Events, Campaigns, Books, & Films

Events

OCCUPY TOGETHER - Occupy Together is the unofficial hub for the various occupations springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Over 1,000 cities and towns are currently participating.

Contact: http://www.occupytogether.org.

FUNDRAISING - Truthout is celebrating its ten-year anniversary and raising funds to continue its important work in the movement for accountability, truth, and justice.

Contact: Truthout, PO Box 276-414, Sacramento, CA 95827; 213-489-1971; messenger @truthout.org; https://members truthout.org/donate.

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION - The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) will host its 21st annual conference in Chicago, November 2-5. This year’s theme, “Reworking Intersections, Reframing Debates, Restoring Hope,” will be addressed in intensive institutes, talks, and workshops.

Contact: name@NAMEorg.org; http://nameorg.org.

RESISTERS - The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is holding the “Nuclear Weapons: Don’t Buy Them, Don’t Own Them,” conference in Kansas City, November 4-6. War tax resistance groups and local war resisters will work together in workshops, panels, and discussions.

Contact: http://nwtrcc.org/.

RIGHTS - The Northeastern University School of Law will host The Institute on Framing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for Mobilization and Advocacy: Towards a Strategic Agenda in the United States, November 3-4. The event will bring together legal activists and academics engaged in sophisticated social movement analysis. Sponsors include the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, The National and Economic Social Rights Initiative, and Human Rights USA.

Contact: http://www.northeastern.edu.

BOOKFAIR - The 10th Annual New Orleans Bookfair is scheduled for November 5 at 500-600 blocks of Frenchmen Street, to celebrate independent publishing and alternative media.

Contact: Robin Stricklin, New Orleans Bookfair, 504-813- 6163; nolabookfair@gmail.com; http://nolabookfair.com/meetings.html.

MARXISM - The Fall 2011 Greater New York Marxism Conference will take place November 5-6 at Columbia University in New York City.

Contact: Andrea Carmen, 907-745-4482, andrea@treatycouncil.org; nwtrcc@nwtrcc.org; http://www.nwtrcc.org/.

HUMAN RIGHTS - The U.S. Human Rights Network will host A Forum: U.S. Toxics Policies & U.S. Human Rights Obligations, on November 6, in Louisiana. The event is a gathering of organizations to strategize about current U.S. policy reform initiatives, community organizing, and advocacy to protect reproductive health, prevent toxic exposures, and defend human rights.

Contact: http://www.ushrnetwork.org.

CLIMATE JUSTICE - On November 6, Tar Sands Action will return to Washington, DC to encircle the White House and to ask President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Contact: http://www.tarsands action.org/.

MEDIA - November 6 is Media Democracy Day and events promoting non-corporate independent media are planned in Vancouver, BC (Nov. 11-13) and Chicago, IL (Nov.5).

Contact: http://mediademocracyday.org/; http://www.chicagoprogmedia.org/.

HUMAN RIGHTS - The Human Rights and Racial Justice Convening will take place on November 7. Sponsors include the U.S. Human Rights Fund, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Just and Fair Schools Fund.

Contact: akahres@publicinterestprojects.org; http:// www.ushumanrightsfund.org/.

DIRECT ACTION - The annual November vigil to protest the School of the Americas (now officially WHINSEC) is scheduled for November 18-20 at Fort Benning, GA. Additional events include teach-ins and workshops.

Contact: SOA Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC 20017; 202-234-3440; info@soaw.org; http://soaw.org/index.php.

PRISONERS - Prison Radio challenges unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism, and gender discrimination. Prison Radio is currently raising funds in efforts to record music from Mumia Abu- Jamal; as well as cover news from the California Prison hunger strike and news of Bradley Manning’s defense, among other prisoners.

Contact: info@prisonradio.org; http://www.prisonradio.org/.

ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR - The first Annual Boston Anarchist Bookfair will take place November 11-13 at Simmons College. Events include workshops, panels, and a film festival.

Contact: http://www.bostonanarchistbookfair.org/.

ENVIRONMENT - The San Francisco Green Festival, the largest sustainability event in the nation, will take place November 12. Speakers include Amy Goodman and Tom Hayden.

Contact: http://www.green festvals.org/.

TEACHERS - Chicago’s Teachers for Social Justice will host the 11th Annual Teaching For Social Justice Curriculum Fair, on November 19.

Contact: steph.organize@gmail.com; http://www.teachersforjustice.org/.

WOMEN - The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991. It will take place November 25 to December 10. The campaign begins on the International Day Against Violence Against Women and ends on International Human Rights Day.

Contact: http://cwgl.rutgers.edu/; http://www.unwomen.org/.

PRISONERS - The Prisoners Are People Too! Community Education Meeting will be held in Buffalo, NY on November 28, sponsored by the Reentry Resource Center.

Contact: http://www.reentry.net/ny/.

CLASS - The Center for Study of Working Class Life has announced the “How Class Works - 2012 Conference,” to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, July 7-9, 2012. Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 12, 2011.

Contact: Center for Study of Working Class Life, Dept. of Economics, SUNY at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384; 631-632-7536; workingclass@notes.cc.sunysb.edu; http://www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass/.

HUNGER/POVERTY - Food Not Bombs continues its End Hunger and Poverty Tour in cities across the U.S., including Charlottesville, VA and Columbia, SC.

Contact: http://www.foodnotbombs.net/.

Books

WALL STREET - In How Wall Street Fleeces America, Stephen Lendman discusses Wall Street’s recovery from the financial crisis of 2007 & 2008 while industrial America continues to implode. With high-paying jobs being exported, economic prospects eroding and austerity being imposed, the book provides a tool for showing angry Americans how they have been fleeced, and includes a plan for constructive change.

Contact: Clarity Press Inc. Ste. 469, 3277 Roswell Rd NE, Atlanta, GE 30305; 404-647- 6501; www.claritypress.com/.

CULTURE - Groundswell, a new journal, is a loose affiliation of cultural producers working in the arts and activism. Groundswell is currently accepting submissions.

Contact: dave@groundswellcollective.com; http://groundswellcollective.com/.

CENSORSHIP - Censored 2011 is a collection of the top 25 censored stories of 2010-2011 that somehow fell off the national news radar. Stories include, “More US Soldiers Committed Suicide than Died in Combat”; “Trafficking of Iraqi Women Rampant”; and “Sweatshops in China Are Making Your iPods While Workers Suffer.”

Contact: Seven Stories Press, 140 Watts Street, New York, NY 10013; 212-226-8760;  http://sevenstories.com.

RACISM - Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice is a guide to understanding and confronting institutionalized racism (3rd edition). The book  provides practical suggestions, tools, examples, and advice on how white people can intervene in interpersonal and organizational situations to work as allies for racial justice.

Contact: New Society Publishers, PO Box 189, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, V0R 1XO, Canada; 800-567-6772; http://www.newsociety.com/.

FEMINISM - Merle Hoffman pioneered one of the first abortion clinics in the time before Roe v. Wade and her new memoir discusses this as well as personal events from her life. Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom is a personal and political book from this journalist, activist, and women’s health care pioneer.

Contact: The Feminist Press, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406, New York, NY 10016; 212-817-7915; info@feministpress.org; http://www.feministpress.org/.

FINANCIAL CRISIS - Yanis Varoufakis’ new book, The Global Minotaur: America, The True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy, traces the systemic cause of the current crisis back to the U.S. trade and budget deficits of the 1970s. Varoufakis links the lessons learned from the crash of 1929 and the U.S. post-war economic strategy to explain how the crisis was allowed to happen through greed, deregulation, and faulty economic theory.

Contact: Zed Books, 7 Cynthia Street, London, N1 9JF, UK; +44-(0)20-7837-4014;  http://zedbooks.co.uk/.

SPANISH CIVIL WAR - The Story of the Iron Column, Militant Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War is a new book by Abel Paz, translated by Paul Sharkey. This history of the Iron Column—an anarchist militia during the Spanish Civil War—is the first book about this group of “uncontrollables.”

Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd Street, Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; i//www.ak press.org/.

GUATEMALA - The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics brings together more than 200 texts and images in a broad introduction to Guatemala. The book includes opinions of politicians, activists, and scholars as well as poems, songs, plays, jokes, novels, short stories, recipes, art, and photographs that capture the diversity of everyday life in Guatemala.

Contact: Duke University Press, 905 W. Main Street, Suite 18B, Durham, NC 90660; 919- 687-3600; http://www.dukeupress.edu/index.php.

Films

CIVILIZATION - The Crisis of Civilization is a new documentary investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism, and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.

Contact: http://crisisofcivilization.com/.

CORRUPTION - The Washington Influence Industry is a call to action as it documents a cycle of political corruption that has resulted in the corporate dominance of American democracy. The film highlights corporations and politicians who buy and sell access to the halls of government for the purpose of rigging public policy for personal gain.

Contact: http://thewashington influenceindustry.com.

HOUSING - Families living on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation crowd into mold-infested trailers. Others are on the brink of losing homes to foreclosure in the old Pennsylvania coal town of Wilkes-Barre, camped out on the streets of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, and displaced by the massive destruction of public housing complexes in cities across the country. 100 grassroots organizations captured stories like these for the documentary, More Than a Roof. The film launched in October with a series of community screenings.

Contact: mtar@nesri.com; http://www.nesri.org/.

MILITARY - Semper Fi: Always Faithful will premier November 12 at the Cucalorus film festival in Wilmington, NC. The movie, from Working Films, is about a marine stationed at Camp Lejeune whose 9-year-old daughter dies from a rare form of leukemia. The father’s search for an explanation reveals a Marine Corp cover-up of one of the worst cases of toxic water contamination in U.S. history.

Contact: http://workingfilms.org/blog/; http://www.cucalorus.org/index.asp.

MEDIA - Media That Matters will tour the southeastern U.S., beginning November 20, with a career and educational enrichment program designed to help at-risk youth develop and progress. The tour will travel to high schools and local theaters in West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Birmingham, and Houston.

Contact: http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/.

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 Zaps are free listings of publications, events, campaigns, and other iitems of note from the progressive community. Submit to zmag@zmag.org.