ECOTOPIA 2050 5-PART SPEAKER SERIES

Ecotopia 2050 is designed as a 5 Episode speaker discussion series with the first episode serving as an introduction/prelude to the event. The speaker discussion series is paired with corresponding book club meetings that give participants a more intimate opportunity to discuss the themes of the book in the community.

Based on the 1975 blockbuster utopian novel Ecotopia, this discussion and book club event series revisit some of the futuristic visions of the Ernest Callenbach classic. His visionary ideas, and those of his generation, that he so skillfully captured in Ecotopia are a fascinating amalgam of technical, economic, societal, and cultural transformations. They are predictive on so many levels, and the series will explore what has come true, what remains on the list of things to do that were proposed, and what new visions we might begin to pull together in the construction of an updated Ecotopian vision of today.

Registration Instructions
1. Choose your experience (single episode) or full series
2. Are you joining the book club? *choose the add on
Note: You must be registered for the full series if you register for book club.
3. Check out.
4. A secure Zoom link will be sent 24 hours ahead of event time to registered email.

Register Here

Alameda County Will Provide Free COVID-19 and Flu Shots at the Oakland Coliseum!

COVID testing: 10/31 – 11/2, 9 AM – 5 PM, age 4+
Appointments: https://t.co/4NeqfutnZv

Flu shots: 11/3, 6:30 AM – 7:30 PM. No appointment needed.

Read more: https://t.co/Vu71xaseCR pic.twitter.com/BtyBply24B

— Supervisor Keith Carson (@Keith_Carson) October 29, 2020

Now more than ever we need to be prepared to mobilize safely in the streets and creatively escalate our campaigns. Learn the basics of Direct Action, from planning and roles to safety and gear. This 4-hour training is spread across 2 days. No experience needed, but there will be plenty to keep intermediate direct action people engaged. Offered by the EBDSA Direct Action Working Group.

Register for zoom here! Register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

There is a peace parade planned for Sunday in Oakland to walk through neighborhoods suffering from gun violence and ask for a truce.

The march starts at 12 noon at 98th Avenue and International Boulevard.

🟥⬛️🟩❤️https://t.co/tni5mnSA3d

— The Oaklandside (@Oaklandside) October 29, 2020

Join us for a fun Halloween action targeting several landlords who live in Piedmont! Our landlords have been unwilling to negotiate rent relief for tenants in need during the pandemic, and some tenants have also experienced harassment and retaliatory actions.

We’ve organized a community postcard campaign so our landlords will be hearing directly from their neighbors, urging them to work with their tenants!

We will be meeting at 5 p.m. at Piedmont Park (at the corner of Highland and Mountain – look for our banners). We will organize into small teams and plan to head out by 5:15 p.m. for “reverse trick-or-treating,” distributing postcards and candy to our landlords’ neighbors. COSTUMES ENCOURAGED 🙂

Please wear your masks and maintain social distancing!

Neighborhood maps, postcards, pens, candy and hand sanitizer will be provided.

Alameda County Will Provide Free COVID-19 and Flu Shots at the Oakland Coliseum!

COVID testing: 10/31 – 11/2, 9 AM – 5 PM, age 4+
Appointments: https://t.co/4NeqfutnZv

Flu shots: 11/3, 6:30 AM – 7:30 PM. No appointment needed.

Read more: https://t.co/Vu71xaseCR pic.twitter.com/BtyBply24B

— Supervisor Keith Carson (@Keith_Carson) October 29, 2020

Now more than ever we need to be prepared to mobilize safely in the streets and creatively escalate our campaigns. Learn the basics of Direct Action, from planning and roles to safety and gear. This 4-hour training is spread across 2 days. No experience needed, but there will be plenty to keep intermediate direct action people engaged. Offered by the EBDSA Direct Action Working Group.

Register for zoom here! Register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Our Sunday morning programs are scheduled pretty much on a “first come, first served” basis and confirmed at our planning sessions. The opinions expressed are those of the speakers only and do not represent a group consensus on the issues by the members of ICSS. Our general practice is to allot at least half of the time to comradely discussion of the issues so that we include as many voices as practical .

Check here close to the date each week for subject matter and Zoom info if not below:

https://icssmarx.org/icss-sched-latest.html

Sun, Sep 20, 2020:
Socialism and ‘Movement for a People’s Party’
In the US, a movement is afoot for a new party and over 100,000 people have responded to the call to form a new ‘People’s Party’, which is presently a pre-party formation.  In this Sunday Morning at the Marxist Library session, we will be showing some videos of the speeches by notable speakers and analyze the platform for this new political formation from a Marxist perspective, followed by a lively discussion

LOG-IN INFO 
The meeting will be opened up, as usual, at 10:15 for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc. We Intend to start the presentation as close to 10:30 am as possible

Raj Sahai is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2591082607?pwd=TTdlcFlnZEVCdWt2VlRHeWZLeHNKQT09

Meeting ID: 259 108 2607
Passcode: 6MwQP7

Sun, Sep 27, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED: Labor and Immigration
David will talk about the struggles of farmworkers on the West Coast to organize, and the way it’s affected by their work lives and status as immigrants.  He’ll include photographs and a description of his documentary work in process.

Sun, Oct 4, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED: The Crisis in Education:
Capitalist Mess and Socialist Solutions
The NY Times recently ran two articles on its front page: U.S. Campuses See Explosions Of Virus Cases,“ and “How Beijing got 295 Million Back to School.” This illustrates how socialism attempts to solve the mess in education created by capitalism. Similar forces can be seen in Oakland, CA, where billionaire-funded charter school organizations are buying our school board members, implementing school closures, and turning students and parents into vectors for billionaire profit. Meanwhile, socialists and union activists fighting to keep Oakland schools public, and to keep charter schools and their billionaire supporters out of our communities. We have invited Gerald Smith, an activist with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and former candidate for the Oakland School Board, to lead a discussion with members of the Oakland Education Association (OEA) the teacher’s union. Discussants will include Mike Hutchinson, a candidate  for the Oakland School Board in District 5, endorse by both DSA and OEA.
The session will be moderated by ICSS Members Eugene Ruyle and Raj Sahai.

Sun, Oct 11, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED: Dealing with Covid 19:
A Comparison Between Cuba and the United States
   Cuba, a socialist nation with a population of about 11 million, has suffered (as of mid-September, 2020) about 100 fatalities from the Covid 19 virus pandemic. The USA, a capitalist nation with a population about 30 times as great as Cuba, has suffered (as of mid-September), almost 200,000 deaths from this virus. The U.S., with about 30 times the population of Cuba has lost about 2000 times as many lives! What are the social, political, economic, ideological, cultural, strategic and other factors relevant to each nation that explain this profound difference
Dr. Laurence H. Shoup has taught history at a number of universities and is the author of five books, his most recent one being Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire Neoliberal Geopolitics 1976-2019 (Monthly Review Press). He has been in active solidarity with the Cuban Revolution for many decades and has visited the country over a dozen times on a variety of solidarity excursions, including two Pastors for Peace caravans, several Labor Exchange trips, as well as with the Venceremos Brigade and Global Exchange.

Sun, Oct 18, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED: What Should Working People in the U.S.
do about Elections 2020?
Should we: 1. Vote Third Party? 2. Vote Democratic to oppose the Fascist tendency represented by Trump? Trump? 3. Adopt the Safe State Strategy?, 4. Sit out of the bourgeois election? 4. Vote for Trump to deny support to the real danger, Biden? 5. suport only those down-ballot candidates from any group that pushes for reform of the capitalist system, e.g Greens, Berners and “The Squad”?
We have three confirmed speakers,
* Tom Gallagher, former Massachusetts State Representative and author of The Primary Route.
* Roger Harris, among his many activities, Roger is on the Central Committee of the Peace and Freedom Party and a board member of the Task Force on the Americas
* Laura Wells, former Green Party candidate for Governor, writer (laurawells.org)
ICSS member Sharon Rose will facilitate the session..
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
* The Specter of a Fascist Coup by Trump Haunts the US, But There’s Worse to Worry About https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/21/the-specter-of-a-fascist-coup-by-trump-haunts-the-us-but-theres-worse-to-worry-About/
* Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World By Rutger Bregman, recommended by https://laurawells.org
* Joe Biden, Don’t Let Donald Trump Run as the Antiwar Candidate! https://tomgallagherwrites.com
LOG-IN INFO 
The meeting will be opened up, as usual, at 10:15 for anyone to join and discuss technical matters, catch up with each other, say Hi, etc. We Intend to start the presentation as close to 10:30 am as possible
BLURB AND LOG-IN INFO WILL BE PROVIDED ON
FRIDAY, OCT 16, 2020

Sun, Oct 25, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED: Attack on Anti-racist Organizers
On Sept. 17, 2020, several protest leaders, including four members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), were arrested in Denver, Colorado in a coordinated police attack. The organizers now face over 30 bogus charges including “kidnapping” and “inciting a riot,” and potentially years in prison. They were targeted because of their dedicated organizing efforts in recent months to denouncing the police murder of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado.
This attack is part of a larger assault on the anti-racist movement directed from the White House, Governor’s mansions, and local governments and police agencies around the country. This can happen to any protester who has used their voice to mobilize in the mass movement against racism in every single corner of the United States.
   We will be joined by Lillian House, one of the protest organizers  facing 12 bogus facing charges including “kidnapping” and “inciting a riot,” and potentially years in prison and well as Richard Becker of the PSL.
For more info and to donate, see https://www.liberationnews.org/thousands-declare-their-solidarity-with-framed-denver-anti-racist-organizers-add-your-name-here/
The demands are: 1. Drop all the charges! 2. Stop the assault on the movement and on free speech!

Sun, Nov 1, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm DST FALL BACK
CONFIRMED -The fall of the Soviet Union: New insights into the sequence of events, starting with the victory of the Russian Revolution on November 7, 1917, and implications for Marxists today.”
Wadi’h Halabi, with the Center for Marxist Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will discuss this topic. His analysis extends to differences between the Chinese and Russian Revolutions. For example, civil war and land reform followed revolution in Russia but preceded it in China. Halabi’s discussion will touch on the ‘new Cold War’. The global class struggle hardly ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, and this is the framework of the presentation.

Sun, Nov 8, 2020: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
CONFIRMED – WHAT NOW?
This will be our first meeting after the November 3, 2020 election, and we know they will not turn out well. Do we Dump Trump or Battle Biden? What will groups like ANSWER, the Poor People’s Campaign, and DSA  be doing? We have invited  Gloria La Riva, the only socialist Presidential Candidate on the ballot in 23 states, or her representative, to lead our discussion, possibly  she will be  joined by another speaker.
Gene is organizing.

Alameda County Will Provide Free COVID-19 and Flu Shots at the Oakland Coliseum!

COVID testing: 10/31 – 11/2, 9 AM – 5 PM, age 4+
Appointments: https://t.co/4NeqfutnZv

Flu shots: 11/3, 6:30 AM – 7:30 PM. No appointment needed.

Read more: https://t.co/Vu71xaseCR pic.twitter.com/BtyBply24B

— Supervisor Keith Carson (@Keith_Carson) October 29, 2020

When Black families are under attack – what do we do?

ACT UP FIGHT BACK!

Join us on Monday, Nov 3 @ 10:30 AM @ 3359 Brookdale Ave to stand with our friend Fred, his wife, & 3 young children who are facing eviction – in the middle of a pandemic – due to a predatory foreclosure.

— Moms 4 Housing (@moms4housing) October 30, 2020

The family, members of @CalOrganize and the Black Housing Union, will host a press conference outside their home to send a strong message to the landlord that they will not be leaving their home and to let all other tenants at risk of eviction that ACCE has their back. BE THERE!

— Moms 4 Housing (@moms4housing) October 30, 2020

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

In alliance with the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) we organized the October 23, 2010 labor and community rally for Justice for Oscar Grant. On that day the ILWU shut down the Bay Area ports in solidarity. Our mission is to educate, organize and mobilize people against police and state repression. Sisters and brothers! The Oscar Grant Committee invites you to join us in this vital struggle.

We meet on the 1^st Monday of each month
You can join our discussion list by sending a blank (doesn’t even need a subject) email to

oscargrantcommittee-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

On Youtube here.

in McElroy is a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s AI Now Institute, researching the digital platforms and technologies used by landlords in order to surveil, track, and racialize tenants. Erin is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data visualization, critical cartography, and multi-media collective documenting gentrification struggles and forms of resistance, while also creating data and tools in order to support the work of housing justice. Erin earned a doctoral degree in Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a focus on the politics of space, race, and technology in Romania and Silicon Valley, and is an editor of the Radical Housing Journal.

About the Visual Activism series

How has visual culture played a role within the social movements of the last several decades, such as #BlackLivesMatter and Extinction Rebellion? How, we might ask, is activism made visible; how does it erupt (or disappear) with collective fields of vision? Drawing upon Black South African queer photographer Zanele Muholi’s term “visual activism” as a flexible rubric that encompasses both formal practices and political strategies, this series interrogates visual cultures of dissent, resistance, and protest.

Facebook will play a key role in enabling–or preventing–disinformation about the election results from disrupting our democracy. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
Millions of people throughout the US will take to the streets on Wednesday, November 4th if Donald Trump refuses to concede after losing the presidential election or claims victory before all the votes are counted. Facebook will play a key role in enabling–or preventing–disinformation about the election results from disrupting our democracy.

That’s why the Protest Facebook coalition has organized a November 4^th Protect the Results protest outside of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park to insist that Facebook stop misinformation from candidates, campaigns, and others who declare victory on Facebook before the final election results are in.

This will be a short, visual action during which we’ll display a human billboard that says TRUTH MATTERS.

We are holding the event at 4 PM so that participants have time to join other local Protect the Results actions that start later in the evening. We hope this protest won’t be necessary, but we’ll be ready in case it is.

Please register for the event so we can provide you with any last-minute updates.

This event, which is among the more than 400 Protect the Results events scheduled across the country, is sponsored by the Protest Facebook coalition, which is co-led by San Francisco Bay Area pro-democracy and media accountability organizations Media Alliance and Global Exchange. Learn more at www.protestfacebook.org.

Can’t get to Menlo Park? You can still Protect the Results. Cyber voter suppression poses a major threat to voter access, which is why we need grassroots power to provide voter support and to disrupt disinformation.

Submit all the misinformation and disinformation that you find as tips at https://reportdisinfo.org/
Sign Up

We literally cannot do it without you.

Our work is done on behalf of our members. All the time. Pandemic or no pandemic.,

Become a member of Media Alliance or renew. Low-income annual memberships are $35, standard memberships are $60, supporting memberships are $120, and anchor memberships are $300. Other amounts welcome. You can set up monthly recurring debits for $5, $10 or $25 monthly.
Become A Member

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87801691687?pwd=R1ZCdjl3UVdEd2hpTi9la2dUVzZOQT09

In 2018 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an alarming report, stating that the world needed to steeply cut its carbon emissions and make radical changes in order to limit the planet’s temperature from rising to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. If that goal wasn’t met, the report predicted a horrifying increase in suffering for almost all life and ecological collapses.

In America, this report was met on the political Left by sustained calls for the abolition of capitalist exploitation of people and the planet. The rationale was that capitalism’s imperative for endless economic growth required massive amounts of energy, the vast majority of which is still produced through fossil fuels. Some of the specific responses were reinvigorated support for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles by Indigenous peoples, surges in attendance at climate strikes, and great support for proposals like the Green New Deal by elected officials.

East Bay DSA will explore this theme in a Socialist Night School mini-series, co-organized with our Green New Deal Committee. These three events will explore what it means to be an ecosocialist, the Red Deal and Indigenous struggle, and how to fight for a Green New Deal after Bernie.

——

In this final Night School in our mini-series, we’ll attempt to answer a perennial question in our prior sessions: “How do we actually win a Green New Deal, especially after Bernie’s loss?” We’ve dedicated this time to making a space for us to attempt an answer.

Our readings offer an array of ways to understand a Green New Deal and strategies and tactics we might employ, to supplement our own ideas. And we’re joined by Thea Riofrancos, whose experience and expertise has already proved invaluable by way of her books, and who will speak with us about the continuing struggle to win a Green New Deal and our planet.

Thea Riofrancos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a member of DSA Ecosocialist’s working group Steering Committee, and co-author of A Planet to Win and Resource Radicals.

Readings:

Socialism or Barbarism — the fight continues!

“It’s Eco-Socialism or Death”: An Interview With Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson

JUST TRANSITION: A Framework for Change

Embrace Feminist Wisdom for a Green New Deal!

There are four finalists for the job of Oakland police chief and they’re being interviewed in a virtual forum tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 by several members of the Police Commission and Mayor Libby Schaaf. The public can tune in on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, or by telephone.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Join us on Friday—though ballots may still not be fully counted—for an online conversation with @NaomiAKlein, @astradisastra, & @KeeangaYamahtta on #Election2020 & its aftermath.

RSVP to attend: https://t.co/ybouyIrhhY

— Haymarket Books (@haymarketbooks) November 2, 2020

Join @ellabakercenter next Saturday 11.7 2-3:30PM for a #ReleasesNOTTransfers Townhall. @jamesking0314 will be facilitating a dialogue with formerly incarcerated organizers/community members to show how #WeTakeCareOfUs and why releases are the only answer. pic.twitter.com/TQLiVafVlB

— Isabella Borgeson (@isaborgeson) October 29, 2020

EMAIL STRIKE.DEBT.BAY.AREA@GMAIL.COM FOR
ZOOM INFO A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE MEETING.

MAX HAIVEN, THE AUTHOR, WILL BE JOINING OUR DISCUSSION IN DECEMBER!

Strike Debt Bay Area hosts a 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, and The Deficit Myth.

For our October discussion we will be reading the first two chapters of  ‘Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts‘ by Max Haiven (You can order it from Pluto Press.)

For our November discussion we’ll be reading the third and fourth chapters, and for our December discussion we’ll read the final chapters and closing material.

Join us – all are welcome! (This is a dense and intricate book, so if you want to join in on the discussion in December as opposed to just auditing the discussion and listening to the author we’d ask that you make sure you’ve read it…)

Capitalism is in a profound state of crisis. Beyond the mere dispassionate cruelty of ‘ordinary’ structural violence, it appears today as a global system bent on reckless economic revenge; its expression found in mass incarceration, climate chaos, unpayable debt, pharmaceutical violence and the relentless degradation of common life.

In Revenge Capitalism, Max Haiven argues that this economic vengeance helps us explain the culture and politics of revenge we see in society more broadly. Moving from the history of colonialism and its continuing effects today, he examines the opioid crisis in the US, the growth of ‘surplus populations’ worldwide and unpacks the central paradigm of unpayable debts – both as reparations owed, and as a methodology of oppression.

Revenge Capitalism offers no easy answers, but is a powerful call to the radical imagination.

Max Haiven is Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University, Canada. His books include Art after Money, Money after Art (Pluto, 2018), Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power (Zed Books, 2004), Cultures of Financialization (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) and the Radical Imagination (Zed Books, 2014).