The Israeli Government responded to the October 7 attack by Hamas with collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza. The slaughter and destruction continues as the war expands in the region. American activists protesting Israel’s escalation and its support by the U.S. government are subjected to accusations of anti-semitism and repression of dissent.
Join our panelists to discuss the roots of the conflict and current developments in the Middle East and in the U.S.

Steven Zunes – Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, directed the program in Middle Eastern Studies

Lujain Al-Saleh – Arab Resource and Organizing Committee

[TBA] – representative from Jewish Voice for Peace

*Organizations listed for identification purposes only.

The New Parkway is now hosting Drag Queen Story Time—Come for the hair, the glitter, the glamour, and the stories!

Drag Queen Story Time was created to be enjoyed by everyone; whether you’re a kiddo yourself or a kiddo at heart, this event is for you!

In order to allow seats for everyone, we are requiring one ticket per person over 1 year of age. Seating will still be limited, so please come prepared to share space with other groups and be generous with your story queen; they are only charging a nominal fee for this event!

SF Vote for Ceasefire Resolution! Join us to continue to demonstrate overwhelming support for #ceasefire. Monday, January 8 @ 9am Rules Committee Meeting and Tuesday, January 9 @ 1pm Full Board meeting and vote. Email Board of Supervisors: https://t.co/PEvWrq1bqu #SanFrancisco pic.twitter.com/7LnE5Jfj98

— AROC #FreePalestine (@AROCBayArea) January 5, 2024

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

For our December meeting we are reading the first half (through chapter 2) of The Feminist Subversion of the Economy. (Common Notions Press, Amazon). For our January, 2024 meeting we will read the remainder.

The political response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressures on the global capitalist economies has, once again, imposed the priority of markets over life. Add to this the climate crisis and, undoubtedly, the task of sustaining life continues to be privatized, made invisible, and feminized.We must ask: what does a dignified life look like, especially one that transforms the gendered labor divisions and a racialized, exploitative feminized care economy that falls mainly on the shoulders of women—from the household to the wider effects of the capitalist economy on social reproduction.

At the same time, these questions are intimately connected with considerations of our environment. The Feminist Subversion of the Economy makes the conection between patriarchy, capitalism, and ecological crisis—and rallies women, the LGBTQ+ community, and movements worldwide to center gender and social reproduction in a vision for a just ecology and economy.

Public intellectual, academic, and activist Amaia Pérez Orozco offers a vision beyond the myths of development (unlimited growth), wealth (accumulation of capital), and work (limited to waged labor) and, at the same time, accounts for the tasks, networks, and economic subjects that, materially and daily, guarantee that life keeps going.

Newly translated and updated in collaboration with Liz Mason-Desse, who has won a PEN translation award for her work on feminist economics, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy shows the urgent need to radically and democratically discuss what we mean by a dignified life and how we can organize to sustain life collectively.

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, and Jackson Rising Redux.

Speaker: Immanuel Ness

For more than a century, a trend within Western Marxism has been to retreat from endorsing actually existing socialist projects such as the Soviet Union and retheorizing their significance in relation to capitalism. In this context, these scholars have begun to, in effect, reject imperialism as a driving force of capitalism, while obscuring the central regressive role of the US in particular.

Such re-theorization downplays the historical significance of actually existing socialism and especially socialist projects in the Global South, often by reframing them as part of global capitalism or global modernity. Recent versions of Western Marxism often conflate capitalism and modernity. The presentation explores the source of Western Marxism’s antagonism to socialism, especially socialism in the Global South. Our speaker contends that a new shift occurred in the 1980s and 1990s as Western Marxists began to focus on global capitalism and globalization.

Our speaker, Immanuel Ness, is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College (CUNY) and a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. A trade union organizer in the US and labor activist in the Global South, Immanuel Ness is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labor and Society. He is chair of the New York Peace Council and of the International Committee of the PSC/CUNY, a labor union representing faculty at CUNY. He recently returned from a US Peace Council delegation to meet with the Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament.

His many books, academic articles, chapters, and edited volumes handbooks focus on US imperialism, labor movements, and international migration.

His latest book is Migration as Economic Imperialism (Polity 2023), which focuses on Western financial imperialism and the oppression of the Global South.

His other books include Sanctions as War (Brill 2022) , Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto 2016), and the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (2014/2021).

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

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88083342274

The USA’s corporate oligarchy made the fateful decision to go for global empire during World War II. This led the US to rescue and repurpose Axis fascists so that the US could consolidate and rebrand the Anticommintern under US management. From this decision to go for global dominance flowed other fateful choices like the dropping of the atom bombs, the launching of the Cold War, the creation of the CIA, alliances with organized crime, the clandestine overthrow of foreign governments, and political assassinations. The deep state and tripartite state constructs were devised to allow us to name this new form of governance which essentially gives plausibly deniable veto power over democracy to an oligarchy of corporate wealth. Exceptionism describes this institutionalized abrogation of the rule of law. Today, the empire forged by the exceptionist deep state is tottering. With no effective democratic check on its power, the empires excesses have dialectically generated the forces which are now collectively bringing about the collapse of US global primacy. As such, this is an exciting – if dangerous – historical mo moment.

Aaron Good is a political scientist and an historian of the US Empire. His dissertation from Temple University was published by Skyhorse in 2022 under the title AmericanException: Empire and the Deep State. A documentary film based on the book is currently in production. Previously, Aaron Good worked on the 2008 Obama campaign in Missouri. Born and raised in Indiana, he has since lived and worked in Taiwan and Shanghai. He currently resides with his wife and son in the greater Philadelphia area where he has been a history and social science instructor. Currently, Aaron Good hosts the American Exception podcast on Patreon, and is co-host of Devil’s Chess Club with David Talbot and Bryce Green.

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:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88083342274

Meeting ID: 880 8334 2274

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Meeting ID: 880 8334 2274

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k39IUnw59

Hybrid event:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/immigration-what-are-borders-really-ogp-townhall-discussion-series-tickets-753471161527?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

How do you define “the border” when it comes to the migration of people? What comes to mind when the term immigrant/immigration is used? Do you start at colonization or at the natural borders defined by a people’s existence with the land? Join the Oakland Greens & special surprise guests, Monday, January 15 2024. Discussion starts at 6:30 PM PST and will end no later than 9:30 PM PST.

The Oakland Greens Townhall Discussion Series is a hybrid community discussion event. These hybrid community engagement events are held the 3rd Monday of the month, January thru October.

In person and Zoom streaming (https://uchastings.zoom.us/j/92681523008)

Panelists:
Hatem Bazian | De-Colonial Islamic Thinker, Chair & Founder at Berkeley Center for Race & Gender
Phyllys Bennis | Director of The New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
Marc Van Der Hout | Founder Van Der Hout LLP and local Plaintiff’s counsel for Defense for Children International – Palestine, et al. v. Biden

Guest speaker:
Melissa Hernandez | Legislative Aide to SF Supervisor Dean Preston

Moderators:
Co-Chairs of UC Law SF NLG
Camilo Pérez-Bustillo | Executive Director at NLG SF Bay Area

Host:
UC Law SF NLG

Please join our coalition of Bay Area Healthcare Workers for a Solidarity Gathering and Vigil for Palestine, a collective space to mourn the loss of countless colleagues and innocent civilians, and bring our voices together for peace. We’ll have speakers, readings and songs, as well as opportunities for action. White coats/scrubs 🩺🕊️suggested. BYO light 💡. Please mask.

More info:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1-L_8gPFZy/

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!
Learn more

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.