Events
THEATER – The Bread & Puppet: Cheap Art & Political Theater is doing a tour of the Midwest in March and is still looking to fill open dates. Check the current schedule and/or call with performance venue suggestions.
Contact: Bread and Puppet: Cheap Art and Political Theater in Vermont, 753 Heights Rd., Glover, VT 05839; 802-525-3031 or 802-525-6972; [email protected]; www.breadandpuppet.org.
ART – A juried art exhibit, performances, and special installations at a gallery in Los Angeles during Oscar week (March 3-7), the "ManifestEquality" events seek to raise visibility for the grassroots campaign to ensure full equal rights to LGBT Americans, especially in California following recent legislative discrimination.
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. Plans are under way for walkouts, marches, occupations, and teach-ins, both in California and nationally.
BOOKFEST – The Raza Press and Media Association is sponsoring the 4th Barrio Book Festival at the Centro Cultural Francisco Villa in Los Angeles on March 6, with panel discussions, vendors, and more.
WOMEN’S STRIKE – International Women’s Day, March 8, has 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.
RNC-8 – Supporters of the eight activists (the RNC-8) on trial for protesting during the 2008 Republican National Convention have called for a National Day of Solidarity on March 23, when local groups can distribute information, hold informational events, or raise legal support funds for those facing draconian fines and prison terms for non-violent political actions.
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. 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.
HUMAN RIGHTS – The 15th annual Get On The Bus for Human Rights, scheduled for April 16, draws upwards of 1,200 participants riding buses, commuter trains, and carpooling down to New York City to take peaceful action in front of embassies, consulates and corporate headquarters in support of human rights, sponsored by Amnesty International USA Local Group 133 of Somerville, Massachusetts.
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.
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 UN’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 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.
Wanted
ESSAYS – The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation invites submissions to the 2010 Daniel Singer Prize competition, up to 5,000 words, on the topic: "Given the devastating effects of the present crisis on working people, what proposals for radical reform can be raised which are both practical to the vast majority while moving us towards the goal of socialism?" Deadline is July 31.
Contact: The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation, PO Box 2371, El Cerrito, CA 94530; [email protected]; www.danielsinger.org.
POSTERS – The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is looking for posters that call for abolishing California’s Three Strikes Law, the cruelest and most punitive in the nation where shoplifting can result in life in prison. Deadline is March 12. Selected submissions will be displayed/projected at the 10th annual awards dinner for Families to Amend California Three Strikes (FACTS) on March 20 and available at the CSPG website.
Contact: Center for the Study of Political Graphics, 8124 West Third Street, Suite 211, Los Angeles, CA 90048; 323-653-4662; [email protected]; www.politicalgraphics.org.
PROPOSALS – The 2010 Rouge Forum for progressive educators is scheduled for August 2-5 in Chicago and proposals for papers, panels, or performances are being accepted through mid-April.
SIGNATURES – Seeking to definitively reverse the Supreme Court’s recent decision expanding corporate power, and past decisions defining corporations as "persons" under the Constitution, Move to Amend is offering a citizen’s petition in favor of a Constitutional Amendment and launching a multi-year project to get it passed.
SUPPORT – On January 25, in Columbus, Georgia, four human rights advocates were given the maximum federal prison sentence of six months each for their non-violent civil disobedience opposing the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC), also known as the School of Assassins for its training and sponsorship of Latin American death squads and military coups. For more info, see the SOAWatch website.
Contact: School of the Americas Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC 20017; 202-234-3440; [email protected]; www.soaw.org.
VENUES – Friends of the Congo is offering its Break the Silence speaking tour February 1 to July 2 throughout the United States, Canada, and select countries throughout the globe. Speakers from the Congo—site of a humanitarian crisis and a deadly war—speak about the problems and possible solutions while representing diverse issue areas.
Contact: Friends of the Congo, 1629 K St., NW Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006; 888-584-6510; [email protected]; www.friendsofthecongo.org; www.congoweek.org.
VIDEOS – The It is Apartheid Collective and Stop the Wall have launched an Israeli Apartheid video contest. Cash prizes and film festival screenings will go to winning submissions, which should run under five minutes and reflect the realities of apartheid policy across Palestine.
DVDs
AGRICULTURE – Following up on the Peabody Award-winning documentary King Corn, a new documentary, Big River, shows the environmental impacts of Iowa agribiz (by traveling downriver), with interviews and impacts on peoples and places.
Contact: Bullfrog Films, PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 800-543-3764; [email protected]; www.bullfrogfilms.com.
TAXES – In Death And Taxes, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee interviews 28 people about their motivations and methods for resisting the U.S. war machine with their tax payments.
Contact: National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, PO Box 150553, Brooklyn, New York 11215; 800-269-7464; [email protected]; www.nwtrcc.org.
VETERANS – The documentary The Good Soldier follows five combat veterans from different wars adjusting to civilian life after killing for the U.S. government and who come to change their minds about what it means to be a "good soldier."
Books
ANARCHISTS – In Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction, edited by Margaret Killjoy with an introduction by Kim Stanley Robinson, some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction discuss the endless possibilities of the world of fiction with a specific focus on anarchist politics.
Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; [email protected]; www.akpress.org.
HOMELESSNESS – In the book At Home on the Street: People: Poverty and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness, Jeffrey Michael Clair and Jason Wasserman report from years of on-the-street interviews about programs and policies addressing homeless people that too often serve only to alienate them.
Contact: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1800 30th St., Ste. 314, Boulder, CO 80301; 303-444-6684; [email protected]; www.reinner.com
JOURNALISM – In The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again, Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols propose a strategy for saving journalism amid the crises of increasing corporate monopolies and diminishing coverage and investigative reporting.
Contact: Nation Books, 116 East 16th St., 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003; 212-822-0250; www.nationbooks.org.
PRISONERS – La Pinta: Chicana/o Prisoner Literature, Culture, and Politics by B. V. Olguín is based on archival research about Chicana and Chicano prisoners—known as Pintas and Pintos—as well as new interpretations of works by renowned authors and activists.
Contact: University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713; 800-252-3206; [email protected]; www.utexas.edu/utpress.
UNIVERSITIES – In No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom, Cary Nelson (author Manifesto of a Tenured Radical) offers an insiders account of the culture wars, corporate takeovers, and pauperization in higher academia to argue for grassroots democratization.
Contact: New York University Press, 838 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10003; 800-996-6987; [email protected]; www.Nyupress.org.