If you are looking for ways to support our local Afghan community in Alameda County, check out this upcoming conversation

A conversation with Afghani community leaders who will discuss the current crisis in Afghanistan, its effects on the Afghan community at home, and the most effective ways that Afghanis and allies can show support during these troubled times. Learn more. https://t.co/4WZtnZ0NGk pic.twitter.com/LTZNdk9hku

— AC Library (@aclib) September 13, 2021

Drawing on confidential documents from leaders of the real estate industry, Gene Slater reveals how realtors systematically created and justified residential segregation.

To defend all-white neighborhoods against the civil rights movement, realtors put the right to discriminate at the center of individual liberty, effectively redefining and weaponizing “freedom” and providing a roadmap for conservatives nationally. This far-reaching strategy reached its peak when realtors successfully campaigned for a California constitutional amendment that would permanently prohibit fair housing. In the process they created the script of color-blind freedom that polarizes America on issue after issue today.

Slater reveals how California and its powerful realtors would shape segregation for years to come. He shows why one of the first all-white neighborhoods was created in Berkeley, why the state was the perfect place for Ronald Reagan’s political ascension, and how Reagan’s early career—drawing on the realtors’ arguments—would lay the groundwork for current conservative narratives.

A landmark history told with supreme narrative skill, Freedom to Discriminate traces the increasingly aggressive ways realtors justified their practices, and how America’s divides and current debates are rooted in the history of segregated neighborhoods. Slater makes a case that shatters preconceptions about American segregation, connecting seemingly disparate features of the nation’s history in a new and galvanizing way.

Gene Slater has served as senior advisor on housing for federal, state, and local agencies for over forty years. He cofounded and chairs CSG Advisors, which has been one of the nation’s leading advisors on affordable housing for decades. He has advised on housing issues in thirty states. His projects have received numerous national awards, and in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009 he helped design the program by which the United States Treasury financed homes for 110,000 first-time buyers. He received degrees from Columbia, MIT, and Stanford, as well as a mid-career fellowship from Harvard. He has lived and worked in New York, Boston, rural Wisconsin, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently resides.

How do we co-create a world without prisons?

Reimagining Safety gathers yrs of organizing wisdom w/Myrtle Thompson-Curtis, @CatsCommentary, and @Combsthepoet about how they are reimagining communal safety without police.

Join us on 9/23 @5PM https://t.co/r6Ogw2fRAM pic.twitter.com/B0fWyeokpQ

— Anti Police-Terror Project (@APTPaction) September 16, 2021

Check it out tomorrow at 6:00 pm Demand that MACRO operate 24/7! https://t.co/Q2TKAozdq5… pic.twitter.com/VerBVwnLgS

— Coalition for Police Accountability (@oakcopoversight) September 22, 2021

On September 25th, the Regional Tenant Organizing Network is hosting an assembly to celebrate tenant power across the Bay Area. Tenants have been fighting hard and we must continue to connect, build, organize, and win!

Help grow the movement for housing justice, sign up today to attend the Bay Area Tenant Assembly

Who should attend: Bay Area Renters

Live entertainment, free food, childcare, and Spanish interpretation will be provided. Interpretation for other languages will be provided as needed. Please email james@urbanhabitat.org if you have any questions or concerns.

Join the East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee for our first Beer & Roses social in over a year and a half!

Meet, talk, and hang out with DSA members and fellow travelers who are interested in building worker power in the workplace and transforming the labor movement into a strong, militant, and democratic working-class force for change. Hear about what’s happening in the EBDSA Labor Committee and learn how you can get involved.

Some food and beverage will be provided, but feel free to bring something to drink and share with your friends. Also feel free to bring yard games and wear your union shirt (or if you aren’t in a union, a shirt that says something about what you do for work).

Close to BART and bus stops. Accessible restrooms.

***In an effort to be safe and responsible with Covid, we ask that all attendees bring a mask AND their vaccination card. We will be keeping a record of all in attendance in case we need to communicate with you afterward about anything Covid-related.***

Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the the online invite.

For September, 2021 we’re reading the first two sections of “The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society.” by Eric D. Beinhocker. (e.g. Amazon, Powell’s, possibly available in libraries.

For October, we’ll be finishing the book.

Over 6.4 billion people participate in a $36.5 trillion global economy, designed and overseen by no one. How did this marvel of self-organized complexity evolve? How is wealth created within this system? And how can wealth be increased for the benefit of individuals, businesses, and society? In The Origin of Wealth, Eric D. Beinhocker argues that modern science provides a radical perspective on these age-old questions, with far-reaching implications. According to Beinhocker, wealth creation is the product of a simple but profoundly powerful evolutionary formula: differentiate, select, and amplify. In this view, the economy is a “complex adaptive system” in which physical technologies, social technologies, and business designs continuously interact to create novel products, new ideas, and increasing wealth… A landmark book that shatters conventional economic theory, The Origin of Wealth will rewire our thinking about how we came to be here– 

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, and Exploring Degrowth.

A young Fidel Castro and his July 26 Movement cadre faced critical questions immediately following their defeat of the Fulgenco Batista Army and Batista’s U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1958-59. Initially, Fidel, previously an attorney from a wealthy family, was characterized as a moderate reformer and past member of one of Cuba’s two main bourgeois parties, the Orthodox Party. Pledged to restoring Cuba’s 1941 constitution that dictator Batista abrogated, the Castro team appointed two bourgeois politicians to the top posts. Manual Urrutia became President and José Miró Cardona became Prime Minister. Both were prominent anti-Batista politicians and both were deeply committed to Cuban business interests and capitalism. The events that transpired in the following six months fundamentally transformed Cuban society, abolished capitalism, and established a revolutionary government dedicated to socialism. Understanding the Cuban road is critical to an understanding of the flawed course followed for decades and to this day in Nicaragua and Venezuela.

We have invited Jeff Mackler of Socialist Action to speak Jeff was the National Secretary of Socialist Action and its presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020. He was the coordinator of the 1999 “Dialogue With Cuba Conference” at UC Berkeley. Two thousand participated in this first institutionally-sponsored conference including a Cuban delegation of 30. Mackler, who has visited Cuba at the invitation of the Cuban government, is the author of several books and pamphlets on Cuba. He is the director of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, a founder/coordinator of the Bay Area End the Wars Coalition; an Administrative Committee member of the United National Antiwar Coalition, and on the Steering Committee of AssangeDrefense.org

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Emergency Press Conference WEDNESDAY September 29 at 12pm (noon)PT.
Location: Intersection of 8th St. & Harrison, St. Berkeley, Ca.
Spread the word! Show up & show support for residents!#StopTheSweeps #NoMorePovertyTows #StopTheWarOnThePoor #HousingIsAHumanRight pic.twitter.com/8vIC7Iwlrd

— Berkeley Copwatch (@Copwatch411) September 29, 2021

The fossil fuel industry is successfully promoting a huge increase in the production of single-use plastics, adding GHG and toxic pollution at every step.

This webinar will explore how this strategy is increasing fossil-fuel production and worsening the climate crisis.

Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics and former Regional Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will discuss the nexus between plastic production and climate change, including the immense environmental justice impacts.

Graham Forbes, Global Project Leader of the Plastic-Free Future campaign at Greenpeace, will discuss Greenpeace USA’s new report, The Climate Emergency Unpacked: How Consumer Goods Companies are Fueling Big Oil’s Plastic Expansion.

Register here.