[act-ma] Starting Tomorrow: Mobilizing for DC; Majority Agenda on Environment; Dialectics; Street on Obama

[Suren Moodliar]

Friends,

How's that for an eclectic subject line? But it is accurate and reflects the
following activities and organizing (full descriptions follow below):

(1) Peace Movement Mobilization for 10-2-10, Wednesday, August 18, 2010,
7:00 p.m. at encuentro 5 (33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA
02111<http://encuentro5.org/home/node/3>
)

(2) Charlie Derber: Solving Climate Change, Thursday, August 19, 2010, 6:30
p.m. Somerville Public Library (79 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA 02143)

(3) Richard Levins: Failures, Errors and the Boundaries of Our Minds,
Saturday, August 21, 2010, 11:00 a.m. at encuentro 5

(4) Paul Street:  The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World
of Power, Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 p.m. at encuentro 5

Full Details:

(1) Peace Movement Mobilization for 10-2-10<http://encuentro5.org/home/node/154>

Wednesday, August 18, 2010, 7:00 p.m. The NAACP, SEIU 1199, La Raza and
Green Jobs for All have called upon the peace and justice movement to join a
mass mobilization in Washington DC, October 2. This is a large national
protest demonstration for jobs, justice and progressive change, and to
counter the right wing. It will be the largest progressive mobilization in
years.

Nationally this action has been endorsed by UFPJ, the UNAC Conference in
Albany, as well as AFL-CIO and many unions, A team is negotiating to include
antiwar demands (stop the war in Afghanistan, cut the military budget and
fund human needs). Regardless, we will organize a large peace contingent to
march with our signs and banners. A massive rally and march will be a big
plus for continuing to rebuild momentum in the peace movement and for
progressives overall. NAACP and 1199 say it's time to hit the streets -- we
must be there with them!

All Boston and New England peace and justice oganizations and friends are
invited to the first citywide peace sector meeting to begin organizing:
information, outreach, publicity, buses -- and connecting to the overall
mobilization in Massachusetts and nationally.

See also the Majority Agenda Project for logistical and organizing
information<http://majorityagendaproject.org/go/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=11>
.

(2) Charlie Derber: Solving Climate
Change<http://www.majorityagendaproject.org/go/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=13>

Charles Derber speaks on his hopeful book, From Greed to Green: Solving
Climate Change and Remaking the Economy. This presentation is organized by
the Majority Agenda Project and Mass. Global Action.

For more information and directions, please visit: http://bit.ly/d2Znvs or
call 781-662-7299, or email gobeiltchen at earthlink.net.

(3) Richard Levins: Failures, Errors and the Boundaries of Our
Minds<http://encuentro5.org/home/node/155>

Saturday, August 21, 2010, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Join the eminent scientist
and activist Richard Levins for a thought-provoking conversation on
"Failures, Errors & the Boundaries of Our Minds"

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of the New York's Brecht
Forum<http://brechtforum.org>,
Richard Levins will speak to how the dialectical method allows us to
understand and learn from our inevitable failures, errors and
misunderstandings of both nature and society.

A Harvard School of Public Health faculty member, mathematical ecologist,
philosopher of science and farmer, Richard will draw on a wide range of
scientific theories, policy experiments and natural phenomena to illustrate
sources of error and also suggest methods for overcoming (but never
completely avoiding) these. From the Green Revolution to Corporate-driven
Pharmacology to Sociobiology, Levins shows us how the both the fragmentation
and commodification of knowledge, together with a static, reductionist
philosophy produces conceptual errors. These are systematic in nature and go
beyond mere momentary and individual miscalculations. Conversely, Richard
will also lead a conversation on how we may overcome these errors.

This philosophical but down-to-earth conversation takes place live and
in-person in Boston and will be teleconferenced to an audience at the Brecht
Forum in New York.

For more background on this topic, see Richard's essays attached here. You
may also wish to read Richard Levins' Talking about Trees. (Leftword Books,
New Delhi. 2008). chapter 4, The Science of Dharma and the Dharma of
science<http://books.google.com/books?id=I7Rj-drVW0gC&lpg=PA84&dq=isbn:8187496630&pg=PA84#v=onepage&q&f=false>
.

The Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Levins>and the Harvard
School of Public
Health<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/richard-levins/>websites
offer short biographical introductions to Richard's work.

(4) Paul Street:  The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World
of Power <http://encuentro5.org/home/node/156>

Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 p.m. Radical author and historian Paul
Street speaks on his new book: The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and
the Real World of Power. Paul is an independent radical-democratic policy
researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and
Chicago, Illinois.  He is the author of four books to date: Empire and
Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004);
Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era(New
York: Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living
Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and (most
recently) Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics.

Street’s essays, articles, reviews, and commentaries have appeared in
numerous outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Capital City Times, In
These Times, Chicago History, Journal of American Ethnic History, Social
History, Review of Educational, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Dissent,
Black Agenda Report, Dissident Voice, Black Commentator, Monthly Review,
History News Network, Tom’sDispatch, AlterNet., and (above all) ZNet and Z
Magazine.

For more on Paul and his work, go to http://www.paulstreet.org/

Feel free to contact us for updates, more information and to plug into these
activities.

Suren


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suren Moodliar
Coordinator, Mass. Global Action
33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111
(w) 617-482-6300 (f) 888-400-1225 (m) 617-968-0880

http://www.MassGlobalAction.org http://www.encuentro5.org
http://www.ColorOfWater.org http://www.majorityagendaproject.org

e-mail: suren at fairjobs.org
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