Events
DIVERSITY – The American Conference on Diversity is holding it’s 2010 Educators’ Institute, "Reaching and Teaching Immigrant Students," in cooperation with the Peter Sammartino School of Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, with two full-day sessions on February 5 & 12.
Contact: American Conference On Diversity, 109 Church St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901; 732-745-9330; [email protected]; www.americanconferenceondiversity.org.
CONVERGENCE – An Anti-Olympic Convergence and People’s Summit is scheduled for February 10-15 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Local activists plan rallies, alternative free events and games, and skill-shares towards creating a capitalism-free future as the corporate, money-driven official games take place on nearby unceded indigenous lands.
EVOLUTION – February 12-14 will be the fifth annual celebration of Evolution Weekend, intended to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations 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 9th Annual Local to Global Justice Teach-in comes to Arizona State University in Tempe on February 27-28, providing space for sharing experiences and knowledge between scholars and activists working on a wide range of social justice, human rights, and sustainability issues.
STUDENT STRIKE – In response to program cuts and fee hikes in California’s school system, students and education activists there have called for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4. The call was issued at an October Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education in Berkeley. Plans are under way for walkouts, marches, occupations, and teach-ins, both in California and nationally, as other states are also seeking to prop up a corrupt corporate welfare state by imposing cuts on working class education rights.
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.
LEFT FORUM – The 2010 Left Forum is scheduled for March 19-21 at Pace University in New York City. This year’s theme is "The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination" and will feature hundreds of panel discussions, art and film shows, and exhibitors. Opening plenary speaker will be Jesse Jackson, while the final plenary will feature Noam Chomsky. Z will also have a table and be sponsoring discussions through the Reimagining Society Project.
Contact: Left Forum, c/o PhD Program in Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016; 212-817-2003; [email protected]; www.leftforum.org.
JOBS – April 8 is the 75th anniversary of congressional passage of legislation to create the largest public works program in history, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created 8.5 million jobs during the Great Depression. As unemployment rises today, the Bail Out the People Movement has issued a national call to help organize a mass demonstration on Saturday, April 10 in Washington, DC calling for a real jobs program.
Contact: Bail Out the People Movement, Solidarity Center, 55 W. 17th St. #5C, New York, NY 10011; 212-633-6646; www.BailOutPeople.org.
LABOR NOTES – The 2010 Labor Notes Conference: Organizing a Rank-And-File Recovery is scheduled for April 23-25 in Detroit, with workshops and strategy sessions. Donations to help offset costs and provide scholarships, especially to youth, are being accepted.
Contact: Labor Notes, 7435 Michigan Ave Detroit, MI 48210; 313-842-6262; [email protected]; www.labornotes.org.
CLIMATE CONFERENCE – The Peoples’ World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights is scheduled for April 20-22 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The conference was announced by President Morales in response to the failure of the UN Copenhagen conference to address the underlying causes in the capitalist model; it will instead offer real solutions and plans.
SPACE WEAPONS – The annual membership meeting of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space is scheduled for May 9 in NYC, in conjunction with other international events centered around the U.N.’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.
Contact: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, PO Box 652, Brunswick, ME 04011; 207-443-9502; [email protected]; www.space4peace.org.
SOCIAL FORUM – The second United States Social Forum is scheduled for June 22-26 in Detroit. The social forum movement, started ten years ago in Brazil, has brought together millions of people around the world working for participatory grassroots alternatives to a hierarchical system of corporate exploitation of peoples and the environment. The theme of the USSF is Another World Is Possible, Another U.S. Is Necessary.
Resources
CAFE – The Red & Black Cafe in Portland, Oregon offers event and discussion space for the progressive community in the Pacific Northwest within a worker run collective offering fair-trade food and drink.
Contact: Red & Black Cafe, 400 Southeast 12th Ave., Portland, OR 97214; 503-231-3899; [email protected]; www.redandblackcafe.com.
GLOBALIZATION – The February/March issue of the journal Globalizations will cover the economic crisis and the response by corporate globalizers and people’s social movements and theorizers.
Contact: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 7625 Empire Dr., Florence, KY 41042; 800-634-7064; www.routledge.com.
LATIN AMERICA – NACLA: Report on the Americas is a bimonthly publication of the North American Conference on Latin America offering progressive, footnoted articles and research about the majority of the western hemisphere.
Contact: North American Congress on Latin America, 38 Greene Street, 4th Fl., New York, NY 10013; 646-613-1440; www.nacla.org.
PROPAGANDA – The November edition of the quarterly journal Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture is dedicated to the "Herman/Chomsky Propaganda Model 20 Years On." The publication is available in print and online as with free, downloadable, printable articles.
Contact: Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture (WPCC), c/o Katharina Nötzold, University of Westminster, Harrow Campus, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 3TP, UK; www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-880.
DVD
PHILOSOPHY – In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor interviews influential thinkers such as Cornell West, Judith Butler, and Michael Hardt in various settings on issues ranging from cultural theory to the environment.
Contact: Zeitgeist Films Ltd., 247 Centre St., New York, NY 10013; 212-274-1989; www.zeitgeistfilms.com.
SPRAWL – Sprawling From Grace: The Consequences of American Suburbanization is a documentary which explores the ravages of oil, cars, and corporate engineered city planning.
Contact: Cinema Libre Studio, 8328 De Soto Ave., Canoga Park, CA 91304; 818-349-8822; [email protected]www.cinemalibrestudio.com.
SUSTAINABILITY – The Suzuki Diaries: Sustainability in Action follows environmentalist David Suzuki and his youngest daughter, Sarika, as they travel to Europe to explore what a sustainable future might look like, and to see if two different generations can find reason for hope.
Contact: Bullfrog Films, PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 800-543-3764; [email protected]; www.bullfrogfilms.com.
Books
ANARCHISM – In Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Peter Marshall offers a balanced and critical account of a misunderstood but broad movement, from Taoism to Situationism, from Ranters to Punk rockers, from individualists to communists, from anarcho-syndicalists to anarcha-feminists.
Contact: PM Press, PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623; 510-658-3906; [email protected]; www.pmpress.org.
CHILDREN’S – Mischief in the Forest is a children’s book by graphic artist Stephanie McMillan and environmentalist Derrick Jensen. An online fundraising campaign for the book’s production is also underway.
COCAINE – Drawing on declassified documents and years of research, William L. Marcy examines The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America.
Contact: Independent Publishers Group, 814 N. Franklin St., Chicago, IL 60610; [email protected]; www.ipgbook.com.
FOOD – Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice by Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel with Annie Shattuck offers the real story behind the global food crisis, documenting the devastating effects of the industrial agri-foods complex and debunking the myth that sustainable farming practices and people-centered food systems cannot feed the world.
Contact: Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618; 510-654-4400; [email protected]; www.foodfirst.org.
NEOLIBERALISM – In Freedom Not Yet: Liberation and the Next World Order, Kenneth Surin examines theoretical models for understanding the economic polarization of corporate neoliberal economic policies.
Contact: Duke University Press, PO Box 90660, Durham, NC 27708; 919-687-3600; [email protected]; www.dukepress.edu.
OLD WORLD – In The New Old World, Perry Anderson offers skepticism of European exceptionalism by examining the EU’s eastward expansion, a foreign policy largely subservient to America’s, and the popular rejection of the European Constitution.
Contact: Verso, 20 Jay Street, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; 718-246-8160; [email protected]; www.versobooks.com.
PIRATES – In Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy, Gabriel Kuhn examines the political legacy and cultural symbolism of the "golden age" pirates who roamed the seas between the Caribbean Islands and the Indian Ocean from 1690 to 1725.
Contact: PM Press, PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623; 510-658-3906; [email protected]; www.pmpress.org.
POPULATION CONTROL – The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees by Al Sandine traces a history of mass gatherings, from the days of anti-colonial revolt to the passive, "colonized crowds" that fill today’s sports arenas, commercial centers, and workplaces.
Contact: Monthly Review Press, 146 W. 29th Street, #6W, New York, NY 10001; 800-670-9499; [email protected]; www.monthlyreview.org.
REVOLUTION – You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of CLR James offers eight never-before-published lectures from 1968 by the prominent Trinidadian anti-colonial scholar and cultural critic.
Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; [email protected]; www.akpress.org.
UNBOUGHT – The 40th Anniversary Expanded Edition of Unbought and Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm details her remarkable rise to be the first African-American Congressperson and her historic and radical presidential candidacy, along with new essays examining her impact.
WALL – A Wall in Palestine by René Backmann (translated by A. Kaiser) offers a comprehensive look, from the barrier’s terrible impact on ordinary citizens to how it will shape the future of the Middle East.
