We are hosting a community-based maker fair at Omni Commons!!! There will be artists/vendors, musical performances, and workshops taking place all day throughout the Omni. Please sign up and share with other creatives in your community!

Sign Up to Participate!

EBABZ (East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest) is an annual festival for writers, artists, makers, and everyone who creates or appreciates zines and alternative books. We strive to make EBABZ reflect the diversity, vibrance, and sense of community of the East Bay. Each year over 100 zinesters gather at the fest to share their wares, meet new friends and collaborators, and have an amazing time!
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Speaker: Jack Rasmus

As we head into election 2024, the Biden administration, Democratic Party politicians, and media pundits have has launched an aggressive campaign touting the “accomplishments of Bidenomics.” Yet according to an AP News poll, only 34 percent of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. Democratic Party politicians and pundits echo the theme that the economy is doing great, decry unfounded pessimism, and insist that expressions of discontent are reflections of misinformation and MAGA propaganda.

This Sunday, Economist Dr. Jack Rasmus will set the record straight for working people: what is going on in the economy in 2024? What is the basis in reality for peoples’ discontent with the economy?

Dr. Jack Rasmus (Twitter/X: @drjackrasmus), Ph.D Political Economy, teaches economics at St. Mary’s College of California, and is an Economist, radio show host, & author of The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Bush, Clarity Press, October 2019; Alexander Hamilton & The Origins of the Fed, Lexington books, March 2019; Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression, Clarity Press, August 2018.

ZOOM LINK
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85175860127?pwd=bfZRQOSMuhX9Pfm4qhPMOZMrmE9Ohm.1

On January 26, 2024, the federal court will hear a lawsuit filed by Palestinian plaintiffs charging President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin with complicity in Israel’s genocide. The lawsuit seeks an emergency federal court order to halt U.S. support for these actions. The court holds the authority to compel the U.S. to cease its support, making this an urgent and pivotal case for the millions affected by genocide.

Meeting Location:
Contrary to previous communications, the meeting will not take place at Oscar Grant. Instead, all activities, including the court hearing and support rally, will be hosted at the Federal Building. 14th and Clay St. Oakland.

Event Details:

9:00 a.m. Court case at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, 14th and Clay St., Oakland.
WATCH THE LIVESTREAM HERE
12:00 pm: Rally outside the Federal Building.

Court Hearing Schedule:
The court hearing is scheduled to begin promptly at 9 am. Due to limited seating, we are actively working to secure an overflow room. Please keep an eye out for updates as we strive to provide the best experience for all attendees.

Support and Rally:
Following the hearing, join us at 12:00 p.m. for a rally outside the Federal Building to show support to the plaintiffs and the affected communities. Your presence is vital in highlighting the urgency of this situation and demanding justice.

Accessibility Services:
During the rally, there will be American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation available. If you have specific accessibility needs, including interpretation or any other requirements, please register at the RSVP link provided and let us know in advance. Masks are required, if you are feeling sick please stay home.

PSA Link:
For those who would like to familiarize themselves with the case, we encourage you to watch this week’s PSA, which features speakers from the court case.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85175860127?pwd=bfZRQOSMuhX9Pfm4qhPMOZMrmE9Ohm.1

Speaker: Gabriel Rockhill

According to the dominant ideology, fascism constitutes an exceptional break with the protocols of liberal democracy, which has only happened at rare moments in the history of the West, such as in Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. Liberalism is thereby postulated as a bulwark against fascism, an idea that’s been consolidated through the massive perpetuation of a historical narrative regarding the supposed democratic defeat of Nazism in WWII. This presentation will critically interrogate these assumptions by re-examining the historical relationship between liberal democracy and fascism. Have they always been opposed to one another, or do they sometimes work in concert as two capitalist ideologies? Is it really the case that liberal democratic governments in the imperial core serve as safeguards against fascism? If so, what are we to make of their imperialist foreign policies, their colonial histories, their general tolerance toward fascists, and their current domestic practices of draconian policing, mass incarceration, the militarization of borders, and the empowerment of vigilante militias? In addressing these and parallel questions, this talk will seek to develop a refined dialectical understanding of fascism and liberalism as capitalist modes of governance that are often partners in crime, while also avoiding any simplistic, ultra-leftist conflation between them.

This event will be co-sponsored by the Critical Theory Workshop.

Gabriel Rockhill is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, and the author or editor of nine books, as well as numerous scholarly and general public articles.

See his 2020 Counterpunch article: “Liberalism and Fascism: Partners in Crime:” https://gabrielrockhill.com/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime-article-in-counterpunch/

Also, most recently, his Dec 2023 Interview in Monthly Review: “Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism.”

Home

For more on Rockhill, see his website: https://gabrielrockhill.com/

LOGIN INFORMATION

Our Zoom room will be opened up as usual at 10:15 am for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc.. The program (and recording) will begin at 10:30 am and will end at 12:30pm.

Richmond was once an industrial powerhouse, building automobiles and battleships.  It’s still home to a sprawling oil refinery owned by global fossil fuel colossus, Chevron.  But it’s also well on its way to becoming a cutting-edge laboratory for progressive policy experimentation.

Join us to hear some of the prominent Richmond environmental justice leaders working on the climate challenges facing Richmond: planning for a just transition, tackling the impacts of sea-level rise, and dealing with the financial impact of closing the Chevron refinery.  We’ll also take a look at the plan to improve the air we breathe and the health of our communities.  Bring your questions, and prepare to be inspired!

Speakers: 

Marisol Cantú, grassroots organizer, strategist, teacher, and researcher
Jamin Pursell, community activist

PLEASE REGISTER HERE.

Despite the Ninth Circuit Court ruling against Berkeley’s gas ban for  new buildings, cities and states are finding legal pathways to decarbonize buildings.

Hear — from the people who are making this happen — about the many policy approaches, including building codes and building performance standards, that are still available to states and localities to protect their residents from the impacts of fossil-fuel use.

This panel discussion will include:

* Jonny Kocher and Denise Grab from Rocky Mountain Institute, which is a longtime leader in designing effective climate policy
* Cliff Majersik from the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), which designed the successful strategy in Vancouver, WA
* Daniel Carpenter-Gold from the Public Health Law Center

This is crucial: In many cities in North America, 60 to 80% of climate pollution now comes from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.

Register here

Speaker: Dr. Ranjeet Brar, a member of the CPGB-ML which is being prosecuted for Palestine solidarity activism.

DESCRIPTION:

As part of the campaign of persecution of prominent anti-Zionist campaigners in Britain. November 25, Dr. Ranjeet Brar and three members of the UK CPGB-ML were arrested at the national Palestine solidarity demo for manning a table selling a book critical of the history of Zionism that was published nine years ago and has since been distributed widely.  They were told that the book might constitute an ‘incitement to racial hatred’ for which they were held in isolation for 24 hours before being released on bail.

While imprisoned, their families were subjected to 3:00 AM raids, during which police seized phones, laptops, and party literature. When they were set free the following day, it was on the condition that they should not sell or distribute leaflets or pamphlets, deviate from the main routes of any march, or “carry swastikas” (!) The cases are pending until February.

Then, on the 13th of January, while proceedings were being brought against Israel in the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide and British bombers attacked Yemen, another huge London demonstration in solidarity with Palestine was targeted � this time not in a hunt for ‘antisemites’ but forr ‘terrorist sympathizers’.

Some fifty officers descended on CPGB ML supporters, surrounding them and confiscating their literature (the leaflet that they seized had been distributed at every Palestine demonstration since October).  Three supporters were arrested.  The justification for the arrests was that the leaflet “supported Hamas, a banned organization” in breach of the 2000 UK Terrorism Act.

Three comrades were arrested, taken to Hammersmith police station, and held for 28 hours, during which time their homes were raided by large squads of anti-terror police. The legislation used to justify our comrades’ arrest (an extension of the ‘anti-terror’ law that was first enacted at the time of the Irish liberation war in the 1970s) gives the UK government wide ranging and draconian powers to act against its citizens � if they are alloweed to establish the precedent of using it freely against the pro-Palestine anti-Zionist protesters.

Our speaker, Ranjeet Brar, is a pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist activist, journalist, author, and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (ML), which is being prosecuted for Palestine solidarity activism. Dr. Brar is a Vascular Surgeon at the University of Sheffield Royal College of Surgeons of England, United Kingdom

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1

Help defeat San Francisco’s Proposition E.

Now that the campaign has launched, we need you to volunteer. I want to extend a warm invite to join us for a Day of Action on Sunday, February 4 at 11 a.m. where we will reach voters to encourage them to vote NOPE (No On Prop E). Lunch will be provided. Grab signs and hand-outs to spread the word!

We are also hosting weekly text banks to reach perspective voters and explain why we oppose Prop E. Text banks will be held on the following days and will last for approximately 2 hours. We are particularly looking for volunteers who speak Spanish or Cantonese.

• Tuesday, January 30 at 5:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, February 6 at 12 p.m.

> RSVP to policy@ellabakercenter.org for the Zoom link

So, please join us in February for a virtual community gathering where we will be responding to letters we receive from people inside prisons and jails in California and across the country. We will be sending in legal resources, parole preparation packets, reentry help, and answers to people’s questions. There will be an “Intro” room for new folks, a problem-solving room, and a “Special Issue” room too! You can also plug into our Calls to Action before/after Mail Night this month. Virtual Prison Mail Night happens on the second Thursday of each month.

Please join Families for Ceasefire at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater on Saturday February 10th for a children’s rally from 11:30am – 1:30pm, in advance of the Gaza Solidarity Ride and in response to Mosab Abu Toha’s call for children of the world to take to the streets and demand a ceasefire. We will have children’s activities and encourage everyone to bring signs, snacks and noisemakers!

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

For our February meeting we will be reading the first half (Chapters 1 -6) of How Infrastructure Works, Inside the Systems that Shape our World by Deb Chachra.  (MIT Press) For our March meeting we will finish reading the book.

“A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us.

Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.

A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.

Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late.”

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, Jackson Rising Redux and The Feminist Subversion of the Economy.