is it the way we build in these vulnerable areas? He will also highlight innovative strategies that prioritize safety while embracing sustainability. Together, let's envision a future where we don’t merely survive wildfires but thrive alongside them. (February 2025)

Praveen Paritosh 

Tell Me Your Story: A tale about AI

As an early member of Google’s AI team, Praveen has been at the forefront of AI research and systems implementation for around 20 years. Praveen fielded our questions about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in a down-to-earth, very accessible, open discussion. (January 2025)

Richard Kaufmann 

Killers Close By

Not a human murder mystery but a brief look into a group of East Bay natural predators…wanted alive! Richard is a lifelong student and observer of wildlife, as well as an educator and advocate professionally and personally. He enjoys camping, hiking and traveling, always with an eye out for encountering creatures familiar and exotic. And he enjoys sharing experiences people have with encountering the natural world. He currently volunteers with wildlife restoration projects in the East Bay Regional Park District. (December 2024)

Our Conference-goers 

Sunday AssembleCon 2024 Shareback

Seven of our active members traveled to Los Angeles to meet with Sunday Assembly members from around the globe for the Sunday AssembleCon 2024. They shared fun details of the events and happenings with those of us who did not attend. (November 2024)

Giovanna Capone 

Finding the Italians: A Granddaughter's Journey

We got a behind-the-screens peek at Giovanna's new documentary film, celebrating migration and Italian Heritage Month by learning about Oakland's rich immigrant history of Italian social clubs dating back to 1920. She asked a pertinent modern-day question: How do you hold onto your culture in a new land? It's a question every grandchild of immigrants must face. (October 2024)

Dan McCoy 

Storytelling

One of our founding members and a technical director at Pixar Animation Studios and one of Sunday Assembly East Bay's founding members. Dan has come to talk about storytelling (September 2024), the origins of our chapter, and Zoey, a little girl born with serious congenital heart issues, and how a group of Pixar artists helped her to achieve her wish to have a book about her experience. (January 2024)

Danny Hirsch

Meeting California's Urban Water Needs in a Changing Climate 

A long-time student of California's urban water needs, Danny shared his fascination with city water issues that began during his childhood in the San Fernando Valley. There, one by one, all of the little creeks he used to explore were channelized and paved over to protect the homes developers had built too close to stream beds. Later, as a teenager, he walked on the salt-encrusted bottom of Mono Lake, wondering where all the water had gone. It dawned on him that the water had been sent over 300 miles south to provide San Fernando Valley residents with water…including himself. Danny has a Bachelor of Science degree from UC Berkeley in Conservation of Natural Resources. (August 2024)

Ellen Anderson 

Oakland Zoo

Zoos used to be a places for entertainment and a bit of education. More recently, as Ellen explained, they have changed their focus to concentrate on conservation. (July 2024) 

She also shared about her experiences as a docent at the Zoo and the importance of wildlife conservation to us all, telling us about the work Oakland Zoo is doing with their programs and collaborations locally and around the world to help save animals and their habitats and how we all can help with these efforts. (October 2023)

Local henkeeper 

Egg-citing Insights (no yolk!) 

A local henkeeper ova-shared her egg-speriences cracking into this fowl hobby: raising her own pack of poultry. What goes into making a henhouse? What natural dangers face hens in Berkeley and Oakland? How many different colors of eggs can be laid, and why is there such variety? What comes first, and why do chickens cross roads? We hatched a plan to serve up some brilliant, Berkeley-based backyard bird-lovers to SAEB. (May 2024)

Esther Cook 

Edible Schoolyard

Since the inception of the Edible Schoolyard in 1997, Esther has been Head Chef Teacher in the Edible Schoolyard kitchen in association with Alice Waters at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. Over the past 27 years, she has developed a portfolio of innovative kitchen lessons linked to classroom curriculum and life skills. Esther grew up on a farm in rural New England and the quality of those times informs the experience she strives to create with her students. It is her belief that the kitchen is a natural classroom brimming with delicious educational opportunities. (April 2024)

Susan Schwartz & Paulina Lara

Friends of Five Creeks 

Friends of Five Creeks mobilizes volunteers of all ages to restore, maintain, understand, and enjoy the creeks and watersheds of the East Bay from North Berkeley to Richmond. In year-round hands-on volunteering, they help revitalize creeks, improve habitat and water quality, eliminate invasive plant species, and increase public access, knowledge, understanding, and stewardship. Susan Schwartz is a UC Berkeley graduate and former newspaper reporter who became involved in creeks as part of raising her children next to Berkeley's Codornices Creek. She has headed all-volunteer Friends of Five Creeks for just over 25 years. Paulina Lara is an intern at Friends of Five Creeks. She is studying Biological Sciences with a concentration in Ecology at Cal State East Bay. Paulina loves learning about the native plant species in California, bird watching, marshes, and going on nature walks at local shorelines. (March 2024) 

Kim Beeman

High Water Blues: Black Music and the 1927 Mississippi Flood

In April 1927 the Mississippi River topped its levees in one of the worst floods in US history.  600,000 people, mostly black, were left homeless, jobless and many without food or shelter.  Ken will describe the economic and cultural dislocations and we'll listen to the rich body of blues music that resulted, expressing the emotions and philosophy arising from such an enormous loss. Kim Beeman has worked as a jazz musician, done radio shows on jazz and blues, taught the history of jazz and studied blues history. In previous lives, he has worked in audio, acoustics, and the science of animal sound.  He's interested in how music and film express individual lives and whole cultures.  In his spare time, Kim cooks, hikes, and paddles his kayak. (February 2024)

Michelle Hlubinka 

Drawn Together: Comics to Connect and Understand Yourself and Others

The Sequential Artists Workshop, a community for comics inspiration, permission & focus that tells stories in visual form, regardless of any creator's skill level in writing or art. We had a hands-on drawing experience inspired by Lynda Barry (someone a lot of SAW loves). (September 2023)

Grace Walcott

Drawn Together: Comics to Connect and Understand Yourself and Others

Gracie X (AKA Grace Walcott) is a sex-positive Author of “Wide Open: My Adventures in Polyamory, Open Marriage, and Loving on My Own Terms” . She writes about sex positivity, chosen & blended family, parenting, and ethical non-monogamy. She spoke on the current and evolving nature of love, sex, and relationships. She is a somatic therapist in training, Pilates Instructor, screenwriter/author, mother of four, and avid plant lover.  (February 2022)

Annie Goglia 

Laughter Yoga

You’ve heard the saying, “Laughter is the best medicine”—in this interactive session, we got to see if it’s true for ourselves! Through her practice she promotes through LifeFire Yoga, we experienced easy laughter and breathing exercises scientifically proven to reduce stress, boost our immune systems, lower blood pressure, lift our moods and improve an overall sense of well-being. We learned fun techniques to simulate and stimulate laughter that we can use in everyday life. (November 2021)

Vita Zavoli 

Tools for Vision Impairment

Vita demonstrated how people who are blind use various tools and technology to get through their daily lives including accessible phone apps for reading mail and other documents, bar codes, prescription labels, etc. Other tools she shared were talking clocks, thermostats, home assistants, screen readers, braille, and more.

Craig Good 

Relax and Enjoy Your Food

How can you save your money, health, and sanity? Separate fact from flapdoodle! 

His talk was a brief overview of how nutrition works and how to fight back against the forces that are trying to frighten you into buying their products. It’s all about the importance of following the science and having a healthy relationship with food. (July 2021)

Mark MacKay 

Chosen Families

A Seattle-based artist and a full-time caregiver for his partner, Mark came out in 1978. He helped found North Shore Lesbian & Gay Alliance, which provided support for a burgeoning queer community near Boston in the 80s through its political action and social functions. In those days it wasn’t uncommon to have pickup trucks with rifle-bearing men driving by their meetings—the location was never secret. Mark was also a founding member of the Boston Area Gay & Lesbian History Project — researching and lecturing on LGBT people’s lives during Boston’s first 350 years. He worked on marriage equality campaigns with his UU congregation and continues to work on queer social justice issues. (June 2021)

Pippa Evans 

Improv Your Life

Co-founder of Sunday Assembly, Pippa Evans describes herself as an improvised human. She spoke to us directly from London via Zoom, about her new book, Improv Your Life, and her philosophy. (May 2021)

Deborah Malbec 

Stonehenge and the Spring Equinox

A member of our chapter and travel and science enthusiast, shared some new discoveries about Stonehenge and explained the connection between Stonehenge and the Spring Equinox. (March 2021)

Regina Mason 

William Grimes the Runaway Slave

Regina discovered that her great, great, great grandfather was William Grimes the Runaway Slave. He wrote the first fugitive slave narrative in American history. Because Grimes wrote and published his narrative on his own, without deference to white editors, publishers, or sponsors, his life has an immediacy, candor, and no-holds-barred realism unparalleled in the famous antebellum slave narratives of the period. Learn more about Regina at her website where you can also view the film about her research “Gina’s Journey” and purchase a signed copy of her book, Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave.  (February 2021) 

Pam Young 

Audubon Society

The executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society shared the organization's activities and how we might participate. Pam Young is an aviculturist, birding guide, and environmental law specialist who worked for many years as a bird curator at zoos including the Toledo Zoo and Dallas Zoo. Her skills with birds include rescue and rehabilitation, reproduction in captivity for re-population programs, and falconry. (January 2021) 

John Beck 

Astronomy is the Poetry of the Universe

John is currently Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Mission College and author of Astronomy is the Poetry of the Universe. He has a PhD from UCLA in Astronomy and experience as Solar Astronomer at Stanford and UCLA. (December 2020)

Janet King

Emeryville Shellmound

Janet works at the Native American Health Center in Oakland. She told us about the past and the proposed future of the Emeryville Shellmound. See their website for more information. (November 2020)

Lucien Greaves 

The Gentle Mission of The Satanic Temple

Encouraging benevolence and empathy, rejecting tyrannical authority, advocating practical common sense, opposing injustice, and undertaking noble pursuits, The Satanic Temple publicly confronts hate groups, fights for the abolition of corporal punishment in public schools, applies for equal representation when religious installations are placed on public property, provides religious exemption and legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women’s reproductive autonomy, exposes harmful pseudo-scientific practitioners in mental health care, organizes clubs alongside other religious after-school clubs in schools besieged by proselytizing organizations, and engages in other advocacy that aligns with the tenets of Sunday Assembly. (October 2020)

Ainebyona Marium 

Nurturing for Future Development

One of the co-founders of this non-profit in Kampala, Uganda, Ainebyona Marium now serves as its executive director. The goal of the organization is to provide essentials to the people in this community, which —in the pandemic— has been even more impacted, and daily life is more difficult. There has been a rise in domestic violence, teen pregnancies, HIV, and marrying off girls by age 13. The community is working on setting up a small business, so local residents can make things such as footwear, to be sold in the city, and to raise funds for daily living. (September 2020)

Hsuan Chen

Virtual Voyage to Taipei, Taiwan

A member of our local group took us on a tour the capitol of the Republic of China. (August 2020)

Roberta Maguire 

East Africa 

A retired public school teacher, Roberta does not let any grass grow under her feet. During the regular school year she works as a substitute teacher in Berkeley. During the summer she often teaches English in schools in various countries. She also runs marathons and climbs mountains. She spoke about several of her international sojourns, including her adventure in East Africa a few years ago, where she both taught English in a village school and also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. 

“Lev” White

Love and Compassionate Activism

Lev offers mindfulness, coaching, mediation, and diversity trainings as tools for shifting towards more authentic, conscious, and passionate living, for individuals, households, and professional teams. He teaches and writes about how self-love and self-compassion are the ultimate gateways to loving and understanding others. Lev’s work encourages more creative and productive work teams, and on the ground healing for our communities, and planet.

Joel Pomerantz 

WATER! 

An ecologist and naturalist, the proprietor of Think Walks. “What clues lead to water locations, and how right or wrong they can be.” Joel discussed underground creeks and rivers and focus especially on the local region. 

Dave Warnock 

Dying Out Loud

Dave spoke about his religious life and conversion to a non-believer at age 50. He also spoke on his movement “Dying Out Loud” and the fear people have of talking about death in the context of how he has chosen to live after his diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). (April 2020)

Picnic  — Just our community of wonderful Assemblers to have conversation, food, and fun! (June 2024)

Winter Solstice Party — A festival of singing songs together, taking time to let go of the negative and make room for a bright and positive New Year, and "party food", whatever that means to you from your memories or culture. (Dec 2023)

Group activity — This month we will talk about how to practice helping often, one of the core values of Sunday Assembly. It will be an interactive workshop facilitated by member Mithua Ghosh. We will also share our feelings of gratitude with a gratitude tree. (November 2023)