Calendar
In the midst of this critical election season, the Berkeley Faith and Justice Coalition has invited a broad array of city leaders to answer pointed questions about the fight for racial equity in Berkeley. Your presence is needed to underline to the council and school board members and candidates, as well as senior leaders of city management and the police, that Berkeley’s people:
Demand that the needs and initiatives of the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our community are the focus of all city leaders!
A leader of the Coalition, Rev. Angela Jernigan, describes it this way:
Together we represent about 3,000 families in this community.
Our chief aim is to build an equitable Berkeley for the health, safety and wellbeing of all. To that end, we represent and prioritize the voices and interests of Black and Brown members of our community in South and West Berkeley who have been historically marginalized, criminalized, underserved, and underrepresented.
Our areas of focus are the issues most grave for our population: homelessness and housing, violence prevention and interruption, police accountability, youth development and educational equity, health equity, climate justice and workforce development.
1. See the May 16 Event Announcement here.
3. There will also be a Zoom option. But if you are able to, the strongest way you can show city leaders you support racial justice is to come help fill the church.
4. Please come early so the meeting can start on time!
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
Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com a few days beforehand for the online invite.
For our May meeting we will be reading by (Amazon, Penguin). For our June meeting we will finish the book.
An insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy—from disinformation fighters to a leader of Black Lives Matter to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and more—by the best-selling author of Winners Take All and award-winning former New York Times columnist
“Anand Giridharadas shows the way we get real progressive change in America—by refusing to write others off, building more welcoming movements, and rededicating ourselves to the work of changing minds.” —Robert B. Reich, best-selling author of The System
The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts.
In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans’ fatalism about one another.
As the book’s subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don’t agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.
Strike Debt Bay Area hosts this non-technical book group discussion monthly on new and radical economic thinking. Previous readings have included (in chronological order) 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, Jackson Rising Redux , The Feminist Subversion of the Economy, How Infrastructure Works, Inside the Systems that Shape our World, and Wealth Supremacy.
Resisting the Purging of pro-Palestinian Faculty
Speaker: Danny Shaw
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
Our speaker, Danny Shaw, is among the many voices for Palestine who have been punished for speaking out against genocide. After 18 years of teaching in the Latin American and Latinx Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he was fired last month for his social media posts educating and organizing against the Israeli-U.S. genocide in Gaza. He has been camped out with the hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and staff that make up the Columbia Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
We urge you to sign the petition in support of Danny Shaw, who has spoken at the Marxist Library a number of times. The popular faculty was fired in retaliation for his outspoken public stand for Palestinian liberation. The petition can be found at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHtHV8F-TmazoQVzDCTE-Or2DcImwC_92qp8c2oVcOUBGm3w/viewform
The witch-hunt was led by the Zionist doxxing and blacklisting operation Canary Mission. Despite receiving numerous death threats, Danny continues to teach as a volunteer at the Columbia University’s pro-Palestine encampment.
Danny Shaw holds a BA in Sociology and Latin American Studies from Colombia University and a master’s in international affairs with a specialization in South American and Caribbean Studies from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
He is affiliated with the Midwestern Marx Institute and frequently appears on TeleSUR, RT, and other progressive media. Danny is also a retired Golden Gloves boxer, fighting twice in Madison Square Garden for the NYC heavyweight championship. He is the author of six books and numerous articles.
See:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/17/bpdx-a17.html
https://www.instagram.com/profdannyshaw/reel/C5Ref73uQRu/
Join the Santa Cruz County Chapter of the ACLU of Northern California for this virtual event regarding the rapidly increasing use of mass surveillance technology by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. The expert panelists will discuss the current surveillance situation, what’s to come, the dangers of mass surveillance, how to monitor law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology and hold them accountable for misuse, our reasonable expectations of privacy, and what we can all do to protect our privacy and advocate for more protections.
Panelists include:
Tracy Rosenberg, Oakland Privacy & Executive Director, Media Alliance
Nick Hidalgo, Technology and Civil Liberties Program Staff Attorney, ACLU Northern California
Matthew Guariglia, Senior Policy Analyst, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Mike Gennaco, Independent Police Auditor for City of Santa Cruz, Office of Inspector General for Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, OIR Group
Moderator: Gary Patton, Professor, UC Santa Cruz & former Santa Cruz County Supervisor
If you are requesting Spanish interpreation, please register by Monday, May 6, so that we can make that available. The audience is encouraged to pose questions to the panelists.
May 20 event on Zoom. Join us! #privacy #surveillance pic.twitter.com/5augKq5jLM
— Media Alliance (@twrling) May 7, 2024
Join experts for a Student Loan Help Clinic hosted online or via telephone. Topics covered include student loan basics, repayment plan information, loan forgiveness options, and more.
1118 4th St, San Rafael, CA
474 24th St, Oakland, CA
An intrepid group of economists is on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt — and the nature of money — upside down.
We all use money, and yet the questions of what is money, and where does money come from remain elusive.
FINDING THE MONEY follows former chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT”, to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope and empowering democracies around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.
Hardware Hacking Tuesdays are better than ever! Plus Fix-It Clinic!
Each Tuesday we welcome all to bring their hardware (and software and firmware) projects to Omni Commons, or simply come by to learn and tinker! All welcome, about 7:30pm until ∞ …whomever’s left standing!
We are inside the Omni Commons at 48th and Shattuck, see the link at the end of this text to call in in case the doors are locked!
○ Projects: can range from building course materials for teaching local kids electronics to a robotic arm that draws, to light projection art, to people building their own microchip boards! We provide the space, tools and peer learning – you bring your project and enthusiasm!
○ Group Sewing: Learn to do simple mending or get help with technical fabric and textile projects. In addition to regular machines our Sewing Lab features heavy-duty industrial sewing machines and sergers. Our in house sewing guru CC has worked for Academy or Art College, Tesla, SuitX, and Zipline and has vast sewing machine repair and maintenance experience; bring your own machine to tune up for tip-top operation and sew alongside others.
○ General Repair: Fix it Clinic’s weekly Oakland residency: bring your broken, non-functioning things – electronic gadgets, appliances, computers, toys, sewing machines, fabric items, etc.– for assessment, disassembly, and possible repair. We’ll provide workspace, specialty tools, and guidance to help you disassemble and troubleshoot your item. First-time repairers and “Fixing Families” are heartily invited. Learn more at https://www.fixitclinic.org/
Join us every Tuesday evening for a trifecta of awesomeness; you can also jump in virtually via our zoom-like video conference at this link: https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles
1118 4th St, San Rafael, CA
474 24th St, Oakland, CA
An intrepid group of economists is on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt — and the nature of money — upside down.
We all use money, and yet the questions of what is money, and where does money come from remain elusive.
FINDING THE MONEY follows former chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT”, to unveil a deeper story about money, injecting new hope and empowering democracies around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.
Speaker: Mark Albertson
Extract: Sykes-Picot (May 1916) was a secret convention held during World War-I between Britain and France supported by imperial Russia for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. Mark Albertson, historian, will go through that progression of the April 1914 request by Arab nationalists desiring British assistance with their nationalism in throwing off the Ottoman yoke; the British acquiescing in November 1914 when the Ottomans join the Germans and Austria-Hungary; the Hussein-McMahan Correspondence; the Damascus Protocol; Sykes-Picot Agreement; Balfour Declaration; San Remo Conference; Treaty of Sevres; & the Treaty of Lausanne.
The inhabitants of the area in question did not forge the borders of the nations they are in, the British and French did, for colonial aspirations in expectation of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Sole Arab nation of any consequence forged by Arabs was Saudi Arabia. The Palestine-Israel conflict is a product of this colonial division of the land of Arabs.
Our speaker, Mark Albertson, is a frequent presenter at the Library. Mark is a military historian with a commanding knowledge of geo-politics. He is the historical research editor at Army Aviation magazine and is the historian for the Army Aviation Association of America. He has authored several books: USS Connecticut: Constitution State Battleship; They’ll Have to Follow You! The Triumph of the Great White Fleet; On History: A Treatise. He is at work on a two-volume history on the saga of Army aviation. Mark teaches history at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89531900427?pwd=mXg1rSZe3ONl4pfWlALW4ornc32Eez.1
Hardware Hacking Tuesdays are better than ever! Plus Fix-It Clinic!
Each Tuesday we welcome all to bring their hardware (and software and firmware) projects to Omni Commons, or simply come by to learn and tinker! All welcome, about 7:30pm until ∞ …whomever’s left standing!
We are inside the Omni Commons at 48th and Shattuck, see the link at the end of this text to call in in case the doors are locked!
○ Projects: can range from building course materials for teaching local kids electronics to a robotic arm that draws, to light projection art, to people building their own microchip boards! We provide the space, tools and peer learning – you bring your project and enthusiasm!
○ Group Sewing: Learn to do simple mending or get help with technical fabric and textile projects. In addition to regular machines our Sewing Lab features heavy-duty industrial sewing machines and sergers. Our in house sewing guru CC has worked for Academy or Art College, Tesla, SuitX, and Zipline and has vast sewing machine repair and maintenance experience; bring your own machine to tune up for tip-top operation and sew alongside others.
○ General Repair: Fix it Clinic’s weekly Oakland residency: bring your broken, non-functioning things – electronic gadgets, appliances, computers, toys, sewing machines, fabric items, etc.– for assessment, disassembly, and possible repair. We’ll provide workspace, specialty tools, and guidance to help you disassemble and troubleshoot your item. First-time repairers and “Fixing Families” are heartily invited. Learn more at https://www.fixitclinic.org/
Join us every Tuesday evening for a trifecta of awesomeness; you can also jump in virtually via our zoom-like video conference at this link: https://meet.waag.org/turtlesturtlesturtles
10th Anniversary Bay Area Book Festival Brings Top Authors, Critical Conversations,
and Family Fun
The Bay Area Book Festival is throwing a 10th anniversary party, where festivalgoers will be treated to the top-tier speakers the festival is known to showcase as well as new attractions, including a full day of workshops for emerging writers, three evening headliner events, a reimagined Outdoor Fair in the park (Sunday only) and the inaugural Native California stage. The icing on the birthday cake? Almost everything is free.
This year’s ticketed headliners include the incomparable Joan Baez, cultural commentator Naomi Klein and a trio of book-to-screen superstars (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Piper Kerman and Alka Joshi). Free programming features nearly 100 speakers, including Jonathan Lethem, Amy Tan, Steve Phillips, Forrest Gander, and Berkeley poet laureate Aya de León, as well as rising stars like Tommy Orange, R.O. Kwon, gina Breedlove and poet Brontez Purnell. Dozens of panels will encompass pressing issues such as Democracy, Equity, Immigration, Climate, Artificial Intelligence, and more. There will also be talks that elevate BIPOC voices, climate fiction and poetry as tools for climate justice, LGBTQIA voices, and more.
The festival’s first-ever Writers’ Day offers 10 free writing workshops for emerging and published writers � including youth andd teens � led by creative writing faculty from Bay Area colleges,, universities and literary groups. Topics include haiku writing, writing across genres, historical fiction, creative nonfiction and how to tap into your creative unconscious. Space is filling up fast; register in advance here.
Native literature has long been a festival mainstay, this year shining an even brighter spotlight on Indigenous voices with a new Native California stage in partnership with Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Native American-focused programming includes award-winning author Greg Sarris and novelist Tommy Orange in conversation, cookbook author Sara Calvosa Olson on decolonizing your diet, Indigenous horror with Rebecca Roanhorse and Dani Trujillo and the inspiring young essayists of the annual Graton Writing Project.
Anchored by four outdoor stages, the festival’s free Outdoor Fair & Literary Marketplace (Sunday only) features more than 100 exhibitors, including an eclectic array of authors, independent booksellers, local publishers, writing groups and programs, literary clubs and organizations, book artists, libraries, reading resources and more. Hosted by Oakland publishing house The Collective Book Studio, the Outdoor Fair’s interactive Family Zone will feature author talks, readings, storytelling sessions, cooking demos, and Drag Story Hour! Other booths will feature book-related arts and crafts, a book scavenger hunt, Literacy Bingo, the popular Half Price Books Free Book Giveaway — and more!
The Bay Area Book Festival is BARTable, easy to get to, free, and fun for all. Bring family and friends and make a weekend of it June 1-2 in downtown Berkeley!
Check out the full line-up at www.baybookfest.org
10th Anniversary Bay Area Book Festival Brings Top Authors, Critical Conversations,
and Family Fun
The Bay Area Book Festival is throwing a 10th anniversary party, where festivalgoers will be treated to the top-tier speakers the festival is known to showcase as well as new attractions, including a full day of workshops for emerging writers, three evening headliner events, a reimagined Outdoor Fair in the park (Sunday only) and the inaugural Native California stage. The icing on the birthday cake? Almost everything is free.
This year’s ticketed headliners include the incomparable Joan Baez, cultural commentator Naomi Klein and a trio of book-to-screen superstars (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Piper Kerman and Alka Joshi). Free programming features nearly 100 speakers, including Jonathan Lethem, Amy Tan, Steve Phillips, Forrest Gander, and Berkeley poet laureate Aya de León, as well as rising stars like Tommy Orange, R.O. Kwon, gina Breedlove and poet Brontez Purnell. Dozens of panels will encompass pressing issues such as Democracy, Equity, Immigration, Climate, Artificial Intelligence, and more. There will also be talks that elevate BIPOC voices, climate fiction and poetry as tools for climate justice, LGBTQIA voices, and more.
The festival’s first-ever Writers’ Day offers 10 free writing workshops for emerging and published writers � including youth andd teens � led by creative writing faculty from Bay Area colleges,, universities and literary groups. Topics include haiku writing, writing across genres, historical fiction, creative nonfiction and how to tap into your creative unconscious. Space is filling up fast; register in advance here.
Native literature has long been a festival mainstay, this year shining an even brighter spotlight on Indigenous voices with a new Native California stage in partnership with Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Native American-focused programming includes award-winning author Greg Sarris and novelist Tommy Orange in conversation, cookbook author Sara Calvosa Olson on decolonizing your diet, Indigenous horror with Rebecca Roanhorse and Dani Trujillo and the inspiring young essayists of the annual Graton Writing Project.
Anchored by four outdoor stages, the festival’s free Outdoor Fair & Literary Marketplace (Sunday only) features more than 100 exhibitors, including an eclectic array of authors, independent booksellers, local publishers, writing groups and programs, literary clubs and organizations, book artists, libraries, reading resources and more. Hosted by Oakland publishing house The Collective Book Studio, the Outdoor Fair’s interactive Family Zone will feature author talks, readings, storytelling sessions, cooking demos, and Drag Story Hour! Other booths will feature book-related arts and crafts, a book scavenger hunt, Literacy Bingo, the popular Half Price Books Free Book Giveaway — and more!
The Bay Area Book Festival is BARTable, easy to get to, free, and fun for all. Bring family and friends and make a weekend of it June 1-2 in downtown Berkeley!
Check out the full line-up at www.baybookfest.org
Speaker: Özgür Narin
Join Zoom Meeting
Machine Learning Algorithms running on Artificial Neural Networks and particularly reinforcement learning were real breakthroughs of 2010s, Generative AI and transformers are of 2020s, all of them developed and spread to various branches.
And nowadays they even talk about an “existential risk” created by AI as if capitalism itself was not the real existential risk for centuries. So we should talk about capitalist production process of AI and the class structure of it.
Hence, I will first try to analyse the path from machine to machine-learning via Marx’s analysis of machine while considering the alienation as the dual and complementary part of it. Datafication of society is a consequence of this process. The data extractivism of capital transforms the datafication into profit seeking capitalist production as well as parameterisation of the society. So the data gathered in and for the sake of the capitalist production is the input of the capitalist cycle and at the same time actively intervening and manipulating both the labour process data and consumer behaviour data. The data was and is not “as given” in a capitalist production. It would be better to discuss this constant manipulation before “bias” and “ethical issues” in data gathering. AI and constantly produced and reproduced data sets transformed this problem into a new sphere. When we consider the machine learning algorithms using large dataset gathered through all cycles of capitalist social reproduction, it would be better to consider the alienation of total social labour and this new level of “manipulation”. I will try to discuss this problem and suggest “parameterization of society” vis a vis “datafication of society” considering the distinction between the social form of data collection that is capitalist data extractivism and the objective content of data gathering which is in fact a possibility to organize the social production in a different classless society. The key factor is the subjective side, that is the intersection of the producers of the AI architecture, algorithms and the data.
The evolution from machinery to AI is actually a social process that is structured by class struggle. So I will try to trace the historical development of producing “learning machines” as a class struggle and point out both sides of the development, i.e. capitalist side of AI research, from cybernetics to AI and the Soviet side of it. And finally, modern class struggle, workers involved in the production of AI versus Tech-giants…
Last but not the least, considering the rather futuristic scenarios of AI, I will discuss the limits of AGI and creating AI with ‘the ability to transfer learning from one domain to other domains’ namely “AI with the capacity to engage and behave intelligently in a wide variety of contexts”.
Our speaaker, Özgür Narin, is currently a union member and Assistant Professor of Economics at Ordu University in Turkey. He graduated from the Electrical & Electronics Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University. He studied the capitalist production of science and technology, particularly innovation and the changing scientific labour process. His current research is on Artificial Intelligence “General Intellect” and the alternative reorganization of social production and society. His writing has appeared in Monthly Review and Science & Society
