Events
OCCUPY TOGETHER – Occupy Together is the unofficial hub for the various occupations springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. Over 1,000 cities and towns are currently participating.
Contact: http://www.occupytogether.org/.
PALESTINE – A collective of students in Gaza has formed the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI). These students are seeking to expand their collaboration and participation in events and activities with solidarity activists at international universities, particularly those involved with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction campaigns.
Contact: [email protected]; http://www.usacbi.org/.
COMMUNITY RADIO – The Prometheus Radio Project advocates for independent media at the federal level and assists community groups to apply for and start their own local community radio stations. The group is currently organizing people to occupy the airwaves after President Obama signed into law the Local Community Radio Act, which mandates that the FCC dedicate a slice of the FM radio airwaves to nonprofits and community groups.
Contact: [email protected]; http://prometheusradio.org/.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE – An Occupy AIPAC—the pro- Israeli lobby—conference is being planned for March 2-6 in Washington, DC. Timed to coincide with the annual AIPAC policy conference in March 2012, the Occupy AIPAC summit will be a long weekend of teach-ins, cultural performances, protests, and creative direct actions involving over 120 groups.
Contact: http://www.occupyaipac.org/.
WOMEN’S STRIKE – March 8 is International Women’s Day and events are planned worldwide. Global Women’s Strike also organizes protest, education, and direct action around this day to redress the ongoing oppression of women who do two-thirds of all the world’s work— most of it without pay or formal benefits and often in slave conditions.
Contact: http://www.global womenstrike.net/; http://www. internationalwomensday.com/about.asp.
OCCUPY/CAPITALISM – The 2012 Left Forum is scheduled for March 16-18 at Pace University in New York City. This year’s theme is “Occupy the System: Confronting Global Capitalism” and will feature panel discussions, art and film shows, and exhibitors.
Contact: 212-817-2003; [email protected]; http://www.leftforum.org.
POETRY – Split This Rock Poetry Festivals: Poems of Provocation & Witness will host poets, writers, and activists at workshops, discussions, and other activities. The event is themed poetry by and for the 99% and is being held from March 22-25 in Washington, DC.
Contact: 202-787-5210; [email protected]; http://www.splitthisrock.org/index.html.
ANTI-WAR – The United National Antiwar Coalition National Conference will be held March 23 in Stamford, CT. The event is themed, A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% Against the 99% Abroad and at Home. The conference will bring together activists from the occupy movements, the antiwar movement, and those struggling for economic equality.
Contact: [email protected]; http://www.justicewith peace.org/node/3306; https:// nationalpeaceconference.org/.
ANTI-WAR – On March 30, people from across the country will gather in Washington, DC, for the National Occupation of Washington, DC (NOW DC), in protest of corporate-controlled government. The event begins with an Occupy Social Forum, with workshops, talks, General Assemblies, and more.
Contact: http://nowdc.org/.
FEMINIST CONFERENCE – The National Young Feminist Leadership Conference, sponsored by the Feminist Majority Foundation, the world’s largest pro-choice student network, is scheduled for March 31-April 1, near Washington, DC.
Contact: Feminist Majority Foundation, 1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 801, Arlington, VA 22209; 866-444-FMLA; http:// www.feministcampus.org/default.asp.
COKE – Killer Coke is planning actions for the next Annual Meeting of Shareowners of the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia in April.
Contact: http://killercoke.org/index.php.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL – Millions 4 Mumia, the American Friends Service Committee and other groups are calling for supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal to be at the U.S. Justice Department on Mumia’s birthday, April 24, with the goal of freeing him and all political prisoners.
Contact: http://www.millions4 mumia.org/; http://afsc.org/.
MAY DAY – A General Strike is called for May Day by many groups. Events are planned worldwide.
Contact: http://www.occupytogether.org/.
LABOR – The 2012 Labor Notes Conference, themed Solidarity for the 99%, will be held May 4-6, in Chicago. Thousands of union members, officers, and grassroots labor activists will attend the event, which features workshops, meetings, and organizing opportunities.
Contact: 313-842-6262; http:// labornotes.org/conference.
NATO/G8 – The Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda is organizing protests at the NATO and G8 meetings being held in Chicago, May 19-21. A legal, family- friendly march and rally are planned for May 19. An Occupy Chicago month-long occupation is being planned to begin May 1.
Contact: http://cang8.word press.com/about/.
PEOPLE’S SUMMIT – The People’s Summit for Social and Environmental Justice during Rio+20 will take place between the June 15 and 23 at Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro— alongside the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Rio+20.
Contact: [email protected]; http://cupuladospovos.org.br/en/.
Books
SOCIAL SECURITY – Eric Laursen’s new book, The People’s Pension: The Struggle To Defend Social Security Since Reagan, traces the story of the 30- year war to determine the fate of America’s most successful social program, analyzes arguments over its future, and suggests what’s needed to preserve and expand the principles behind it for the 21st Century.
Contact: [email protected]; http://peoplespension.infoshop.org/blogs-mu/.
IDENTITY – In Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities, Rychetta Watkins uses the guerilla figure as a point of departure and shows how the trope’s rhetoric animates representation and identity in African American and Asian American literature and culture.
Contact: University of Mississippi Press, 3825 Ridgewood Road, Jackson, MS 39211; 601-432-6205; press@ihl. state.ms.us; http://www.upress. state.ms.us/.
LABOR – Rank & File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers is a new oral history by Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd. The book covers the activities of rank-and-file organizers from the 1930s- 1990s, who demanded changes in their unions, workplaces, and societies.
Contact: Haymarket Books, PO Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618; 773-583-7884; info@ haymarketbooks.org; http:// www.haymarketbooks.org/.
GLOBALIZATION – Alternative Globalization examines the intellectual structure of anti-globalization and global justice movements, exploring the formation and transformation of ideas, identities, and solidarities in the movements.
Contact: http://www.rout ledge.com/.
CORPORATIONS – In Slaying Corporate Vampires: A Proposal in the Age of Occupy Wall Street, author Mitchell Szczepanczyk argues that corporations are a rational response to the economic context in which they survive—the competitive realm of markets—and that in order to combat them, a wholesale shift is necessary away from the retentionist economic systems of markets and command planning and into an alternative cooperative economic model which goes by the name participatory economics.
Contact: [email protected].
Film
AFGHANISTAN – Shadow of Afghanistan is a new film about the country seen through the eyes of an Afghan warrior. The film includes the periods of the Soviet occupation, the exile of two million refugees maimed by Soviet mines, a violent civil war, and the invasion by the United States.
Contact: http://shadowofafhanistan.com/.
DETROIT – Deforce is a new documentary which provides insight into how the once great and prosperous city of Detroit, with a progressive and industrialized economy in the postwar years, is now a city rife with socio-economic inequality, violence, and political oppression.
Contact: http://www.deforce movie.com/.
FORECLOSURE – Expect Resistance is a film in progress about the current housing crisis, particularly in Rochester, NY, as seen through the principle that Housing Is A Human Right. The film follows activists in the Take Back The Land and Occupy movements in their struggles for housing rights. The filmmakers are currently fundraising to complete the film.
Contact: blackcatfilmsltd@ gmail.com; http://www.indie gogo.com/Expect-Resistance-Documentary-on-Foreclosure-Resistance-and-Occupation.
ABORIGINAL PEOPLES, CANADA – Many Canadians believe that if aboriginal people would assimilate into the dominant culture, their problems would be solved. In Civilized to Death, the Aboriginal People’s Television Network’s (APTN) Kimlee Wong talks to health professionals who point to the social determinants of health as the primary cause for these conditions.
Contact: http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2012/01/23/civilized-to-death-part-1/.
ROMANIA – Tales from the Golden Age is about the final 15 years of the Ceau- sescu regime, some of the worst in Romania’s history. The film spins the most popular, comic, and bizarre urban legends from that harrowing period into a hilariously surreal and omnibus film.
Contact: www.zeitgeist films.com/.
WOMEN/AFRICA – The women of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women’s writers’ Association, went into the Ugandan countryside seeking women to tell stories of their struggles. In I Dare To Say, edited by Hilda Twongyeirwe, FEMRITE has collected stories that relect the ironies of a modern patriarchal society and the conflict between traditional and contemporary Africa.
Contact: Lawrence Hill Books, 800-888-4741; igpbook.com.
