Calendar
Speaker: José Luis Granados Ceja
Our program is about the México Solidarity Project (https://mexicosolidarityproject.org/), which recognizes the 2018 presidential election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party offer the first opportunity to end the corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests that has marked the 70 years of neoliberal dominance.
The project offers critical support for Morena, a left-leaning populist political party rooted in anti-neoliberalism and a staunch defender of national sovereignty. It is immersed in the social movements in México struggling for basic rights for workers and people in all marginalized groups. These voices for radical change sometimes line up with Morena and sometimes, as with the Zapatistas, do not. The project’s most basic goals are to promote people-to-people understanding across borders and to concentrate efforts to oppose the US dominance that undermines México’s national sovereignty.
Our speaker, José Luis Granados Ceja, is with the México Solidarity Project and is on the staff of Venezuelanalysis (https://venezuelanalysis.com/) and formerly with TeleSUR. He was born in Mexico City and spent his life migrating throughout the Americas. It was his experience as a migrant that led to his development of class consciousness at a young age. In 2005 he would travel to Venezuela to participate in the World Festival of Youth and Students, an experience that would change him forever and instill in him a passion for resisting imperialism and defending popular power.
In 2018, he realized his dream of returning to Mexico as writer and photojournalist to produce stories about the people of Latin America: workers fighting to improve the lives of their families and communities, thinkers teaching the world about how to secure justice, and activists on the frontlines of social change putting their beliefs into practice every day.
Some of José Lius’s articles:
Venezuela, Non-Aligned Movement Condemn Israel’s ‘Illegal’ Assault on Gaza, https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-non-aligned-movement-condemn-israels-illegal-assault-on-gaza/.
Protests Against AMLO’s Reforms Reveal the Strongholds of Mexico’s Ancien Régime,
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/protest-mexico-amlo-ine/.
Latin American Leaders Reject US-Imposed Migration Policies at Palenque Summit, https://truthout.org/articles/latin-american-leaders-reject-us-imposed-migration-policies-at-palenque-summit/
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.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
Ken Hammond is professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State Unive rsity. He holds a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. He lived in Beijing from 1982-1987, and has taught and travelled in China many times over the ensuing years. From 2007 until 2017 he was co-director of the Confucius Institute at New Mexico State. He has written numerous books and articles on early modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, and is most recently the author of China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future.
The talk will explore China’s efforts to achieve the stated objective of building an “ecological civilization” as part of the global struggle with climate change and planetary warming. I will discuss China’s achievements in alternative energy development and carbon emissions and the country’s commitments to meaningful environmental goals. I will also consider the problems facing the leaders and the people of China as they pursue these goals, including the efforts of the U.S. government to slow or stall China’s economic development, the questions surrounding population trends, and the balancing of raising material living standards while striving to reduce fossil fuel use, especially coal.
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Meeting ID: 880 8334 2274
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Ken Hammond is professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University. He holds a PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University. He lived in Beijing from 1982-1987, and has taught and travelled in China many times over the ensuing years. From 2007 until 2017 he was co-director of the Confucius Institute at New Mexico State. He has written numerous books and articles on early modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history, and is most recently the author of China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future.
The talk will explore China’s efforts to achieve the stated objective of building an “ecological civilization” as part of the global struggle with climate change and planetary warming. I will discuss China’s achievements in alternative energy development and carbon emissions and the country’s commitments to meaningful environmental goals. I will also consider the problems facing the leaders and the people of China as they pursue these goals, including the efforts of the U.S. government to slow or stall China’s economic development, the questions surrounding population trends, and the balancing of raising material living standards while striving to reduce fossil fuel use, especially coal
Green Sundays are a series of free public programs & discussions on topics “du jour” sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County and held on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The monthly business meeting of the County Council of the Green Party follows at 7:00 pm, after a 30-minute break. Council meetings are open to anyone who is interested.
Join Zoom Meeting:
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Meeting ID: 880 8334 2274
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STUDENT & COMMUNITY PANEL
Presented by: Hong Seng Campaign, Grad Students for Justice in
Palestine, People’s Park Berkeley, & Blackstone Divestment Campaign
Where is our tuition money going?
Learn about the UC’s unethical investments
and what WE can do about it.
The University of California, Berkeley is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovatiion and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university’s roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in his latest book, The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley’s history.
Tony Platt is the author of thirteen books dealing with issues of inequality, power, and justice in American history. Platt, a longtime activist, is currently a Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at Cal Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law & Society.
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.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
NOTE: Our programs are all recorded and a link will be placed on our website soon after they are finished.
Join the Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8759275991
Have you ever wondered how socialists should engage with elections? With the threat of Trump back in office in 2024 and a Democratic Party insistent on sacrificing Palestinian lives even if it means losing the presidency, the question has never been more urgent.
This Night School is a 101- and 201-level dive into the way socialists approach running for office and governing, which we call class-struggle elections. It’s geared toward new members and old heads alike. Bring a coworker, a mentee, or a friend! We’ll be joined by NYC DSA’s Zohran Mamdani from the New York State Assembly, plus EBDSA-endorsed Oakland School Board member Valarie Bachelor, who will talk about how they use their offices to build movements.
We encourage everyone to do the readings, but everyone is welcome regardless of whether they’ve done the readings.
Readings:
Class-Struggle Politicians Are Organizers First, Legislators Second, by Jack McShane, 2019 – https://socialistcall.com/2019/08/01/class-struggle-politicians-dsa-elections/
How a Grassroots Movement is Building Political Power: Notes From Richmond, California, by Mike Parker, 2020 – https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/26/how-a-grassroots-movement-is-building-political-power-notes-from-richmond-california/
Mike Parker on Political Action, 2021 – https://socialistcall.com/2022/01/20/mike-parker-electoral-strategy/
Palestine, labour activism and the US presidential elections, by Neal Meyer, 2024 – https://links.org.au/palestine-labour-activism-and-us-presidential-elections-interview-neal-meyer-bread-roses-dsa
Join us for a lively and informative discussion at the ROE V WADE: PROTECTING ABORTION RIGHTS PANEL event.
Our panelists, Liberty Crochet Mural Artists, TEACH (Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare) and other activists/practitioners will delve into the history, current status, and future of abortion rights in the US. Get ready to hear diverse perspectives and engage in thought-provoking conversations.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn and connect with others who are passionate about this important issue.
PANELISTS:
Flor Hunt (TEACH)
Kathryn Vercillo (Liberty Crochet Mural)
Ujjayini Sikha (WOMEN RISING Artist)
Tisha Kenny (Artist, activist and health care practitioner)
Dr. Cynthia Farner (OB/GYN)
More info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roe-v-wade-protecting-abortion-rights-panel-tickets-859205295167
This Friday, March 22nd from 3-7pm we are excited to do a soft launch of The People’s Clinic!
The People’s Clinic is an abolitionist wellness and recovery center for people impacted by state/police violence and frontline organizers taking action against genocide.
(1/3) pic.twitter.com/aN3uXvzkrf
— Anti Police-Terror Project (@APTPaction) March 21, 2024
Start this weekend off with a distinguished and lively group of activists for disability rights. This is the fifth in a series of special gatherings co-hosted by the One Payer States group.
The event will focus on what the disability community needs from a single-payer system and how single-payer health care can benefit an important part of our population,
Register here for the Zoom link.
The summit features:
- Keynote speaker Rep. Debbie Dingell (MI-6), co-chair of both the Medicare for All and Bipartisan Disabilities caucuses in Congress
- Facilitator Patricia Chadwick, co-founder of the Disability Social History Project
- Special guests including disability, medical, indigenous, and youth activists
Health Care for All – California
Speaker: Basudev Nag Chowdhury, People’s Brigade, India
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
Neoliberalism began in the last quarter of the 20th century, when the accumulated capital in the G-7 was allowed to penetrate much of the world that had closed its doors to foreign capital: Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam. India, Africa and Latin America. These are the countries which together today have the vast majority of the global low wage working class in numbers. Yet, only after a decade and a half, the economic crisis returned in 2008. It was then postponed by a huge expansion of credit. But as is evident by new wars and tensions rising between major powers of the world, the economic crisis of capitalism has not been overcome. Yet, there is no mass movement of workers as yet on the horizon against capitalism even when a majority of the world’s workers today are unable to make ends meet.
The presentation will briefly explain the definition of Neoliberalism as the current capitalist era of ‘Temporal mode of production’ (speculative futures trading of stocks); against conventional economists, Marxists, who describe Neoliberalism as a set of policies. The presentation will then focus on explaining the significant change in class-correlation (capitalists vs. petit bourgeoisie, better paid workers and proletarians) on the basis of Marx’s fundamental theory and the origin of the cyclic crises of this new-age capitalism. We will compare our analyses against two major recent theoretical contributions: one by Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik, and the other by Yanis Varoufakis. We will further explain the origin of right-wing opportunism pervaded through the majority of the existing Communist Parties. Finally, we will briefly discuss the nature of new-age fascism and the tactics that should be adopted by the Left forces.
Our speaker, Basudev Nag Chowdhury, is a young activist, organizer and agitator and an organic intellectual. He is a physicist by education. He is a leader in a new Marxist-Leninist Communist Party based in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, called ‘The Workers’ Brigade’, which he among others helped form in the past few years, after the CPI-Marxist was routed from West Bengal by Trinamool Congress, a bourgeois political party, led by a fiery orator, Mamta Banerjee. The Workers’ Brigade has organized the Bidi workers in West Bengal state in tobacco and in other industries. (NOTE: Bidi is a rolled tobacco leaf, smoked by very low wage majority women workers � i.e. proletarians)
Basudev Nag Chowdhury is writing a new book, still in progress, titled: ‘Neoliberalism, the stage of Irresolvable Contradictions of Capitalism’. He lives and works in Kolkata, India.
In partnership with the Wellstone Club: a viewing of Abortion and Women’s Rights 1970. This film serves as a powerful reminder of the conditionsand demands that inspired the movement for abortion rights fifty years ago, and speaks to the need for safe, legal abortion and the broader fight for reproductive justice today.
- Abortion and Women’s Rights 1970
- Directed by Catha Maslow, Jane Pincus, Mary Summers, and Karen Weinstein
- Sunday, March 24 at 7:00 PM
- On Zoom
- Introductions by Kate Harrison and Karen Weinstein
Karen Weinstein made this film with three other activists over 50 years ago and would have hoped that it would be irrelevant today. But it isn’t. They made this film when most of the legislators were male, and there were few women’s voices being heard. They wanted those voices to be heard.
ACLU NorCal is pleased to partner with Colmena Consulting to offer From Awareness to Action, a three-hour workshop designed especially for you, our donor community.
You’re aware of racial inequity. You know what inclusion is. You consider yourself anti-racist. But you’re wondering: Now what? What else can I actually do, day-to-day and over the long-term, to make a concrete change?
From Awareness to Action is an interactive, virtual workshop that takes you through a unique process to arrive upon tangible steps – designed for you by you – to make the most of everything you can give to this work.
Zoom (log-in details provided upon registration)
RSVP NOW
Colmena Consulting is a radical consulting cooperative of change-makers with systematically marginalized identities and social justice values, seeking to create change through new models of work.
Awareness to Action is a workshop they’ve fine-tuned, especially for ACLU NorCal supporters. It helps translate political beliefs into personal actions. The focus of this workshop is not ACLU NorCal’s racial justice program or work. It’s about you.
Accessibility is important to us. Live captioning will be provided, and we welcome other accommodation requests. Please use the RSVP form to share any accommodation requests or email us at events@aclunc.org.
Space in this workshop is limited and will likely fill up. To learn more and claim your spot, register today. RSVPs will be accepted until the workshop is full or 3/21.
Mark your calendars, we hope to see you there!
ACLU of Northern California
To prepare:
Reading: Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism by Marta Harnecker, Chapter 5 “Base and Superstructure”, Chapter 6 “The ideological structure”, Chapter 7 “Juridico-Political Structure”, Intro, Chapter 4 “Economic Structure of Society”.
- Supplemental reading for context: The Philosophy of Marxism, the section titled “Materialism”.
This will be the second installment of the chapter’s new Socialist Fundamentals series, which was approved at our November 2023 chapter general meeting!The purpose of the Socialist Fundamentals series is to build a common language for socialists in our chapter – through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same texts as a group. The series is 11 self-contained parts and includes writing from famous socialists like Karl Marx and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, as well as less well-known but rigorous and important writers like Chilean Marxist Marta Harnecker, and East Bay DSA member Mike Parker.
The emphasis is on material that is either relevant for organizers in DSA today, presents or grapples with ideas that are historically significant for the socialist movement, or both.
Bioneers, “Revolution from the Heart of Nature,” will hold its 35th annual conference in Berkeley this year. Leaders, activists, and healers will give talks and lead discussions and workshops on a wide range of topics including: indigenous rights and wisdom, climate issues, digital rights and democracy, many approaches to personal healing, effective persuasion, reproductive justice, dealing with conflict, debtors’ rights, just transition, fossil fuels in the Amazon, the danger of rising fascism — and many more.
The conference will also include films, social gatherings, and more.
The introduction to this year’s conference says:
“We’re already in overtime. The driving question is whether we have sufficient time to make the transformational change necessary to begin to heal and regenerate people and planet.
“We need to connect and scale the constellation of brilliant social movements to reach critical mass and enact . . . breakthrough systemic solutions.”
Members of the Sunflower Alliance community can get a 20% discount using the code: Sunflower20
WHERE
UC Berkeley Zellerbach Hall and locations in downtown Berkeley
REGISTER EARLY FOR LOWER COST!
Rates go up February 21 and again March 13
Register here
Bioneers, “Revolution from the Heart of Nature,” will hold its 35th annual conference in Berkeley this year. Leaders, activists, and healers will give talks and lead discussions and workshops on a wide range of topics including: indigenous rights and wisdom, climate issues, digital rights and democracy, many approaches to personal healing, effective persuasion, reproductive justice, dealing with conflict, debtors’ rights, just transition, fossil fuels in the Amazon, the danger of rising fascism — and many more.
The conference will also include films, social gatherings, and more.
The introduction to this year’s conference says:
“We’re already in overtime. The driving question is whether we have sufficient time to make the transformational change necessary to begin to heal and regenerate people and planet.
“We need to connect and scale the constellation of brilliant social movements to reach critical mass and enact . . . breakthrough systemic solutions.”
Members of the Sunflower Alliance community can get a 20% discount using the code: Sunflower20
WHERE
UC Berkeley Zellerbach Hall and locations in downtown Berkeley
REGISTER EARLY FOR LOWER COST!
Rates go up February 21 and again March 13
Register here
Bioneers, “Revolution from the Heart of Nature,” will hold its 35th annual conference in Berkeley this year. Leaders, activists, and healers will give talks and lead discussions and workshops on a wide range of topics including: indigenous rights and wisdom, climate issues, digital rights and democracy, many approaches to personal healing, effective persuasion, reproductive justice, dealing with conflict, debtors’ rights, just transition, fossil fuels in the Amazon, the danger of rising fascism — and many more.
The conference will also include films, social gatherings, and more.
The introduction to this year’s conference says:
“We’re already in overtime. The driving question is whether we have sufficient time to make the transformational change necessary to begin to heal and regenerate people and planet.
“We need to connect and scale the constellation of brilliant social movements to reach critical mass and enact . . . breakthrough systemic solutions.”
Members of the Sunflower Alliance community can get a 20% discount using the code: Sunflower20
WHERE
UC Berkeley Zellerbach Hall and locations in downtown Berkeley
REGISTER EARLY FOR LOWER COST!
Rates go up February 21 and again March 13
Register here
The Oakland Greens Free Dinner & a Movie Discussion Series is a hybrid community discussion event.
The Whale is a 2022 American drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Samuel D. Hunter, based on his 2012 play of the same name. The film stars Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Ty Simpkins, and Samantha Morton. The plot follows a reclusive English teacher with morbid obesity who tries to restore his relationship with his teenage daughter.
The Whale premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2022. It had a limited theatrical release in the US on December 9, before a wide release on December 21 by A24, grossing $54.9 million against a budget of $3 million. The film received a polarized response; though critics lauded the acting, particularly Fraser, Chau and Sink, the film’s portrayal of obesity-related struggles drew criticism. For his performance, Fraser won the Academy Award, Critics’ Choice Award and SAG Award for Best Actor, while the film also won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Chau was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Join the Oakland Greens for this free community event — dinner starts at 6:30 PM and movie promptly at 7 PM.
The Oakland Greens Free Dinner & a Movie Discussion Series is a hybrid community discussion event. Get in persxn & virtual tickets and information thru http://www.oaklandgreens.org/events These community engagement hybrid events are held the last Sunday of the month January thru October. All Oakland Greens events are held in community partnership with It’s Your Move Games & Hobbies 4920 Telegraph Ave., Suite B, Oakland, CA.
Please register before 6:00 pm today (Saturday) at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-dinner-a-movie-discussion-series-presented-by-oakland-greens-tickets-786786007127?aff=ebdsoporgprofile