Events
FILM FEST – The 17th Annual Seattle Human Rights Film Festival is scheduled for February 4-8 featuring 16 documentaries, plus speakers and other events at several downtown venues.
Contact: Amnesty International Puget Sound, PO Box 45777, Seattle, WA 98145; shrff09@gmail.com; www.shrff.org.
EVOLUTION – Evolution Weekend 2009 coincides with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. This year’s weekend events (February 13-15) are intended to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems for their faith, affiliated with the Clergy Letter Project repudiating anti-science fundamentalism.
TEACH-IN – The 8th Annual Local to Global Justice Teach-in will take place February 28 and March 1, 2009, on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. The theme is Reclaim the Commons.
CLIMATE – The second national youth summit to solve the climate crisis, Power Shift 2009, is scheduled for February 27 to March 2 in Washington, DC with workshops and discussions about organizing and legislative campaigns.
WOMEN’S STRIKE – International Women’s Day, March 8, has also been a day of protest, education, and direct action 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.
BOOKFAIR – The 2009 Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair will take place on March 14-15 at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park.
Contact: Anarchist Bookfair c/o Bound Together, 1369 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117; abookfair@yahoo.com; www.sfbookfair.wordpress.com.
ECONOMY – The first annual Forum on the Solidarity Economy: Building Another World, scheduled for March 19-22, 2009 at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, brings together diverse groups and individuals to share ideas and practices, to forge new connections, and to build a more powerful and cohesive movement for a just, democratic and sustainable economy.
ANTI-WAR DEMOS – Local chapters of United For Peace & Justice are organizing demonstrations around the time of the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, March 19. The National Assembly anti-war group are planning a March on the Pentagon on March 21.
Contact: UFPJ, PO Box 607, Times Square Station, NY, NY 10108; 212-868-5545; www.unitedforpeace.org; National Assembly to end the Iraq & Afghanistan wars & Occupations, 216-736-4704; natassembly@aol.com; www.natassembly.org.
WALL ST. MARCHES – Bail Out People, Not Banks is planning two days of marches on Wall Street in NYC for April 3-4, the anniversary of when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life fighting for economic justice. Make your voice heard.
Contact: Bail Out the People Movement Solidarity Center, 55 W. 17th St. #5C, New York, NY 10011; 212-633-6646; bailoutpeople@safewebmail.com; www.BailOutPeople.org.
FEMINISM – Visions in Feminism is holding its annual conference in Washington, DC on April 4. The group seeks to merge feminist theory and praxis and engage both academic and activist discussion. This year’s conference theme is Pushing Boundaries: Queering Feminism & Queer-ying our Communities.
Contact: American University, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016; 703-276-9768; vif@visionsinfeminism.org; www.visionsinfeminism.org.
IMMIGRATION – The 4th National Grassroots Immigrant Strategy Conference is scheduled for April 10-12 at the UIC College of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. The conference will focus on building multi-ethnic, multi-constituent, broad-based grassroots immigrant rights movements run by de-centralized volunteer-based community-rooted immigrant rights activists.
Contact: National Immigrant Solidarity Network, PO Box 751, South Pasadena, CA 91031; 213-403-0131; info@immigrantsolidarity.org; www.immigrantsolidarity.org.
LEFT FORUM – The 2009 Left Forum is scheduled for April 17-19 at Pace University across from City Hall. This year’s theme is Turning Points and features discussions, workshops, and tables.
ANTI-NATO – Planning and mobilization is underway for protests and peace alternatives during NATO’s 60th anniversary celebration on the French-German border in April 2009.
Campaigns
ISRAEL/PALESTINE – The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is currently working in crisis mode to try to stop the illegal, brutal invasion of Gaza, and will work to assist the survivors in an anticipated aftermath of ongoing sanctions and blockade. The group also engages in long-term campaigns to end the larger occupation of Palestine. Petitions, boycotts, and ideas for further actions are available.
Contact: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, PO Box 21539, Washington, DC 20009; 202-332-0994; www.endtheoccupation.org.
NO ROADS – Friends of the Earth launched a campaign in December for economic stimulus money to be invested in clean transportation options including public transit, passenger rail, and bike and pedestrian infrastructure—instead of the usual pollution-creating pork of new roads.
Contact: Friends of the Earth, 1717 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036; 877-843-8687; www.foe.org.
Publications
HUMAN TERRAIN – In the pamphlet American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (release date February 14), Roberto J. González shows how the history of anthropology can be used to illuminate the problems of turning "culture" into a military tool.
Contact: The University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637; 800-621-2736; custserv@press.uchicago.edu; www.press.uchicago.edu.
LABOR – Labor Notes (publication and organizing group) has been trying to "put the ‘movement’ back in the labor movement" for 30 years. With a new Administration taking office amid economic instability, this will be a crucial year for activists to stay up on worker fights and participate for real change.
Contact: Labor Notes, Main Office, 7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, MI 48210; 313-842-6262; labornotes@labornotes.org; www.labornotes.org.
TEXAS – The New Texas Radical is a print magazine focusing on issues of interest to radical and progressive Texans: the death penalty, immigration, prison privatization, etc.
Books
CAPITALISM – Violence Today: Actually Existing Barbarism, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, collects essays on the dangerous death spiral of the market-based economic profit system and its vicious nation-state protectors.
Contact: Monthly Review Press, 146 W. 29th Street, #6W, New York, NY 10001; 212-691-2555; bookorder@monthlyreview.org; www.monthlyreview.org.
CHE – Che: A Graphic Biography by artist Spain Rodriguez and edited by Paul Buhle recounts the revolutionary’s life in a graphic-novel format.
Contact: Contact: Verso Books, 20 Jay Street, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; 718-246-8160; versony@versobooks.com; www.versobooks.com.
CLASS – In Dynamite: A Century Of Class Violence In America, Louis Adamic retells the much suppressed story of the real "class war" in the contest over resources between the privileged few and the working class.
Contact: Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; info@akpress.org; www.akpress.org.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE – In Literature and War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers, Runo Isaksen asks more than a dozen Israeli and Palestinian authors to comment their role and responsibility in promoting peace, solving conflict, and seeing "the other" in their war-torn region.
Contact: Interlink Publishing, 46 Crosby St., Northampton, MA 01060; 800-238-5465; info@interlinkbooks.com; www.interlinkbooks.com.
MURALS – On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman is the result of six years of research and hundreds of interviews, and brings to light murals that were hitherto "lost" to history or unknown outside their immediate surroundings.
Contact: University Press of Mississippi, 3825 Ridgewood Rd., Jackson, MS 39211; 800-737-7788; press@ihl.state.ms.us; www.upress.state.ms.us.
PMC – In Servants of War: Private Military Corporations and the Profit of Conflict, Rolf Uessler exposes the ways in which the employment of for-profit military organizations compromises justice, jeopardizes international peace and stability, and escapes public scrutiny.
Contact: Soft Skull Press, 9 West 21st, Suite 1101, New York NY 10010; 718-643-1599; www.softskull.com.
REDS – "They Are All Red Out Here": Socialist Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1895-1925 by Jeffrey A. Johnson examines the most fertile ground for American radicalism in its history.
Contact: University of Oklahoma Press, 2800 Venture Dr., Norman, OK 73069; 800-627-7377; www.oupress.com.
WAR RESISTERS – Ethics of Conviction and Civic Responsibility: Conscientious War Resisters in America During the World Wars by Yuichi Moroi focuses on a small number of determined idealists marginalized in the larger war glorifying culture.
Contact: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham MD 20706; 800-462-6420; custserv@rowman.com; www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
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