Black-Brown Alliances from Mexico to California

With Ron Wilkins, southern California activist, photographer and teacher; Maria Elena Ramirez, Bay Area activist and counselor at Ohlone College; and Sandra Mitchell, teacher and co-founder of the San Francisco Freedom School

Co-sponsored by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration,
the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, and
the Center for Political Education

Ron Wilkins is an activist and photographer whose work on Afro-Mexico has made him widely respected. He has pursued alliance building between Black and Mexicano/Latino communities in southern California and is the author of Mexico Welcomed Fugitive Slaves, African American Job-Seekers: New Perspectives on the Immigration Debate and Exposing the Conspiracy to Divide Mexicans and African Americans. Now teaching at California State University Dominguez Hills and West Los Angeles College, his activism goes back to the Black civil rights movement when he headed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Los Angeles.

Short Films From and About Cuba:

The Greening of Cuba, by Food First &
Cerro Pelado, by Santiago Alvarez

Following our April event on the latest developments in Cuba, we present two very different films about the Cuban experience. Discussion to follow films.

About The Greening of Cuba: When trade relations with the socialist bloc collapsed in 1990, Cuba lost 80 percent of its pesticide and fertilizer imports and half its petroleum–the mainstays of its highly industrialized agriculture. Challenged with growing food for 11 million in the face of the continuing US embargo, Cuba embarked on the largest conversion to organic farming ever attempted. Told in the voices of the women and men–the campesino, researchers, and organic gardeners–who are leading the organic agriculture movement, The Greening of Cuba, produced by Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy, reminds us that developed and developing nations alike can choose a healthier environment and still feed their people.

About Cerro Pelado: Filmed in Puerto Rico and aboard the ship that took dozens of Cuban athletes to the 1966 Central American and Caribbean Games, this stirring film illustrates the resistance of the Cuban athletes and the Cuban people to U.S. intervention. In nearly 700 films, Santiago Alvarez, director of Cuba’s newsreel for over 30 years, creates a subversive alternate history. “My style is the style of hatred for imperialism.”–Santiago Alvarez

Book Release with
Bill Fletcher, Jr.co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice

If you would like to purchase a copy of Solidarity Divided ($25), please contact us at center@politicaleducation.org

About Solidarity Divided…

The U.S. trade union movement finds itself today on a global battlefield filled with landmines and littered with the bodies of various social movements and struggles. Candid, incisive, and accessible, Solidarity Divided is a critical examination of labor’s current crisis and a plan for a bold new way forward into the twenty-first century. Bill Fletcher and Fernando Gapasin, two longtime union insiders whose experiences as activists of color grant them a unique vantage on the problems now facing U.S. labor, offer a remarkable mix of vivid history and probing analysis. They chart changes in U.S. manufacturing, examine the onslaught of globalization, consider the influence of the environment on labor, and provide the first broad analysis of the fallout from the 2000 and 2004 elections on the U.S. labor movement. Ultimately calling for a wide-ranging reexamination of the ideological and structural underpinnings of today’s labor movement, this is essential reading for understanding how the battle for social justice can be fought and won.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., co-founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, is a columnist and long-time activist. He served as President of TransAfrica Forum and was formerly the Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. He is the author of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Relations, 1934-1941.

Solidarity Divided, hot off the presses, will be available for sale at both events

Co-sponsored by Speak Out

Building a Green Economy: Hope or Hype?

Join us for a lively discussion on green jobs, transitions to a “green” economy and the relationship to racial, environmental and economic justice.

Click here to read the San Francisco Bay Guardian Article about the Green Economy/Jobs Event.

With Ian Kim, Green Collar Jobs Campaign Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and respondents:

• Mateo Nube, from the Justice and Ecology Project of Movement Generation
• Marie Harrison, Bayview Environmental Justice organizer with Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice (invited)
• Charlie Sciammas from People Organized to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER)

Panelists and participants will discuss questions such as:

• Can a green jobs movement organize towards good jobs for under and unemployed workers while staving off environmental catastrophe?
• How do we address the need to fundamentally transform our economy and societies while fighting for reforms such as jobs and housing?
• How does the environmental justice movement relate to the green jobs movement?
• What are the implications of this “green economic transition” for people in the global south? What perspectives from the global south do we need to take into account?

One event in a series of CPE discussions and classes in 2008 on ecological crises, the economy, and the left

Other Events in 2008

2008 Elections: What Does it Mean and Why Should We Care?
Analysis of the implications of the 2008 elections and what the mean for the left in the U.S. with Carl Bloice and MK Nguyen from the League of Pissed Off Voters

An Inconvenient Truth: Climate Change, Justice and Al Gore’s Market-Based Solutions
Film showing and discussion with Jason Negrón-Gonzalez from the Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project

Strategic Opportunities: Direct Action and Movement Building: Lessons from Direct Action to Stop the War
Panel discussion on the cusp of the 5th anniversary of the war against Iraq, with Clare Bayard, Catalyst Project, Sami Kitmitto from Arab Resource and Organizing Center, and Gopal Dayaneni, direct action trainer

Cuba Without Fidel: What Does the Future Hold?
Presentation and discussion about what the transition means, and how U.S. anti-imperialists can continue to support Cuba.

Building a Green Economy: Hope or Hype?
Discussion on prospects for justice and sustainability with a transition to a green economy with Ian Kim, Ella Baker Center Green Collar Jobs Campaign, Mateo Nube, Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project and Charlie Sciammas, People Organized to Demand Economic and Environmental Rights (PODER)

Egypt’s Winter of Labor Discontent
Talk and discussion on current events and worker’s resistance in Egypt with journalist, blogger and labor activist Hossam el-Hamalawy.

Climate Justice: Negotiating Solutions in a Time of Crisis
Presentation and discussion on local, state, national and international strategies and proposals for addressing climate change and for climate justice with congressional science fellow Holmes Hummel, West Oakland Environmental Justice organizer Azibuike Akaba and Ana Yun Lee from Communities for a Better Environment
Click here to view a more complete history of our classes, events, and workshops (1998-2007)!