OccupyForum presents
Information, discussion & community! Monday Night Forum!!
OccupyForum is an opportunity for open and respectful dialogue
on all sides of these critically important issues!
Film: The People Speak
(Based on Howard Zinn’s books)
Discussion: Strategy For Resistance
As the newly installed juggernaut in Washington DC lurches forward, apparently dismantling and destroying most of the things valued by a majority of people in this country (whether they realize it or not), such as health care, environmental protections, social security and what little oversight remains of corporations, it may be helpful to remember that throughout US history, many ordinary citizens stood up to the government, corporations
,
and powerful individuals. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they weren’t. But they have repeatedly demonstrated the incredible power of individuals or grassroots movements created by ordinary people.
THE PEOPLE SPEAK is a beautiful and moving film inspired by Howard Zinn’s books
A People‘s History of the United States
first published in 1980 and one of the bestselling history books in the country
and Voices of a People’s History of the United States, the primary-source companion to A People’s History of the United States, edited with Anthony Arnove.
The film features the actual words (in letters, songs, poems, speeches, and manifestos) of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past and present including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Bob Dylan, Langston Hughes, Chief Joseph, Muhammad Ali, and unknown veterans, union workers, abolitionists, and many others never featured in high school textbooks. These dramatic moments from our history are brought to life by a group of remarkable musicians and actors filmed mostly in live performances.
Like Howard Zinn’s work as a whole, THE PEOPLE SPEAK celebrates the extraordinary possibilities for creating social change that ordinary people have realized throughout the course of our nation’s rich, but often ignored, history of dissent and protest.
Following the film, Andy Gillis, Occupier and one of the organizers of the Howard Zinn Book Fair, will facilitate a discussion on how to apply much of what we’ll see in the film to the current authoritarian trend in DC. We can share the various ways we’re resisting individually as well as the groups, movements and ideas we’ve encountered recently and also discuss how we might bring these together under a larger umbrella group or movement. We’ll write up a summary of the discussion and send it out to everyone in preparation for a continuation of the following week’s Forum with author Michael Goldstein.
As Howard Zinn said, “if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
Time will be allotted for announcements.
Donations to Occupy Forum to cover costs are encouraged; no one turned away!
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The words of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were supposed to guarantee that slavery and involuntary servitude effectively were outlawed. The exception of punishment for a crime where the “party shall have been convicted” is the loophole. As detailed in Ava DuVernay’s “The 13th”, the injustice system in America has not changed all that much since the earliest days of slavery. The statistics DuVernay puts onscreen say it all: African-Americans make up 6.5% of the U.S. population but a whopping 40% of the prison population — in a country with the highest level of incarceration in the world; up more than tenfold since 1970 and existing mostly to put away black and Latino men.
Join us to discuss options for the community to put pressure on Phil Tagami to drop his lawsuit. Tagami filed suit in federal court after the Oakland City Council unanimously voted to ban the storage of coal at the marine terminal that Tagami is planning to build on land he leased from the city, Still in its early stages, the lawsuit could make it difficult for local communities to protect themselves from toxic pollutants if it is ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court. We will discuss what we can do to stop this, as well as hear an update about the current status of the lawsuit.