Calendar
Speaker: João Romeiro Hermeto
ZOOM LINK
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3OelectioNl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
The energy crisis in Europe, proxy war in Ukraine, rebellion in the Global South, and expansion of the BRICS reflect the decline of Western imperialism and growing cracks in the capitalist world system.
Based on his new book of the same name (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2024), João Romeiro Hermeto will address some historical developments of intellectual property. He asks what is ‘knowledge’ under capitalism, and how is it created and appropriated?
Developments such as digitalisation and the convergence between big pharma and tech giants are bringing about transformations in social property relations. What are the conditions of intellectual property creation today? What theoretical assumptions does it make? Under what social relations is intellectual property produced?
The emphasis will not be on individual cases or symptoms but on the overarching logic: the logic of capitalism as revealed in intellectual property.
Our speaker is João Romeiro Hermeto. Born in 1985, he originally comes from Brazil, where he studied engineering at the Universidade de São Paulo and then economics. During the upheavals of the financial crisis, he first worked there as an investment banker and then founded a company that produced and promoted art and culture. At the end of 2013 he emigrated to Germany, studied philosophy and cultural reflection and did his doctorate in philosophy. His research focus is criticism of capitalism.
Recommended:
With Western imperial decline, capitalism is in crisis – a new phase is emerging
João Romeiro Hermeto is a Brazilian-Italian scholar. In Brazil, he studied engineering and then economics at the Universidade de São Paulo. During the upheavals of the financial crisis, he worked with derivatives credit risk management for an investment bank from 2007 to 2011 and subsequently founded a company that produced and promoted art and culture. In 2013, he emigrated to Europe, studied philosophy and culture, and earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Universität Witten/Herdecke. His research focuses on Marxism and the ontology of the social being, on the critique of political economy, and on the critique of knowledge production – ideology and intellectual property.
Pro-Israel lobby sways Berkeley councilmembers to replace commissioners on the Peace & Justice Commission that was scheduled to discuss a Gaza Ceasefire reso tonite. Mtg canceled due to bogus technicality. Rally ON! pic.twitter.com/6b0NmfrEuf
— Elana Auerbach (@elana4berkeley) September 3, 2024
Bay Area: please show up for the Global Monthly Vigils happening around the world on the first Wednesday of the month, every month, as we urgently tell President Biden: Close Guantánamo NOW and release the 16 Muslim men who have been cleared for release—some for well over a decade.
Biden must follow his own words and CLOSE GITMO ASAP!
“America will not torture. We will uphold the rights of those who we bring to justice. And we will close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay…. [W]e say to our friends that the alliances, treaties and international organizations we build must be credible and they must be effective. That requires a common commitment not only to listen and live by the rules, but to enforce the rules when they are, in fact, clearly violated”
~US Vice President Joe Biden, February 2009
President George W. Bush declared his wish to shutter the prison that he had opened. Both Obama and Biden promised to do the same. NOW may well be the last chance for Guantánamo closure; Trump had planned to enlarge the facility for more ‘bad guys’; Kamala Harris has thus far been quiet on the issue.
Please join World Can’t Wait, Amnesty International and the many co-sponsoring organizations worldwide to deliver that message on Wednesday, September 4, 3PM at the traffic island (Harry Bridges Plaza) outside the SF Ferry Building.
The Green Party of California co-sponsors the Missouri Green Party’s Black & Green Wednesday Webinar Series, and we invite you to tune in to the September 4 webinar, Curing Electoral Dysfunction.
From the organizers:
- We all see it, the election process is not working. But how can we fix it?
- How can Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) remove the “spoiler effect”?
- What’s the difference between “Approval voting” and RCV?
- How could “proportional representation” give us a voice, and how could it work combined with RCV?
- What about the backroom deals and dark money?
- How can we end the silencing of progressive voices?
Speakers will address these issues and ask for questions and thoughts from the audience. Hear from:
- Philena Farley, Green Party of Ohio
- Larry Bradley, Better Ballot KC
- Mike Feinstein, Former GP Mayor, Santa Monica CA
- Michael Bagdes-Canning, Green Party of Pennsylvania
- Oliver Hall, Center for Competitive Democracy
- Jill Stein, Green Party Presidential Candidate (moderator)
The webinar is NO COST, but you need to REGISTER to attend. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on joining the meeting.
Assaults on refugee camps, including those in Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarem, constitute the largest attack by Zionists on the West Bank in over 20 years. Bold-faced forced displacement exposes the genocidal intent of the Zionist entity.
Join us Friday, September 6th, 6:30pm at San José City Hall to demand Hands Off the West Bank! Stop the Genocide on Palestine! No More Zionist Apartheid and Terrorism! Stop U.S. Aid to Israel! Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!
Initiated by San José Against War (SJAW)
Suds, Snacks, and Socialism
Please register in advance at
https://bit.ly/2024DownBallot
to receive your personal link to participate in this event online
Here in California, there is no question about who will get the electoral votes. But there are a lot of issues and ballot measures that could have great consequence for the lives of working people. Will we finally repeal Costa-Hawkins and get the possibility of effective rent control? Will Alameda County’s progressive D.A. keep her job and continue prosecuting killer cops and corporate criminals?
Join our speakers who will discuss some of these issues. And bring your own ideas about what measures are important on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Bill Balderston – Alameda County Green Party County Council
Marsha Feinland – Peace and Freedom Party of California
Walter Riley – Oakland Civil Rights Attorney
John Selawsky – 35-year Berkeley Resident and Activist
*Organizations listed for identification purposes only.
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>
Coming up Oct. 5: The Presidential Election
Ya'll don't want to miss this special event in Oakland September 7 featuring courageous survivors leading the work of the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition. RSVP to join us 7-9pm for community-building, storytelling & advocacy updates: https://t.co/ZaopokQzD9 pic.twitter.com/JR6CcDcXrp
— CCWP (@c_c_w_p) August 9, 2024
Speaker: Gabriel Rockhill
Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn, by Domenico Losurdoa, is a paradigm-shifting book that provides a trenchant critique of the Western left intelligentsia. It reveals how its dominant ideological orientation�characterized by defeatism, utopianism, and anti-commuunism�is rooted in the political economy of imperialism. Internationnally acclaimed theorist Domenico Losurdo thus provides a fresh and challenging perspective on purportedly radical thinkers who have been widely promoted in the imperial core
Our speaker, Gabriel Rockhill, is a philosopher and activist who has published nine books. He is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University.
Our Zoom room will be opened up as usual at 10:15 AM Pacific Time for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up, and say hi. The program (and recording) will begin at 10:30 AM and will end at 12:30 PM.
Join Zoom Meeting https://villanova.zoom.us/j/5056623120?omn=92842903705
Meeting ID: 505 662 3120
Join us for a A Teach-In Introducing the Debt Collective – the nation’s first union of debtors. w/ local Bay Area organizers Maddy Clifford and Emily Birnbaum. Learn how debtor’s unions are organizing alongside labor unions and tenant unions to combat the financialization of our most basic needs like housing, education and healthcare. Share your personal story, your dream for an economically just future and build solidarity with other debtors and our allies. Plus, free resources to fight your eviction in California AND free copies of Debt Collective’s In These Times takeover issue *first 50 people*
Speaker: Radhika Desai
To Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
The application of Neoliberal Economics had its beginning with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. It held its sway for almost four decades starting when China allowed G-7 capital to exploit a vast pool of labor power, but unlike in the past when it resulted in failed economics in the Third World, China rose as an economic giant in just three decades, with the Communist Party of China firmly controlling the process. The US workers largely lost good industrial wages even as they benefited from cheaper consumer products imported from China in these three decades. But lately the Chinese economy has also run into a slowdown and as shown by the recent parliamentary elections in India and Mexico, the Neoliberal Economics has lost support from the vast majority of these two countries and there appears to be opposition to it in China as well. Prof. Desai’s talk will focus on this core issue and how it is related to the decline of the G-7 group of countries, and its impact on the geopolitics and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
Radhika Desai is the convener of the International Manifesto Group (https://internationalmanifesto.org/), which analyzes the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of the world order. From around the world, they represent a diversity of currents of anti-imperialist socialist thought.
Dr. Desai is professor at the Department of Political Studies and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba. Among her many publications are Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party. She is also the author of numerous articles in Economic and Political Weekly, International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture, and nationalism. With Alan Freeman, she co-edits the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press and the Future of Capitalism book series with Pluto Press.
Her article, “The Long Shadow of Hiroshima: Capitalism and Nuclear Weapons, International Critical Thought,” was published online: 08 Apr 2022 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21598282.2022.2051582?tab=permissions&scroll=top
Medical debt shouldn’t exist.
More than 100 million people in the U.S. are actively struggling with medical debt. It’s an injustice that’s costing us our livelihoods, economic stability, and, in far too many cases, our lives.
As election season ramps up and politicians pay lip service to the issue, we can’t make the mistake of accepting minor concessions and band-aid fixes as solutions. If we want to put an end to medical debt, we need to strike at the root of the problem – our predatory, prrofit-driven healthcare system.
That’s why we’re hosting a National Call for Medical Debt Abolition. We’ll discuss our experiences with medical debt, strategies for tackling corporate control of our healthcare, and ways to build the fight for healthcare as a reparative public good. will you join us?
The medical-industrial complex is hostile and dysfunctional, and the corporate interests invested in keeping it that way have a lot of money to throw around. But we have people, we have our anger, and we know how to organize. Together, we can fight back against industry giants and a complicit state.
Community groups have long been pushing the California Air Resources Board to prioritize environmental justice. Now CARB is at least asking for our input. The powerful agency is holding a series of public meetings around California in the next few weeks to discuss how to “incorporate environmental justice into future research on air quality, climate change, health, and sustainable communities.” It wants to hear about research needs and priorities. Outcomes from the meeting will impact CARB’s 5-Year Strategic Research Plan and help guide potential research projects for the 2025-2030 time period.
Refinery activist Kathy Kerridge reminds us that “CARB’s research informs regulations, programs, and incentives that affect people in our neighborhood and region.” Her Benicia Community Air Monitoring Program is cosponsoring the September 23rd meeting in Richmond.
An online meeting option is available if you can’t attend one of the in-person meetings. You can also provide written recommendations by emailing: research@arb.ca.gov.
Register here.
Co-Hosted with: Benicia Community Air Monitoring Program
Tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/B5XC2lVtV9
— Y Disassembler (@loomdoop) September 23, 2024
FORMERLY INCARCERATED SHORTS PROGRAM
The Berkeley Film Foundation presents a program of shorts by and about formerly incarcerated filmmakers, with a post program Q&A. The films include �
Finding Ma (14 minutes), about a Vietnamese family struggling with the ramifications of foster care and imprisonment was they search for their homeless mother in Sacramento;
Friendly Signs (22 minutes), wherein an San Quentin inmate and his older deaf brother start a sign language course the prison;
The Bridge Between Two Worlds (30 minutes), in which two parolees released from San Quentin reinvent themselves by attending a private school in Marin; and
Judging Juries which examines injustices in the jury system that adversely impact defendants and deny them fundamental rights.
A diverse group of changemakers, knowledge-holders, and innovators, hosted by the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, will explore how we can “disrupt the corporation-enriching global extractive system that results in widespread injustice, poverty, hunger, climate change, and irreversible environmental destruction.”
Forty years ago, Bhopal, India, experienced the world’s worst-ever corporation-caused disaster, resulting in the deaths and disabling of hundreds of thousands of marginalized people over multiple generations. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, corporations have been exploiting, polluting, and appropriating land and people for over a century.
In this event, survivor-activists of the 1984 chemical disaster will join in solidarity and conversation with Bay Area environmental justice activists. Participants—including environmentalists, labor organizers, community/indigenous leaders, housing experts, artists, lawyers, activists, agroecologists, scientists, and other knowledge-holders from a diverse range of ethnicities and perspectives—will discuss how frontline/indigenous communities and activists are taking on what continues to be the greatest challenge of our time.
Seats are limited. Please reserve yours with QR code in the graphic or here.
Tickets: Sliding scale donation $5 and up.
RSVP
Please join the rally!
“If you’ve been waiting to turn up for that one protest action for the unhoused, this’ll be it! We need numbers, folks, as we want the city of Berkeley to here our outlay at their unjust actions! See you there.”