Calendar
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.
For our October meeting we are reading Parts 5 and 6 of Jackson Rising Redux: Building the Future in the Present. (PM Press, Amazon). For our November meeting we are reading Parts 7, 8 and the Afterwords.
Mississippi is the poorest state in the US, with the highest percentage of Black people and a history of vicious racial terror. Black resistance at a time of global health, economic, and climate crisis is the backdrop and context for the drama captured in this new and revised collection of essays. Cooperation Jackson, founded in 2014 in Mississippi’s capital to develop an economically uplifting democratic “solidarity economy,” is anchored by a network of worker-owned, self-managed cooperative enterprises. The organization developed in the context of the historic election of radical Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, lifetime human rights attorney. Subsequent to Lumumba’s passing less than one year after assuming office, the network developed projects both inside and outside of the formal political arena. In 2020, Cooperation Jackson became the center for national and international coalition efforts, bringing together progressive peoples from diverse trade union, youth, church, and cultural movements. This long-anticipated anthology details the foundations behind those successful campaigns. It unveils new and ongoing strategies and methods being pursued by the movement for grassroots-centered Black community control and self-determination, inspiring partnership and emulation across the globe.
Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth, Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More, Cannibal Capitalism, Debt, the First 5000 Years , Poverty, By America,, and End Times.
Speaker: Mark Albertson
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85175860127?pwd=bfZRQOSMuhX9Pfm4qhPMOZMrmE9Ohm.1
The 200-year history of the Monroe Doctrine is a history of US imperialism. Among Washington’s recent junior partners, Israel stands out as an accomplice to the US imperial project not only in the old world but in this hemisphere as well.
Beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the course of what is labeled Manifest Destiny (term was applied in 1845) will be charted through the 19th century. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 is a continuation of the planned expansion across the North American continent. As the 19th century proceeded apace, the North defeated the South during the 1861-1865 Revolt of the Planters. Industrialization of the United States together with the eventual linking of Chesapeake Bay with the Golden Gate instilled a dynamic America, an allure to become a willing participant in what President Monroe’s document urged the Europeans not to repeat here, Imperialism. Historical parallels will be made with such efforts as the Catholic Church and Spanish Army in the Philippines, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the present situation in Gaza.
Our speaker, Mark Albertson, is a frequent presenter at the Library. In fact, according to his blog, in each of the last three years, he has logged 200-plus appearances. Mark is a military historian with a commanding knowledge of geo-politics. He is the historical research editor at Army Aviation magazine and is the historian for the Army Aviation Association of America. He has authored several books: USS Connecticut: Constitution State Battleship; They’ll Have to Follow You! The Triumph of the Great White Fleet; On History: A Treatise. He is at work on a two-volume history on the saga of Army aviation. Mark teaches history at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Suggested background reading:
Elier Ramírez Cañedo, 200 Years of the Monroe Doctrine: History and Present, https://resumen-english.org/2023/07/200-years-of-the-monroe-doctrine-history-and-present/
Or check out this informative video:
Ben Norton, Israel’s destruction of Gaza is West’s fascistic plan for Global South, warns Colombia’s president, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC8YMcHn9nE
Connect with us at an upcoming event hosted by Bay Resistance as well as the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), the Center for Political Education, and the Anti Police-Terror Project. Please save the date for a #CEASEFIRE mass meeting on Sunday, November 26 and RSVP here.
This is the moment where all of us should be joining together to move into immediate action to stop the genocide in Gaza. This is an opportunity for us to come together, to find clarity in the midst of uncertainty, and to deepen our shared understanding of the world around us.
In this critical moment, AROC and allied organizations are offering this mass meeting space to get clear on messaging and deepen our shared understanding of organizing strategy. There will be space for political education, training on essential organizing skills, action planning, and spaces for the healing power of arts and culture.
RSVP HERE
This invitation is extended to everyone looking to plug in, including those who want to learn more about this movement and activists who want to find ways to do more. In acknowledgment of the diverse roles we play in our communities, we have arranged special breakout sessions for families and parents organizing in schools and districts.
Once you RSVP we will send the exact location early next week. It will be in Downtown Oakland near Bart. Please forward this email to 10 friends. Your presence and support would mean a lot.
There is a March and Rally beginning at the Oakland Courthouse on Tuesday November 28th! We are demanding that the Board of Supervisors stop funding for the expansion of Santa Rita Jail. We are demanding an investigation into the over 70 deaths of black and brown inmates in Santa… pic.twitter.com/O5WOwdkYbH
— Anita Wills (@bwdn2008) November 23, 2023
🚨BAY AREA ACTION ALERT🚨 Saturday, Dec. 2, 2pm-5pm. Civic Center #SanFrancisco. #FreePalestine #Gaza #GazaGenocide. NOTE: I know you are all tired. I know you are all stressed. But the Palestinian people have been carpet bombed for almost two months straight. #CeasefireNow! 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/MhsMsBQOLe
— Free Palestine (@domainawareness) December 1, 2023
The Howard Zinn Book Fair returns as an in-person event on Sunday, Dec. 3, at the City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus. The organizers describe this year’s theme as “Against Amnesia”:
Sessions in the struggle against the attacks on people’s history. Far-right projects such as book bans, so-called “anti-woke” campaigns, “don’t say gay” legislation, and the dismantling of Ethnic Studies serve to build a historical and political amnesia as our opponents work to warp our sense of the past and sabotage our ability to imagine a future of collective liberation.
We are against amnesia. But what do we remember? What truths do we tell about past social movements that provide lessons for today’s organizers and activists? How will the work we are doing now be remembered in the future?
Propose a session or register to have a table at zinnbookfair.org.
This week, Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library will cover the attacks on the pro-Palestine, anti-genocide movement that are being made in the name of “fighting antisemitism,” A group discussion will follow several short presentations on the subject.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85175860127?pwd=bfZRQOSMuhX9Pfm4qhPMOZMrmE9Ohm.1
This year we are sending cards & updates to over 10,000 people who are currently incarcerated💛
💌 In addition to having our volunteers pick up holiday mail kits, we are having an *in-person & covid safe* mail night! (Masks are requred indoors)
💌RSVP: https://t.co/pHush3ncwa pic.twitter.com/4ZgISsWjN4
— Ella Baker Center (@ellabakercenter) November 14, 2023
Join us on Tuesday, December 5th at 2PM at San Francisco City Hall and call on the Board of Supervisors to support a permanent ceasefire!
Supervisor Preston plans to introduce a ceasefire resolution at next Tuesday’s Board meeting.
Text “SF” to 833-633-0604 to stay updated pic.twitter.com/AVX6LjAycx
— AROC #FreePalestine (@AROCBayArea) November 30, 2023
From @/loveandjusticeinthestreets on Instagram:
Join us tomorrow, 12/5 to help stop an ordinance that aims to criminalize unhoused people and their advocates under the guise of "worker safety"
Come to City Council at 3:30 to make your voice heard! https://t.co/BX7ex018gW pic.twitter.com/DabOz30th1
— Anti Police-Terror Project (@APTPaction) December 4, 2023
Register here.
Join Greenaction and Save the Bay for a discussion by frontline community activists and an academic expert on sea level rise, focusing on how rising groundwater and sea levels caused by climate change will flood and spread toxic and radioactive contamination along San Francisco Bay, threatening the health and environment of communities and the entire bay ecosystem.
As sea level rises, shallow groundwater will be pushed to the surface, causing more widespread flooding. This will impact infrastructure, homes, and communities in ways that we are just beginning to understand. Thousands of toxic sites that currently border the San Francisco Bay are also at risk of inundation by groundwater and sea level, which could put tens of thousands of residents at risk, especially low-income communities and communities of color.
Panelists:
Kamillah Ealom is Greenaction’s Bayview Hunters Point Community Organizer/Policy Advocate and Program Coordinator and a lifelong resident of Bayview Hunters Point.
Ms. Terrie Green is the Executive Director of the Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice program. She will share how her community is being impacted by climate change and how they are organizing to respond.
Dr. Kristina Hill is a UC Berkeley professor and expert on groundwater rise, emphasizing environmental justice as a focus for climate resilience planning.
Moderator: Ezra David Romero, KQED Radio climate reporter who helped bring this issue to public attention.
WHEN
Tuesday, December 5, 5 – 6 PM
WHERE
Online Register here.
Members of the public can view the meeting live on KTOP or on the City’s website at
https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/ktop-tv-10
To observe the meeting via Zoom, go to: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85817209915
Or One tap mobile: +1 669 900 9128
Relevant Agenda Items:
3. Open Forum/Public Comment for non-agenda items
4. Recognition of Commissioner Robert Oliver for his years of service – Council Member Reid’s office
5. Welcome new Commissioner Sean Everhart – Council Member Reid’s office
6. Surveillance Technology Ordinance – OPD – Cellebrite Cellphone Data Extraction Technology
a. Review impact report and take possible action on a proposed use policy
It is supported by these former political prisoners:
Arthur League, Sundiata Tate, Claude Marks, Luis Talamantez, David Gilbert, Minister King as well as Freedom Archives, Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee, Party of Socialism and Liberation, and Code Pink.
Ruchell Magee’s life was one of resistance to oppression. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is also one of resistance to oppression.
“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery. This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”� � Ruchell Magee
This event will include short speeches and writing holiday cards to political prisoners and protest postcards to Philadelphia D.A. Krasner, who is continuing to support the conviction and life prison sentence of Mumia.
Please spread the word!
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.
For our December meeting we are reading the first half (through chapter 2) of The Feminist Subversion of the Economy. (Common Notions Press, Amazon). For our January, 2024 meeting we will read the remainder.
The political response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressures on the global capitalist economies has, once again, imposed the priority of markets over life. Add to this the climate crisis and, undoubtedly, the task of sustaining life continues to be privatized, made invisible, and feminized.We must ask: what does a dignified life look like, especially one that transforms the gendered labor divisions and a racialized, exploitative feminized care economy that falls mainly on the shoulders of women—from the household to the wider effects of the capitalist economy on social reproduction.
At the same time, these questions are intimately connected with considerations of our environment. The Feminist Subversion of the Economy makes the conection between patriarchy, capitalism, and ecological crisis—and rallies women, the LGBTQ+ community, and movements worldwide to center gender and social reproduction in a vision for a just ecology and economy.
Public intellectual, academic, and activist Amaia Pérez Orozco offers a vision beyond the myths of development (unlimited growth), wealth (accumulation of capital), and work (limited to waged labor) and, at the same time, accounts for the tasks, networks, and economic subjects that, materially and daily, guarantee that life keeps going.
Newly translated and updated in collaboration with Liz Mason-Desse, who has won a PEN translation award for her work on feminist economics, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy shows the urgent need to radically and democratically discuss what we mean by a dignified life and how we can organize to sustain life collectively.
Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included Doughnut Economics, Limits, Banking on the People, Capital and Its Discontents, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century, The Deficit Myth, Revenge Capitalism, the Edge of Chaos blog symposium , Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, The Optimist’s Telescope, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, Exploring Degrowth, The Origin of Wealth, Mine!, The Dawn of Everything A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Beyond Money, Less is More, Cannibal Capitalism, Debt, the First 5000 Years , Poverty, By America, End Times, and Jackson Rising Redux.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85175860127?pwd=bfZRQOSMuhX9Pfm4qhPMOZMrmE9Ohm.1
Speaker: Paul Larudee
Recently back from a humanitarian mission to besieged Gaza, which was denied entry by Egyptian authorities, our speaker will explain how the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians is a natural outcome of Zionism. The social dynamics of domination inevitably lead to genocide given sufficient time. This is the logical consequence of exceptionalism.
The resistance forces of the Palestinians and their allies have planned for a confrontation of unlimited duration, while Israel plans only short, massive attacks designed for a quick, decisive victory, which in this case is illusive. This is the main reason they have chosen genocide as a tactic. They reason that massive, horrible deaths of vulnerable civil Palestinians, mainly women and children, will force Hamas, Hezbollah, and their allies to take risks and expose themselves. But genocide is not working. And when it doesn’t, Israel’s answer is to use more genocide.
Paul Larudee, our speaker, is an Iranian-born American political activist who is a major figure in the pro-Palestinian movement. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, he has been to Palestine many times since 1965. He is active with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a nonviolent resistance group, and the Syria Solidarity Movement (SSM). Paul is a co-founder of the Free Palestine Movement (FPM) and the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), whose boats broke a 41-year-old Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in August 2008. He was a member of the US delegation aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was attacked by Israeli forces on May 31, 2010.
Paul has a PhD in linguistics and spent fourteen years in Arab countries, supervising a Ford Foundation project in Lebanon, working as a Fulbright-Hays lecturer in Lebanon, and a US government adviser to Saudi Arabia. He is also a Registered Piano Technician.
Paul received the Lifetime Peacemaker Award from the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center. Another, albeit inadvertent, tribute to Paul’s dedication and effectiveness is this disgusting doxing.
https://www.israellycool.com/2006/06/06/the-loathsome-paul-larudee/) by the blogsite Israellycool.
Recommended background reading: https://syriasupportmovement.org/2023/11/12/genocide-is-israels-strategy/.
Paul tells the story of the founding of ISM here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H6OUStQR9c. Here Paul talks about Syria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHbivUckqC0.