Calendar
Suds, Snacks, and Socialism
at the Starry Plough
The Fightback Against
the Attack on Immigrants
Doors open at 1:30 p.m.
Please register in advance at
https://bit.ly/SSS_Immigrants
to receive your personal link to participate in this event online
While Trump sends masked goon squads to kidnap innocent workers, people are exercising true solidarity to defend them. Our speakers will talk about recent defense actions and how we can continue to organize and participate in these efforts.
Manuel De Paz – Political/Community Organizer, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
[TBA] – Bay Area Labor for Palestine, OEA Rapid Response Network
Constanza – Party for Socialism and Liberation, organizer with the We Fight Back Coalition in Oakland
*Organizations listed for identification purposes only.
Please help us celebrate our return to the Starry Plough by ordering food and/or drinks.
Please arrive early to place your order so that you do not miss any of the presentations.
An open discussion will follow the presentations.
We will be accepting donations which will be divided among the sponsoring organizations.
This event is sponsored by the Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party,
the Alameda County Green Party and Bay Area System Change Not Climate Change.
For more information email <info@sudssnackssocialism.org>
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite. All are welcome!
For our December, 2025 meeting we will be reading and discussing the first two chapters of What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis by Malcolm Harris (Amazon) (Hatchette). For our January meeting we will finish the book.
A vital guide for collective political action against the climate apocalypse, from bestselling progressive intellectual Malcolm Harris—“a brilliant thinker and writer capable of making the intricacies of economic conditions supremely readable” (Vulture).
Climate change is the unifying crisis of our time. But the scale of the problem can be paralyzing, especially when corporations are actively staving off changes that could save the planet but which might threaten their bottom lines. To quote Greta Thunberg, despite very clear science and very real devastation, the adults at the table are still saying “blah blah blah.” Something has to change—but what, and how?
In What’s Left, Malcolm Harris cuts through the noise and gets real about our remaining options for saving the world. Just as humans have caused climate change, we hold the power to avert a climate apocalypse, but that will only happen through collective political action. Harris outlines the three strategies—progressive, socialist, and revolutionary—that have any chance of succeeding, while also revealing that none of them can succeed on their own. What’s Left shows how we must combine them into a single pathway: a meta-strategy, one that will ensure we can move forward together rather than squabbling over potential solutions while the world burns.
Vital and transformative, What’s Left confirms Malcolm Harris as next-generation David Graeber or Mike Davis—a historian-activist who shows us where we stand and how we got here, while also blazing a path toward a brighter future.
Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Our first book was Doughnut Economics, and our most recent books were The Age of Insecurity and Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals”. For the rest of our reading list see here.
Speaker: Rick Sterling
To Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87388824824?pwd=QTWNvr8cGeGo1ZDW7x9Y8W0sDaNxRc.1
Meeting ID: 873 8882 4824
Mexico is the US’ largest trading partner and has over three times the population of Canada. Strangely, there has been little news in the US about the immense changes taking place in Mexico. The transformation began in 2018 under President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and continues under President Claudia Sheinbaum. Both leaders represent the MORENA Party, which now holds a majority in the Mexican Congress and Senate despite having only been created in 2014. Mexico is now drawing US attention, and there are examples of foreign promoted violence in spite of the overwhelming popularity of the Morena leaders. Our speaker, Rick Sterling will outline developments in Mexico based on personal observations and the excellent new book “MEXICO IN TRANSFORMATION from AMLO to Claudia.”
Rick Sterling is a board member of the Task Force on the Americas and Mt Diablo Peace & Justice Center. He has written many articles about international issues including Mexico, published at LA Progressive, Consortium News, Global Research, Dissident Voice, etc.
you’re invited to our exclusive screening: The Alabama Solution, an HBO Documentary on Sunday, December 7 at 12:30 P.M. PT, followed by a Q&A with special guests! Space is limited so register below while you still can:
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Join the Ella Baker Center for a free community screening of The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary exposing the violence and corruption inside America’s most dangerous prison system.
Shot with contraband cell phones and first-hand testimony from those living inside, this film offers a rare, unfiltered view of America’s carceral crisis that resonates far beyond the South.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with special guests. Register for this exciting event today: bit.ly/AlSolcreening.
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“Police Brutality”
An analysis of the culture of the local police in the US
by Steve Martinot
There will be a meeting on the book. The book will be discussed as a means of understanding and opposing what is being developed as our present police state.
When did the US start to become fascist? 1913? 1945? Or 1607? How do we understand the mind of the current police?
From their history? From their economy? Or from their goal of power
They build power through murders, averaging 1100 a year. (That is more than 3 a day)
What are police goals in their murders? What kind of white supremacist structure are they building? What is the structure of their brutality?
They militarize their actions to express their hegemony. They take over ICE to make it a mediation for themselves. They and the courts are turning ICE into a US Gestapo. They are rapidly constructing a police law unto themselves (with impunity).
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They shoot people running away.
Anyone running away from police restraint (e.g. handcuffing), is resisting the cop.
When a cop shoots him, he had decided to do that — for his target’s disobedience.
But obedience is irrelevant to a dead man.
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It even happens in Berkeley. After a homeless person had taken a sandwich from a downtown store, the cops surrounded him and one fired his gun. He hit the guy in the jaw. That means he was aiming for his head, which means he intended to kill him — (for a sandwich?) – but missed.
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The police operate on a notion of race as a verb, and not a noun. The verb stands for “to racialize.” They intend to set themselves up as a white line across society, separating white people from all others. They kill people of color, and beat white people who reject or oppose their supremacy. The cops thus fill the prisons.
Steve Martinot has been fighting racism and white supremacy all his life. He has written books critiquing racism and white supremacy (“The Rule of Racialization,” “The Machinery of Whiteness,” “Police Brutality,” “The Need to Abolish the Prison System”). He has led strikes in New York’s Garment District against industry and union racism. He has written against police militarism and for prison abolition.
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Celebrate the Holiday Season with old friends and new. We’ll have good fun, yummy food, and open dialogue at the 2025 Annual Potluck Holiday Party
The Berkeley Council continues to shut out the residents of Berkeley City council members have consistently ignored the voice of the people in favor of powerful, well-resourced special interest groups — developers and foreign lobby groups who drown out community concerns. How much more can we tolerate?
Hundreds of Berkeley residents show up, speak up, and stand up at city council meetings… And still the council votes against the will of the people. Whether it’s the unpopular upzoning ordinance they’re trying to ram through without community input, or other major decisions — the pattern is the same: SPECIAL INTERESTS WIN! TENANTS, HOME OWNERS, & SMALL BUSINESSES GET IGNORED!
ELECTIONS ARE COMING — Districts 1, 4, 7, and 8 next year. It’s time to take back our city council, reignite Berkeley’s identity as a champion of the underserved and a beacon of human rights,
JOIN US TO STRATEGIZE Sunday, December 14, 2025 East Bay Community Space, 507 55th St, Oakland, CA 94609 2:30 PM Hosted by: Berkeley Network for Palestine Come together. Speak out. Organize. The future of Berkeley belongs to its residents — not special interests.