Zaps - March 2011

Events

TOUR - The Taking It Back Tour 2011 features former Green Party vice-presidential candidate Rosa Clemente, author/activist JLove Calderon, and former Dead Pres musician M-1, aka Mutulu Olugabala, in an interactive, multimedia tour working with youth, immigrants, college students, and community organizers to empower and sustain their local communities. Open dates still available.

Contact: takingitback2011@gmail.com; rosaclemente.org.

STUDENT STRIKE - Students in California are planning more actions this March in response to budget cuts affecting tuition and courses. Actions include a statewide strike and day of action on March 2, a conference on March 12, and a march on the state Capitol in Sacramento on March 14.

Contact: statewidecoordination@gmail.com; www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com.

GREEN FILMFEST - The first-ever San Francisco Green Film Festival is scheduled for March 3-6, featuring 70 film premieres, panels, workshops, and more.

Contact: Ninth Street Independent Film Center, 145 9th Street, Ste. 101, San Francisco CA 94103; 415-742-1394; info@sfgreenfilmfest.org; www.sfgreenfilmfest.org.

WOMEN'S STRIKE - March 8 is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day with events planned around the world. 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: www.internationalwomensday.com; www.globalwomenstrike.net.

FEMINIST CONFERENCE - The Young Feminist Leadership Conference, sponsored by the Feminist Majority Foundation, the world's largest pro-choice student network, is scheduled for March 12-14 at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Contact: Feminist Majority Foundation, 1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 801, Arlington, VA 22209; 866-444-FMLA; www.feministcampus.org.

LEFT FORUM - The 2010 Left Forum is scheduled for March 18-20 at Pace University in New York City. This year's theme is "Toward a Politics of Solidarity" and will feature hundreds of panel discussions, art and film shows, and exhibitors.

Contact: Left Forum, c/o PhD Program in Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016; 212-817-2003; leftforum@leftforum.org; www.leftforum.org.

PROTEST - March 19 is the eight-year anniversary of the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq and more than 50,00 American troops and mercenaries still occupy the country, while U.S. aggression continues across the globe. Veterans for Peace and other organizations are planning a demonstration at the White House in Washington, DC.

Contact: stopthesewars@gmail.com; www.stopthesewars.com.

SENTENCING - Five peace activists convicted in December of felony trespass and other charges for a protest against nuclear weapons at a Navy base near Bremerton, Washington are scheduled to be sentenced on March 28 in Tacoma. They face up to ten years in prison.

Contact: Tacoma Catholic Worker, 1417 South G St., Tacoma, Washington 98405; 443-602-0464; disarmnowplowshares@gmail.com; www.disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com.

CESAR CHAVEZ DAY - March 31 is Cesar Chavez Day, with a parade and festival in San Francisco (on April 9 this year), plus a national campaign to get March 31 (Chavez's birthday) declared a national holiday to honor the migrant farm worker organizer.

Contact: www.cesarchavezday.org.

CLIMATE - A national youth summit to strategize climate activism, Power Shift 2011, is scheduled for April 1-4 at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC with workshops and discussions about organizing and legislative campaigns.

Contact: www.energyactioncoalition.org.

ANTIWAR DEMOS - The National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance has called for a march on the Pentagon in Washington, DC on April 8 and a coalition of groups through the United National Antiwar Committee has called for rallies and marches in San Francisco and New York on April 9.

Contact: www.iraqpledge.org/wordpress; www.nationalpeaceconference.org.

HUMAN RIGHTS - The annual Get On The Bus for Human Rights, scheduled for April 8, draws upwards of 1,200 participants riding buses, commuter trains, and carpooling 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.

Contact: gotb@amnesty133.org, www.gotb.org.

ABORTION RIGHTS - The 30th annual CLPP conference "From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom" is scheduled for April 8-10 at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, featuring workshops, trainings, and discussions.

Contact: Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 01002; 413-559-5416; clpp@hampshire.edu; clpp.hampshire.edu.

ANTI-MILITARIZATION - A convergence in Washington, DC for Latin America solidarity and against U.S. militarization there is planned for April 4-11, sponsored by SOA Watch and the Latin America Solidarity Coalition. Events include fasts, direct actions, a two-day conference (April 8-10), and a lobbying day (April 11).

Contact: School of the Americas Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC 20017; 202-234-3440; info@soaw.org; www.soaw.org.

BOOKFAIR - The 5th Annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair is scheduled for April 9 at the Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. A film festival and additional events are scheduled for the night before and after.

Contact: info@anarchistbookfair.net, www.anarchistbookfair.net.

MEDIA REFORM - The 5th National Conference for Media Reform is scheduled for April 8-10 in Boston and brings together thousands of activists and mediamakers to help democratize communications media.

Contact: Free Press, 40 Main St, Suite 301, Florence, MA 01062; 877-888-1533; conference@freepress.net; conference.freepress.net.

DAY OF ACTION - Rising Tide North America has called for a Chain Reaction Day of Action Against Extraction, with various events nationwide on April 20, the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

Contact: www.risingtidenorthamerica.org.

Books

AGRICULTURE - In Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal, editors Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar present a collection of essays on the inequities of the current profit-driven food production and distribution system, while also examining what can and is being done to create a human-centered and ecologically sound alternative system.

Contact: Monthly Review Press, 146 W. 29th Street, #6W, New York, NY 10001; 800-670-9499; bookorder@monthlyreview.org; www.monthlyreview.org.

ART - Art and Politics Now: Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis by Susan Noyes Platt offers a critical analysis of contemporary, politically-engaged art, beginning with the Seattle anti-WTO demos of 1999 up to the BP spill in 2010, from street art to the international art scene and a special emphasis on Turkey and the Mideast.

Contact: Midmarch Arts Press, 300 Riverside Dr., New York NY 10025; 212-666-6990; info@midmarchartspress.org; www.midmarchartspress.org; www.artandpoliticsnow.com.

BALKANS - In Don't Mourn, Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia, Andrej Grubacic offers a radical left perspective on Yugoslav balkanization and occupation, "humanitarian intervention," the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, and structural adjustment.

Contact: PM Press, PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623; 510-658-3906; info@pmpress.org; www.pmpress.org.

BIOREGIONALISM - Bioregionalism and Global Ethics by Richard Evanoff examines the possibility of maximizing ecological sustainability, social justice, and human well-being in the context of decentralized but confederated bioregional communities.

Contact: Taylor & Francis Books, 7625 Empire Drive, Florence, KY 41042; 561-361-6000; orders@taylorandfrancis.com; www.routledge.com.

CANADA - Todd Gordon's Imperialist Canada exposes an imperialist past and present, at home and across the globe, interweaving histories of indigenous dispossession with a much ignored oppression of peoples in the global South.

Contact: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 201E-121 Osborne Street, Winnipeg, MB, R3L 1Y4, Canada; 204-942-7058; info@arbeiterring.com; www.arbeiterring.com.

CAPITALISM - In The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers, Michael Perelman describes how dominant, mainstream economists distort economic reality by covering up the reality of exploitation and promoting a fantasy of equal exchange.

Contact: Monthly Review Press, 146 W. 29th Street, #6W, New York, NY 10001; 800-670-9499; bookorder@monthlyreview.org; www.monthlyreview.org.

CIVIL RIGHTS - Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama by Wayne Greenhaw describes the local activists who fought back against kidnappings, bombings, and murders and transformed a state's political machinery.

Contact: Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago Review Press, 814 N. Franklin St., Chicago, IL 60610; 312-337-0747; www.chicagoreviewpress.com.

DESIGN - In ID: Ideology of Design, Branka Curcic edits an anthology focused on the former Yugoslavia, which tried to define the role of design in a (non)market socialist economy, but which increasingly played a main role in building a socialist market society.

Contact: Autonomedia, www.autonomedia.org.

DISSENT - The Verso Book of Dissent: From Spartacus to the Shoe-Thrower of Baghdad, edited by Andrew Hsiao and Audrea Lim, with a preface by Tariq Ali, commemorates 40 years of publishing with a historical compendium of revolt and resistance to orthodoxy and repression.

Contact: Verso Books, 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201; 718-246-8160; verso@versobooks.com; www.versobooks.com.

ECOLOGY - Vandanna Shiva's Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development exposes third-world development policy as violence against nature and women, with a focus on how rural Indian women experience and resist causes and effects of ecological destruction.

Contact: South End Press, Medgar Evers College, 1 1650 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225; 800-533-8478; info@southendpress.org; www.southendpress.org.

ECUADOR - In Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador, Marc Becker examines the tensions between social movements and electoral politics in Ecuador, where powerful Indigenous movements are clashing with the country's leftist president Rafael Correa.

Contact: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham MD 20706; 800-462-6420; orders@rowman.com; www.rowman.com.

FEMINISM - In Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s, Stephanie Coontz examines the context for Betty Friedan's 1963 bestseller through research and interviews to illuminate how a generation of women came to realize that their dissatisfaction with domestic life originated in social and political injustice.

Contact: Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016; 212-340-8164; www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic.

GOODMAN - The Paul Goodman Reader, edited by Taylor Stoehr, collects works from the influential 1960s author, including excerpts from best-sellers like Growing Up Absurd and landmark essays on education, community planning, and language theory.

Contact: PM Press, PO Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623; 510-658-3906; info@pmpress.org; www.pmpress.org.

GRAPHICS - Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now collects more than 350 posters, prints, photographs, films, videos, music, and ephemera from more than 25 nations focused on global struggles for equality, democracy, freedom, and basic human rights.

Contact: AK Press, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland, CA 94612; 510-208-1700; info@akpress.org; www.akpress.org.

HOMELESS - First-time author Jake Anderson travelled the country to collect stories of today's homeless and combined photos, poems, and their words and art in the new book Homeless Souls. Proceeds go to organizations supporting the homeless.

Contact: Antrim House, 21 Goodrich Rd., Simsbury, CT 06070; eds@antrimhousebooks.com; www.antrimhousebooks.com.

INVISIBLE - In Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Barbara Foley explores the political context behind the 1953 classic and argues that by expunging leftist vision, Ellison rendered his novel not only less radical but also less humane than it might otherwise have been.

Contact: Duke University Press, 905 W. Main St., Suite 18B, Durham, NC 27701; 888-651-0122; www.dukeupress.edu.

ISLAMOPHOBIA - Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims by Stephen Sheehi, preface by Mumia Abu Jamal and foreword by Ward Churchill, examines the increased mainstreaming of Muslim-bating rhetoric, legislation, police surveillance, and discriminatory policies in North America and abroad.

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

LABOR - Steve Early's The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers' Movement or Death Throes of the Old? describes how the progressive wing of the U.S. labor movement—including SEIU, UNITE HERE, the California Nurses Association, and various independent organizations—tore itself apart in a series of internecine struggles between 2008 and 2010.

Contact: Haymarket Books, PO Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618; 773-583-7884; info@haymarketbooks.org; www.haymarketbooks.org.

LAW - In The Conservative Assault on the Constitution, Erwin Chemerinsky exposes how conservative justices, far from following the Constitution's "original meaning," are imposing their personal prejudices in detrimental ways that affect every American.

Contact: Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 11th Fl., New York, NY 10020; 212-698-7000; www.simonandschuster.com.

MARX - In Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx, Chris Harman uses basic Marxist concepts to show how the current financial crisis is embedded into the structure of the capitalist system.

Contact: Haymarket Books, PO Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618; 773-583-7884; info@haymarketbooks.org; www.haymarketbooks.org.

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