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Greenzine - Election Day
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 15 Feb '22

15 Feb '22

Feb 15, 2022 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Today is Election Day for the School Board recall election, but you can still vote in person or mail in your ballot; so long as it's postmarked today, it will count. The Green Party has endorsed NO on recalling all three Board members. Our statement explaining our reasoning is included in this newsletter, so please share with others. It is also on our website, here: http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/99-school-board-recall-2022-endorsemen… Join us next Wednesday, Feb 23, for our regular monthly meeting. The agenda will be set at this Wednesday's County Council meeting, so please email us any suggested agenda items. *===========================* SF Green Party Statement on School Board Recall The School Board Recall Election is happening between now and Election Day, February 15. If you are voting by mail, your ballot must be postmarked on or before February 15. You can also vote in person on Election Day, or beforehand at City Hall. Three members of the School Board, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga, are up for recall. Although López is the only one of the three who previously earned our endorsement, the SF Green Party has endorsed a "NO" vote on recalling all three of the Board members in this election (i.e., we support keeping them in office through the next regular election in November 2022). If one or more of the Board members is recalled, the City Charter gives Mayor Breed the authority to fill each vacancy with one of her own hand-picked candidates. Greens don't want our public schools to be subject to the same corruption as we see at other City departments run by the Mayor, such as the Department of Building Inspection, Recreation and Parks, and the MTA (which operates Muni). As we wrote in our School Board endorsements in 2020, concerning our non-endorsement of Jenny Lam (http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/95-november-2020-endorsements) Our biggest concern with Lam is not the policies she supports, but rather her close ties to the Mayor's office. The School Board is supposed to be an independent body from the rest of SF government, so having a Board member who directly reports to the Mayor is very problematic. Having four such appointees would give the Mayor the majority of the seven seats on the School Board, allowing her to spend bond money and give out contracts to Machine-friendly companies without any public oversight. Greens have long advocated for a charter amendment that would allow voters to choose replacements (using ranked choice voting) on the same ballot as the recall election. Until that happens, voters who the Mayor does not listen to can not meaningfully exercise our constitutional right to recall elected officials. Because the Mayor is the only person who gets to choose replacements for elected officials who are recalled, these elections (other than recalling the Mayor herself) can only benefit the Mayor and her supporters. This is not to say that Greens are completely happy with the performance of the current members of the School Board. In 2020, we wrote in our endorsements: The biggest issue facing the School Board over the next year will be when, and how, to safely reopen SF's public schools. Zoom classes don't work for young children, and keeping kids at home has had a serious impact on parents, especially on women, who disproportionately provide for childcare and homeschooling. Based on research from UCSF that showed serious mental health impacts of Zoom school, and low in-school transmission risk, Greens advocated for reopening our elementary schools in the Fall of 2020. We also advocated for SFUSD support for "pods" of public school students in all grades (TK-12) as a bridge to full school reopening, noting that SF's summer camps that were organized into pods of 12 kids did not result in any COVID outbreaks. Although SFUSD failed to reopen schools in a timely manner, and lost many students to private schools, Greens think the majority of the blame lies with the Superintendent rather than the Board. The Superintendent attempted to waste money on an outside consultant rather than taking free advice from experts at the Department of Public Health and UCSF. Although the SFUSD central administrative budget (i.e., money not spent in classrooms) has ballooned under Superintendent Matthews, the public (including SFUSD parents, students, and teachers) have yet to see any benefits. Members of the School Board also deserve some blame for their failed attempt to rename a number of public schools. The centralized renaming committee, poorly managed and dominated by insiders, advocated renaming some schools based of inaccurate information, while being completely comfortable leaving "Willie Brown Middle School" in place. This was a stark contrast to the process used to rename (the former) Drake High School in Marin County, which empowered the students at the school to participate in the process and therefore became a learning opportunity. (https://www.marinij.com/2021/05/12/tam-board-oks-archie-williams-for-new-dr…) On the other hand, our Board had a major success in reforming admissions standards at Lowell High School. For years, Lowell appears to have been in violation of the CA Education Code, which requires a "random, unbiased" process to determine which kids get to attend schools in high demand, and forbids admissions standards based on "academic or athletic performance." (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?section…) Lowell's previous admission standards used a combination of GPA and standardized test (SBAC) scores to measure academic performance. Greens believe that standardized tests have significant racial and class biases, and are a poor measure of academic potential (http://sfgreenparty.org/10-campaigns/79-opt-out-of-standardized-tests) We therefore applauded the School Board's change to change Lowell admissions to the lottery-based system used at other SF schools, which does not consider test scores. With this change to admissions policy, racial diversity at Lowell improved dramatically, with the number of Black and Hispanic freshmen nearly double that of prior years. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Lowell-got-rid-of-competitive-a…) And despite the fears of those parents who opposed the change, academic standards at the school have remained high. In summary, the current School Board has had some successes and some failures, which SF political groups should take into account when interviewing candidates for office in the next regular election in November 2022. If voters instead decide to turn control over to our corrupt Mayor, it will almost certainly make things worse for our students and for the City as a whole. Vote NO on all the recall questions. *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - Statewide Green Candidates, Oppose School Board Recall
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 28 Jan '22

28 Jan '22

January 28, 2022 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Voting by mail is underway in the School Board recall election, going through Election Day on Feb 15. The Green Party has endorsed NO on recalling all three Board members. Our statement explaining our reasoning is at the end of this newsletter, so please share with others. It is also on our website, here: http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/99-school-board-recall-2022-endorsemen… We will be doing precinct walking with the SF Berniecrats for the next several weekends to get out the vote against the recall. Please see our Twitter feed for details. Here are several locations this weekend: * Saturday 11 am - West Sunset Playground (39th Ave and Ortega) * Sunday 11 am - Joseph Lee Rec Center (3rd St and Oakdale) This Saturday, we'll also be gathering signatures for the "Left Unity Slate" of candidates for this year's statewide elections: What: Signature Gathering event for Statewide candidates Where: Medicine for Nightmares, 3036 24th St, SF 94110 When: Sat, Jan 29, 1-5 pm The Luis Rodriguez for Governor Campaign is hosting an event this weekend in SF to gather signatures and donations: https://www.facebook.com/events/1959225700945773 If you can't make the event but would still like to help gather signatures through Feb 9, email us at cc(a)sfgreens.org. The Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party are jointly fielding a "Left Unity Slate" for the 2022 statewide races. This cooperative strategy increases the likelihood that both parties will be able to reach 2% of the vote in at least one statewide race, which is the minimum threshold needed to retain ballot status. These groundbreaking Left Unity Slate candidates are listed below, starting with Luis Rodriguez, the author of 16 books, a former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and our 2014 Governor candidate. For 5 weeks, starting in early January, YOU can help our candidates gather signatures for their campaigns! These "signatures-in-lieu of the filing fee" will help eliminate those fees, which range from $3,278 to $4,371 per candidate, depending on the office. Each voter can sign forms for all of the candidates below: Luis Rodriguez (Green), Governor Mohammad Arif (Peace and Freedom), Lt. Governor Gary Blenner (Green), Secretary of State Laura Wells (Green), Controller Dan Kapelovitz (Green), Attorney General Meghann Adams (Peace and Freedom), Treasurer Nathalie Hrizi (Peace and Freedom), Insurance Commissioner Marco Amaral (Decline to State), State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Parker (Peace and Freedom), US Senate *===========================* SF Green Party Statement on School Board Recall The School Board Recall Election is happening between now and Election Day, February 15. If you are voting by mail, your ballot must be postmarked on or before February 15. You can also vote in person on Election Day, or beforehand at City Hall. Three members of the School Board, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga, are up for recall. Although López is the only one of the three who previously earned our endorsement, the SF Green Party has endorsed a "NO" vote on recalling all three of the Board members in this election (i.e., we support keeping them in office through the next regular election in November 2022). If one or more of the Board members is recalled, the City Charter gives Mayor Breed the authority to fill each vacancy with one of her own hand-picked candidates. Greens don't want our public schools to be subject to the same corruption as we see at other City departments run by the Mayor, such as the Department of Building Inspection, Recreation and Parks, and the MTA (which operates Muni). As we wrote in our School Board endorsements in 2020, concerning our non-endorsement of Jenny Lam (http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/95-november-2020-endorsements) Our biggest concern with Lam is not the policies she supports, but rather her close ties to the Mayor's office. The School Board is supposed to be an independent body from the rest of SF government, so having a Board member who directly reports to the Mayor is very problematic. Having four such appointees would give the Mayor the majority of the seven seats on the School Board, allowing her to spend bond money and give out contracts to Machine-friendly companies without any public oversight. Greens have long advocated for a charter amendment that would allow voters to choose replacements (using ranked choice voting) on the same ballot as the recall election. Until that happens, voters who the Mayor does not listen to can not meaningfully exercise our constitutional right to recall elected officials. Because the Mayor is the only person who gets to choose replacements for elected officials who are recalled, these elections (other than recalling the Mayor herself) can only benefit the Mayor and her supporters. This is not to say that Greens are completely happy with the performance of the current members of the School Board. In 2020, we wrote in our endorsements: The biggest issue facing the School Board over the next year will be when, and how, to safely reopen SF's public schools. Zoom classes don't work for young children, and keeping kids at home has had a serious impact on parents, especially on women, who disproportionately provide for childcare and homeschooling. Based on research from UCSF that showed serious mental health impacts of Zoom school, and low in-school transmission risk, Greens advocated for reopening our elementary schools in the Fall of 2020. We also advocated for SFUSD support for "pods" of public school students in all grades (TK-12) as a bridge to full school reopening, noting that SF's summer camps that were organized into pods of 12 kids did not result in any COVID outbreaks. Although SFUSD failed to reopen schools in a timely manner, and lost many students to private schools, Greens think the majority of the blame lies with the Superintendent rather than the Board. The Superintendent attempted to waste money on an outside consultant rather than taking free advice from experts at the Department of Public Health and UCSF. Although the SFUSD central administrative budget (i.e., money not spent in classrooms) has ballooned under Superintendent Matthews, the public (including SFUSD parents, students, and teachers) have yet to see any benefits. Members of the School Board also deserve some blame for their failed attempt to rename a number of public schools. The centralized renaming committee, poorly managed and dominated by insiders, advocated renaming some schools based of inaccurate information, while being completely comfortable leaving "Willie Brown Middle School" in place. This was a stark contrast to the process used to rename (the former) Drake High School in Marin County, which empowered the students at the school to participate in the process and therefore became a learning opportunity. (https://www.marinij.com/2021/05/12/tam-board-oks-archie-williams-for-new-dr…) On the other hand, our Board had a major success in reforming admissions standards at Lowell High School. For years, Lowell appears to have been in violation of the CA Education Code, which requires a "random, unbiased" process to determine which kids get to attend schools in high demand, and forbids admissions standards based on "academic or athletic performance." (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?section…) Lowell's previous admission standards used a combination of GPA and standardized test (SBAC) scores to measure academic performance. Greens believe that standardized tests have significant racial and class biases, and are a poor measure of academic potential (http://sfgreenparty.org/10-campaigns/79-opt-out-of-standardized-tests) We therefore applauded the School Board's change to change Lowell admissions to the lottery-based system used at other SF schools, which does not consider test scores. With this change to admissions policy, racial diversity at Lowell improved dramatically, with the number of Black and Hispanic freshmen nearly double that of prior years. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Lowell-got-rid-of-competitive-a…) And despite the fears of those parents who opposed the change, academic standards at the school have remained high. In summary, the current School Board has had some successes and some failures, which SF political groups should take into account when interviewing candidates for office in the next regular election in November 2022. If voters instead decide to turn control over to our corrupt Mayor, it will almost certainly make things worse for our students and for the City as a whole. Vote NO on all the recall questions. *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - Meeting next Wed, Health Care, Oppose School Board Recall
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 21 Jan '22

21 Jan '22

January 21, 2022 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Please join us next Wed, Jan 26, for our monthly meeting. Details and agenda are below. Voting by mail is underway in the School Board recall election, going through Election Day on Feb 15. The Green Party has endorsed NO on this recall. Our statement explaining our reasoning is at the end of this newsletter, so please share with others. It is also on our website, here: http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/99-school-board-recall-2022-endorsemen… A Single Payer Healthcare bill (AB 1400) has moved out of State Assembly committees, and currently moving to the full Assembly for a vote. Watch for upcoming phone banking events on https://events.medicare4all.org/. Green Party activist Barry Hermanson is one of the organizers, and he wrote the following article: https://sfbayview.com/2021/12/will-democrats-enact-universal-health-care/ Finally, the Green Party and Peace and Freedom Party are jointly fielding a "Left Unity Slate" for the 2022 CA statewide elections. The slate is led by Green poet Luis Rodriguez, and other members are listed below. We are considering adding two candidates to the slate, Mohammad Arif for Lt. Governor and Marco Amaral for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. We will make the decision at our upcoming meeting next Wednesday (agenda and candidate bios below). *===========================* What: Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Jan 26, 7-9 pm Agenda: * Introductions * Planning for Elections this Year: review of schedule and offices open, actions we can take * Single Payer Health Care Update * Signature gathering update (statewide slate) * Endorsement Decision on adding candidates to the statewide slate: Mohammad Arif for Lt. Governor and Marco Amaral for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Bios below. Mohammad Arif, 53, is an immigrant from Pakistan. His wife is an immigrant from India, and they have four children born in California. He earned a bachelor's degree from Hailey College and a masters in economics from Punjab University in Lahore. After coming to California in 1991, he attended Abraham Lincoln Law College in Los Angeles. He has worked as a paralegal for many years in California and Arizona, and now works in that capacity for a law firm in Corona. He speaks English, Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi, with some Arabic. Mohammad Arif was an independent candidate for governor of California in the 2003 recall election. He later joined the Peace and Freedom Party, and was a candidate in that party's primary for governor in 2010. He joined the Peace and Freedom Party State Central Committee, and became the party's Kern County chair. He was the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for State Senate in the 2013 16th district special election. Mohammad moved to Arizona in late 2013. The Peace and Freedom Party is not on the ballot in Arizona. He registered in the Green Party, and appeared on the ballot in 2018 as the Green candidate for state senate in the 11th district. Mohammad Arif returned to California in late 2021, and now lives in Covina in Los Angeles County. He is a candidate for lieutenant governor in the June 2022 primary election as a Peace and Freedom Party member. He endorses the entire Left Unity Slate of candidates for statewide office. Marco Amaral's bio is on his website, here: https://www.amaral4sup2022.com/about He is registered "No Party Preference". The Statewide Candidates Subcommittee, along with two Peace and Freedom Party representatives, met with Marco online earlier this week and were favorably impressed, and recommend endorsement. (Also, Rick Greenblatt, in San Diego county, where Marco lives, knows Marco and recommends endorsement too.) Mask policy: Masks are currently required indoors. We recommend wearing a good (N95 or equivalent) mask during the Omicron wave. We now provide the option for SF Green Party members to participate in our meetings via Zoom, so email cc(a)sfgreens.org for info on how you can join us virtually. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* What: Signature Gathering for Statewide candidates Where: everywhere When: now through Feb 9 At our post-holiday celebration, we kicked off signature gathering for our slate of statewide candidates. We have the opportunity to eliminate $25,000 in fees for them -- just by getting people to sign our candidates' forms! If you can help, please contact us at cc(a)sfgreens.org and we'll get you the forms. As you may have heard, the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party are jointly fielding a "Left Unity Slate" for the 2022 statewide races. This cooperative strategy increases the likelihood that both parties will be able to reach 2% of the vote in at least one statewide race, which is the minimum threshold needed to retain ballot status. These groundbreaking Left Unity Slate candidates are listed below, starting with Luis Rodriguez, the author of 16 books, a former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and our 2014 Governor candidate. For 5 weeks, starting in early January, YOU can help our candidates gather signatures for their campaigns! These "signatures-in-lieu of the filing fee" will help eliminate those fees, which range from $3,278 to $4,371 per candidate, depending on the office. Each voter can sign forms for all 7 of the candidates below: Luis Rodriguez (Green), CA Governor Gary Blenner (Green), CA Secretary of State Laura Wells (Green), CA Controller Dan Kapelovitz (Green), CA Attorney General Meghann Adams (Peace and Freedom), CA Treasurer Nathalie Hrizi (Peace and Freedom), CA Insurance Commissioner John Parker (Peace and Freedom), US Senate *===========================* SF Green Party Statement on School Board Recall The School Board Recall Election is happening between now and Election Day, February 15. If you are voting by mail, your ballot must be postmarked on or before February 15. You can also vote in person on Election Day, or beforehand at City Hall. Three members of the School Board, Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga, are up for recall. Although López is the only one of the three who previously earned our endorsement, the SF Green Party has endorsed a "NO" vote on recalling all three of the Board members in this election (i.e., we support keeping them in office through the next regular election in November 2022). If one or more of the Board members is recalled, the City Charter gives Mayor Breed the authority to fill each vacancy with one of her own hand-picked candidates. Greens don't want our public schools to be subject to the same corruption as we see at other City departments run by the Mayor, such as the Department of Building Inspection, Recreation and Parks, and the MTA (which operates Muni). As we wrote in our School Board endorsements in 2020, concerning our non-endorsement of Jenny Lam (http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/95-november-2020-endorsements) Our biggest concern with Lam is not the policies she supports, but rather her close ties to the Mayor's office. The School Board is supposed to be an independent body from the rest of SF government, so having a Board member who directly reports to the Mayor is very problematic. Having four such appointees would give the Mayor the majority of the seven seats on the School Board, allowing her to spend bond money and give out contracts to Machine-friendly companies without any public oversight. Greens have long advocated for a charter amendment that would allow voters to choose replacements (using ranked choice voting) on the same ballot as the recall election. Until that happens, voters who the Mayor does not listen to can not meaningfully exercise our constitutional right to recall elected officials. Because the Mayor is the only person who gets to choose replacements for elected officials who are recalled, these elections (other than recalling the Mayor herself) can only benefit the Mayor and her supporters. This is not to say that Greens are completely happy with the performance of the current members of the School Board. In 2020, we wrote in our endorsements: The biggest issue facing the School Board over the next year will be when, and how, to safely reopen SF's public schools. Zoom classes don't work for young children, and keeping kids at home has had a serious impact on parents, especially on women, who disproportionately provide for childcare and homeschooling. Based on research from UCSF that showed serious mental health impacts of Zoom school, and low in-school transmission risk, Greens advocated for reopening our elementary schools in the Fall of 2020. We also advocated for SFUSD support for "pods" of public school students in all grades (TK-12) as a bridge to full school reopening, noting that SF's summer camps that were organized into pods of 12 kids did not result in any COVID outbreaks. Although SFUSD failed to reopen schools in a timely manner, and lost many students to private schools, Greens think the majority of the blame lies with the Superintendent rather than the Board. The Superintendent attempted to waste money on an outside consultant rather than taking free advice from experts at the Department of Public Health and UCSF. Although the SFUSD central administrative budget (i.e., money not spent in classrooms) has ballooned under Superintendent Matthews, the public (including SFUSD parents, students, and teachers) have yet to see any benefits. Members of the School Board also deserve some blame for their failed attempt to rename a number of public schools. The centralized renaming committee, poorly managed and dominated by insiders, advocated renaming some schools based of inaccurate information, while being completely comfortable leaving "Willie Brown Middle School" in place. This was a stark contrast to the process used to rename (the former) Drake High School in Marin County, which empowered the students at the school to participate in the process and therefore became a learning opportunity. (https://www.marinij.com/2021/05/12/tam-board-oks-archie-williams-for-new-dr…) On the other hand, our Board had a major success in reforming admissions standards at Lowell High School. For years, Lowell appears to have been in violation of the CA Education Code, which requires a "random, unbiased" process to determine which kids get to attend schools in high demand, and forbids admissions standards based on "academic or athletic performance." (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?section…) Lowell's previous admission standards used a combination of GPA and standardized test (SBAC) scores to measure academic performance. Greens believe that standardized tests have significant racial and class biases, and are a poor measure of academic potential (http://sfgreenparty.org/10-campaigns/79-opt-out-of-standardized-tests) We therefore applauded the School Board's change to change Lowell admissions to the lottery-based system used at other SF schools, which does not consider test scores. With this change to admissions policy, racial diversity at Lowell improved dramatically, with the number of Black and Hispanic freshmen nearly double that of prior years. (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Lowell-got-rid-of-competitive-a…) And despite the fears of those parents who opposed the change, academic standards at the school have remained high. In summary, the current School Board has had some successes and some failures, which SF political groups should take into account when interviewing candidates for office in the next regular election in November 2022. If voters instead decide to turn control over to our corrupt Mayor, it will almost certainly make things worse for our students and for the City as a whole. Vote NO on all the recall questions. *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - NO on School Board Recall, post-Holiday party this Sunday
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

January 11, 2022 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Happy New Year! Please join us on MLK weekend, Sunday, Jan 16, for an outdoor post-holiday celebration. We will gather outside at the picnic area at McNab Lake in McLaren Park, starting at noon on Sunday. McNab Lake is near Woolsey St and University St, on the north side of the park. We will be grilling some vegan burgers and sausages, and also provide other snacks and drinks. Look forward to seeing you there! Voting will begin soon in the School Board recall election, with Election Day on Feb 15. The Green Party has endorsed NO on this recall. Our statement explaining our reasoning is online, so please share this information with others: http://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/99-school-board-recall-2022-endorsemen… At our post-holiday celebration, we will also be kicking off signature gathering for our slate of statewide candidates. We'll have the opportunity to eliminate $25,000 in fees for them -- just by getting people to sign our candidates' forms! If you can't come to the party, please contact us at cc(a)sfgreens.org and we'll get you the forms. As you may have heard, the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party are jointly fielding a "Left Unity Slate" for the 2022 statewide races. This cooperative strategy increases the likelihood that both parties will be able to reach 2% of the vote in at least one statewide race, which is the minimum threshold needed to retain ballot status. These groundbreaking Left Unity Slate candidates are listed below, starting with Luis Rodriguez, the author of 16 books, a former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and our 2014 Governor candidate. For 5 weeks, starting in early January, YOU can help our candidates gather signatures for their campaigns! These "signatures-in-lieu of the filing fee" will help eliminate those fees, which range from $3,278 to $4,371 per candidate, depending on the office. Each voter can sign forms for all 7 of the candidates below: Luis Rodriguez (Green), CA Governor Gary Blenner (Green), CA Secretary of State Laura Wells (Green), CA Controller Dan Kapelovitz (Green), CA Attorney General Meghann Adams (Peace and Freedom), CA Treasurer Nathalie Hrizi (Peace and Freedom), CA Insurance Commissioner John Parker (Peace and Freedom), US Senate *===========================* What: Save the date - Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Jan 26, 7-9 pm We will set the agenda at next Wed's CC meeting. We now provide the option for SF Green Party members to participate in our meetings via Zoom, so email cc(a)sfgreens.org for info on how you can join us virtually. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - holiday meeting schedule, upcoming state plenary
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 24 Nov '21

24 Nov '21

November 24, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Due to the holidays, our monthly membership meetings on the 4th Wednesdays of the month will not be held in November or December. We will be planning an outdoor holiday gathering instead. Please email us if you would like to help organize it! Congrats to Greens who ran in the November 2021 elections! At least sixteen have been elected so far, among at least 54 Greens running. Wins included four city council seats, two school board seats, one citywide taxation board in a major US city, and nine other smaller offices. Five of eight incumbents were re-elected, including two of four city council members and one of one school board members. There were no local elections in SF this November, but Bay Area Greens did win two seats on the KPFA local station board (not included above, as this election was restricted to KPFA listener members). Greens are invited to participate in the Green Party of California's general assembly, detailed below. Green Party delegates from around the state have already endorsed a "Left Unity Slate" composed of Green Party and Peace and Freedom Party candidates for the June 2022 Primary Elections: Gary Blenner (Green), CA Secretary of State Laura Wells (Green), CA Controller Dan Kapelovitz (Green), CA Attorney General Meghann Adams (Peace and Freedom), CA Treasurer Nathalie Hrizi (Peace and Freedom), CA Insurance Commissioner John Parker (Peace and Freedom), US Senate Additional candidates, including Governor, will be considered for endorsement at the Green Party of California general assembly. *===========================* What: Green Party of California General Assembly Where: online When: Dec 4-5, all day The Green Party of California invites you to its upcoming General Assembly (GA) taking place by video teleconference on Saturday and Sunday, December 4th and 5th. Registration is already open and accessible from our GA webpage: http://cagreens.org/ga The two day General Assembly will focus on our strategy for the 2022 elections and the budget for the coming year. This and more is included in the draft agenda on our website: http://cagreens.org/ga *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - Don Bechler memorial, monthly meeting, and bring back Muni
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 23 Oct '21

23 Oct '21

October 23, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, This week, the Department of Elections certified petitions to recall three members of the school board: Alison Collins, Gabriela López, and Faauuga Moliga. The election will be held next Feb 15. The Green Party has endorsed NO on this recall because if it succeeds, Mayor Breed will be able to fill all the vacancies with her own hand-picked candidates. We don't want our public schools to be subject to the same corruption as we see at other City departments run by the Mayor, such as the Department of Building Inspection, Recreation and Parks, and the MTA (which operates Muni). Instead, we need a charter amendment to allow voters to choose replacements (using ranked choice voting) in the same election as the recall. Please join us over the next week for several events (detailed listings for each one follow the summary): On Sunday, we'll gather in Dolores Park to remember long-time Green Party activist Don Bechler, a leader in the Single Payer Healthcare movement. On Wednesday, we'll hold our monthly membership meeting, to discuss a possible ballot initiative to ban City use of toxic herbicides, as well as our platform plank on HIV and its relevance to COVID, and the agenda for the upcoming statewide Green Party meeting. On Thursday, we'll join a rally to demand restoration of full pre-pandemic Muni service. *===========================* What: Don Bechler memorial Where: Northwest Corner of Dolores Park, near Church and 18th When: Sun, Oct 24, 1 pm Dear Single Payer Now Supporters, Sunday, October 24th will be one year since Don Bechler died. We miss his leadership as we continue to fight for an Improved Medicare for All. To celebrate Don's life, we are planning an informal, in-person, outdoor gathering. Look for us near the northwest corner of Dolores Park in San Francisco, not far from the restrooms and close to the paved walkway at 1 pm. The nearest street corner is Church and 18th. There will not be a program, only a moment of silence to remember our friend, colleague and leading advocate for better health care for everyone. We look forward to the possibility of seeing you. Bring a folding chair or a blanket if you want to stay and talk awhile. A few of us plan on being there no matter the weather. This won't be the last time we will gather together. By early next year, we may be able to meet again indoors! Contact Barry Hermanson (415-255-9494) for more information or if you're having trouble finding us. *===========================* What: Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Oct 27, 7-9 pm Agenda: * Introductions - 5 min * Potential initiative to ban toxic herbicides on City property (Anastasia Glikshtern) - 30-45 min See SF Forest Alliance post on this subject: https://sfforest.org/2021/08/28/we-need-to-reduce-toxic-herbicide-use-in-sa… and ballot language here: https://stopherbicidessf.org/ (under the label "Proposition") * Review HIV platform plank and its relevance to COVID - 30-45 min The State party platform plank is here: https://www.cagreens.org/platform/hiv-aids and the national one is here: https://www.gp.org/social_justice (see secton H) * Review agenda for Green Party of California statewide meeting on Dec 4-5 (virtual event only). Mask protocol: We will ask at the beginning if everybody present is fully vaccinated, and if so, masks will be optional for people who would like to wear them. If anybody present is not vaccinated, we will all need to wear masks throughout the meeting. We also provide the option for SF Green Party members to participate in our meetings via Zoom, so email cc(a)sfgreens.org for info on how you can join us virtually. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* What: Rally to demand full Muni service Where: Grove St, between Polk and Van Ness When: Thurs, Oct 28, 4 pm There is a rally planned for this coming Thursday, October 28, beginning at 4 pm, on Grove Street, between Polk and Van Ness. Join a City-wide coalition of riders from different neighborhoods to demand SFMTA restore all lines to pre-pandemic levels. For more information, write to equitywithmuni(a)gmail.com. HANC has been advocating for restoration of the 6 and 21 lines. This rally is focused on those lines, as well as the 10, full J-Church service, original 48 route, original 35 route. *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - last day to vote in KPFA elections
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 15 Oct '21

15 Oct '21

October 15, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, If you're a KPFA member, today is the last day to vote in local station board elections. You can vote for several Green Party members, but be sure to get your vote in by 9 pm tonight. Our endorsements are below. Also, the SF Bayview just published Barry Hermanson's article, "Paying for universal health care": https://sfbayview.com/2021/10/paying-for-universal-health-care/ *===========================* What: KPFA election Where: online When: ballots were sent by email 8/16, vote 9 pm on 10/15 If you're a KPFA member, please be sure to vote for the Rescue Pacifica candidates in the Local Station Board (LSB) election. It will be conducted using ranked choice voting. We have endorsed the nine Rescue Pacifica candidates, as listed below. (More info about Rescue Pacifica is here: https://rescuepacifica.net/ ). This year's election is vital to preserve democracy at KPFA and Pacifica! Individuals involved with the opposing faction worked to gut the powers of the LSB and they've filed lawsuits to try to take control of KPFA and the Pacifica network. Please use your democratic voting rights to maintain and strengthen the LSB by voting for the Rescue Pacifica candidates as your top nine choices! Please vote for all nine of the following candidates as your top choices (in any order): Rich Stone * Daniel Borgstrom * Don Macleay * James McFadden * Adisa Armand Donna Carter Pete Farruggio Amber Jayanti Elizabeth Milos * = Registered Greens; note that Rich Stone is a County Council member here in San Francisco. Thank you for standing up for democracy and supporting progressive, independent radio! *===========================* What: Save the Date - Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Oct 27, 7-9 pm Save the date; the agenda will be set at the CC meeting one week before, on Oct 20. Mask protocol: TBA. We also provide the option for SF Green Party members to participate in our meetings via Zoom, so email cc(a)sfgreens.org for info on how you can join us virtually. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - discussion of COVID vaccines and mandates on Wed, 9/22
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 21 Sep '21

21 Sep '21

September 20, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Thanks to everybody who voted in last week's Gubernatorial recall election! Our endorsed position of "no" on the recall won with 86% of the vote in SF, and our endorsed candidate, LA Green Party member Dan Kaplelovitz, has received nearly 3000 votes in SF to date. Kapelovitz earned nearly twice as many votes in SF as Caitlyn Jenner, just one of many conservative candidates who received extensive positive coverage from the SF Chronicle. Results from mail-in ballots are still being counted, and current totals can be found here: https://sfelections.sfgov.org/september-14-2021-election-results-summary Several local Greens published op-eds in local media this week. Barry Hermanson wrote an article on "Turning off the gas" in the SF Bayview: https://sfbayview.com/2021/08/turning-off-the-gas/ and Steven Hill wrote about "The Great Highway shutdown fiasco" at 48 Hills: https://48hills.org/2021/09/the-great-highway-shutdown-fiasco/ Please join us this Wednesday, 9/22, from 7-9 pm for our monthly membership meeting. You can participate in person or online: What: Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Sep 22, 7-9 pm Agenda items: 1) Introductions 2) Update on SB9 and 10 passing, and how we might help to repeal them. 3) Decide our position on COVID vaccines and mandates. Do we think current COVID vaccines are safe and effective, and what is our position on government and/or business mandates? 4) Decide SF positions on GPCA proposals regarding changes to internal state party elections. Mask protocol: SF's COVID rules currently require people to wear masks indoors, even if everybody present is fully vaccinated, unless you are Mayor Breed or one of her friends or allies from the Democratic Party. We now provide the option for SF Green Party members to participate in our meetings via Zoom, so email cc(a)sfgreens.org for info on how you can join us virtually. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* What: KPFA election Where: online When: ballots were sent by email 8/16, vote before 10/15. If you're a KPFA member, please be sure to vote for the Rescue Pacifica candidates in the Local Station Board (LSB) election. It will be conducted using ranked choice voting. We have endorsed the nine Rescue Pacifica candidates, as listed below. (More info about Rescue Pacifica is here: https://rescuepacifica.net/ ). This year's election is vital to preserve democracy at KPFA and Pacifica! Individuals involved with the opposing faction worked to gut the powers of the LSB and they've filed lawsuits to try to take control of KPFA and the Pacifica network. Please use your democratic voting rights to maintain and strengthen the LSB by voting for the Rescue Pacifica candidates as your top nine choices! Please vote for all nine of the following candidates as your top choices (in any order): Rich Stone * Daniel Borgstrom * Don Macleay * James McFadden * Adisa Armand Donna Carter Pete Farruggio Amber Jayanti Elizabeth Milos * = Registered Greens; note that Rich Stone is a County Council member here in San Francisco. Thank you for standing up for democracy and supporting progressive, independent radio! *===========================* What: Online events When: various dates, see below Below are some more online events -- as before, almost all of them are free, and they're hosted across the country, as well as in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Ireland. (The listed times are for the local Pacific time zone). They cover a fairly broad range of topics, so please just ignore the ones you're not interested in. And of course, do feel free to forward as much or as little of this info to others as you'd like: Tue, 9/21, 11:30 am -- Sustainable Book Group (launch meeting, discussing Doughnut Economics) -- The first meeting of a new Sustainability Book Club hosted by Transition Tavistock. A chance to discuss new and classic titles that inspire -- Something tasty to start with - "Doughnut Economics" by Kate Raworth, who argues that a healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow -- https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sustainable-book-group-launch-meeting-discussi… Tue, 9/21, 7 pm -- California RCV Coalition Statewide Launch California has been a leader when it comes to ranked choice voting, with several cities implementing the reform beginning two decades ago. Now some advocates are looking to build on that success by starting a new statewide organization to bring ranked choice voting to more communities. They have a launch event coming up next week. We hope you’ll consider attending. https://www.fairvote.org/r?u=iKj5iuxBXy-0B6ifolAJk-7Mb6lE5uIHFHjDzmPEvfamRD… *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - Vote No on the Recall, Dan Kapelovitz to replace Newsom
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 03 Sep '21

03 Sep '21

September 2, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, The Gubernatorial Recall election is happening between now and Election Day, September 14. If you are voting by mail, your ballot must be postmarked on or before September 14. You can also vote in person on Election Day, or beforehand at City Hall. Greens are endorsing NO on the recall, and Green Party member Dan Kapelovitz as a candidate to replace Governor Newsom should the recall vote pass. Please feel free to foward our statement on the recall to others: SF Greens strongly disapprove of the job Gavin Newsom has done as Governor. Few officials in California have ever stood so consistently in opposition to the Greens' 10 Key Values. Here are just a few of the ways Governor Newsom has failed: * COVID. As head of the 5th largest economy in the world, Newsom might have led the US in setting up an effective program for testing and contact tracing to stop the spread of COVID within the state. Newsom was unprepared to begin with: along with his predecessor, Governor Brown, he had previously ended Governor Schwarzenegger's pandemic emergency program. Newsom's state "lockdown" was based more on politics than science: he allowed construction and other Democrat-friendly businesses (including his own winery) to continue to stay open while others were closed. State Democrats also declined to use their authority to enact a rent and mortgage moratorium, or to keep locked-down small businesses afloat by paying them to keep their quarantined workers on the payroll (as was commonly done in Europe). * PG&E and Wildfires. After fires caused by unmaintained PG&E equipment burned down the town of Paradise and killed 85 people in 2018, the investor-owned utility declared bankruptcy. This would have been a great opportunity for the state of California to take over the utility and address years of deferred maintenance of equipment. But Newsom, who received over $200,000 in bribes from PG&E during his 2018 campaign for Governor, did everything in his power to ensure that the utility would continue to be run as a for-profit private company. Newsom allowed PG&E to emerge from bankruptcy with the promise to pay fire victims out of a trust fund, which has paid almost nobody to date, other than the people who run the trust. Since emerging from bankruptcy, PG&E has gone on start more fires that have killed dozens of people, including the current Dixie Fire, the largest single wildfire in California history. * The Climate Emergency. Newsom has continued to promote fracking and the gas and oil industry in California. Despite campaign promises to end the practice, Newsom has approved even more new fracking permits than his predecessor, Governor Brown, did. The California Democratic Party continues to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the fossil fuel industry each year. * Universal Health Care. Newsom campaigned in favor of establishing universal health care in California. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, single payer bills landed on his desk twice. But since Governor Brown and Newsom took over the governor's office, the Democratic-supermajority legislature hasn't seriously tried to pass this legislation. * High Speed Rail. In his 2019 State of the State address, Newsom announced he was suspending California's $77 billion attempt to link SF and LA by high speed rail. This allowed President Trump to take back nearly $1 billion that the federal government had committed to the project. Ever since voters approved bonds to fund high speed rail, Democratic Party officials have used the project to enrich politically connected contractors rather than actually trying to build it. A transition from air and road travel to rail is essential for mitigating the worst effects of the climate emergency. * Democracy. Newsom vetoed a measure that would have allowed cities across California to use ranked choice voting in local elections. California should follow Maine in implementing ranked choice voting for all single-seat elections, including Presidential elections. California should be using ranked choice voting for this recall election, but Newsom and the Democrats have showed no interest in fixing a broken system - only complaining that Republicans are taking advantage of it. California should also use proportional representation for larger bodies such as the state legislature. The current system of "winner take all" elections gives no representation to members of any party other than the locally dominant one (Democrats in most cities, Republicans in rural areas). * Rubber Stamp for the Real Estate Lobby. All of the above priorities have been sidelined by Newsom and the Democratic Party so they can focus on what they do best: passing laws to facilitate more market-rate real estate development (i.e., luxury condos). Newsom has shown no interest in building social housing or other types of development that will ameliorate displacement and gentrification of our cities. As a result of the Democrats' libertarian approach to planning, coastal cities have become havens for the wealthy professionals who are the base of the Democratic Party. The working poor who were displaced from these cities are now forced to drive long distances to work as gig economy servants of urban elites. * Hypocrisy. At a time when public schools were closed (despite scientists from UCSF and other academic institutions providing guidelines for safe reopening), Newsom sent his own kids to private schools so they could benefit from in-person learning. While ordinary people were asked to stay home, Newsom attended a dinner hosted by a lobbyist at the French Laundry restaurant in Napa. Although indoor dining was illegal at the time, Newsom's party ate in a temporary building that was only technically "outdoors." Despite all of Newsom's problems, the leading candidates to replace him on the recall ballot are as bad or worse. Therefore, this recall election is unlikely to result in a Governor who is more in alignment with our Green values. Even worse, the rules of the recall election do not require the winner to have majority support: there will be no runoff or ranked choice voting, so a winner could be elected with only a small fraction of the votes. Although the Democrats who are in complete control of government in California could have reformed this process, they have chosen not to do so. Greens therefore urge a NO vote on the first ballot question of recalling Newsom. The second ballot question asks voters who will replace Newsom if the recall succeeds. On this question, Greens have endorsed Dan Kapelovitz (https://kapelovitz.com/) Kapelovitz is a recent convert from the Bernie Sanders campaign to the Green Party. He is an attorney who also teaches law at the People’s College of Law in Los Angeles. His clients are mainly poor people caught up in the criminal justice system, as well as defenders of animal rights. Kapelovitz' values are clearly aligned with the 10 Key Values of the Green Party, and the platform on his website is very similar to ours. Although he recently joined the Green Party, his long record of activism shows that he has shared our values and priorities for decades. Greens should therefore feel confident in voting for him to replace Governor Newsom should the recall vote pass. *===========================* What: KPFA election Where: online When: ballots were sent by email 8/16, vote before 10/15. If you're a KPFA member, please be sure to vote for the Rescue Pacifica candidates in the Local Station Board (LSB) election. It will be conducted using ranked choice voting. We have endorsed the nine Rescue Pacifica candidates, as listed below. (More info about Rescue Pacifica is here: https://rescuepacifica.net/ ). This year's election is vital to preserve democracy at KPFA and Pacifica! Individuals involved with the opposing faction worked to gut the powers of the LSB and they've filed lawsuits to try to take control of KPFA and the Pacifica network. Please use your democratic voting rights to maintain and strengthen the LSB by voting for the Rescue Pacifica candidates as your top nine choices! Please vote for all nine of the following candidates as your top choices (in any order): Rich Stone * Daniel Borgstrom * Don Macleay * James McFadden * Adisa Armand Donna Carter Pete Farruggio Amber Jayanti Elizabeth Milos * = Registered Greens; note that Rich Stone is a County Council member here in San Francisco. Thank you for standing up for democracy and supporting progressive, independent radio! *===========================* What: Online events When: various dates, see below Below are some more online events -- as before, almost all of them are free, and they're hosted across the country, as well as in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Ireland. (The listed times are for the local Pacific time zone). They cover a fairly broad range of topics, so please just ignore the ones you're not interested in. And of course, do feel free to forward as much or as little of this info to others as you'd like: Fri, 9/3, 11 am -- ODDconvo: Creating Utopia -- What worlds get to exist beyond our imagination? -- Utopia literally means 'nowhere.' For some people, that may seem bleak. For us here at GariTalks, Nowhere is the space of infinite possibility -- Creating Utopia, part of the ODDconvo series, is a space to collectively channel the power of Imagination to generate new ideas about what this world around us could look like -- "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." – Lewis Carroll -- Once a month, on the 1st Friday, we gather and actively ask ourselves the questions: "What worlds get to exist beyond what we currently see and don't see? What worlds are we longing to build?" -- Come talk about the unexpected. Come share in the power of dreaming: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oddconvo-creating-utopia-tickets-165484062285?… Fri, 9/3, 3 pm -- Abolition Means No War: The New Generation of Anti-Imperialists -- While the United States sends drones and drops bombs in the Middle East and Africa, militarized police at home are killing Black people and filling detention centers on the Mexico border. These are two sides of the same imperialist coin. Sprawling military bases around the world support the everyday brutal violence of empire and US-backed military coups tear apart homes and force migration. Their wars haunt our families and bring violence into our homes and neighborhoods. It is time we abolish their wars -- Dissenters is leading a new generation of young people to reclaim our resources from the war industry, reinvest in life-giving services, and repair collaborative relationships with the earth and people around the world -- Join Dissenters and Rampant Magazine for a discussion about rebuilding a movement against imperialism and creating a new global future built from mutual care, real safety, and liberation -- Speakers: Byul Yoon is a founding member of Dissenters -- Destiny Harris is a Black, queer abolitionist and organizer from the west side of Chicago. She is a student at Howard University, who has organized throughout Chicago on campaigns like #DefundCPD, #CopsOutCPS and the #NoCopAcademy campaign which aimed to combat the narrative that our communities need police -- brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist activist, writer, and speaker originally from North Carolina. He is one of the founding editors of Rampant Magazine. His work has been published in Jacobin, Red Flag, International Viewpoint, and other publications. He is co-editor of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction and recently co-authored the article, "Rebuilding the Anti-Imperialist Movement in a New Era.": https://www.eventbrite.com/e/abolition-means-no-war-the-new-generation-of-a… Sat, 9/4, 8 am -- Rise of The Resistance: LA BIOTIQUE & Migrant Health and Health Inequality -- Screening of short film LA BIOTIQUE by Rahila Gupta, followed by a panel discussion with Rahila Gupta, Sonali Naik QC, and guests, on migrant health and the global impact of health inequality as a driver for Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) -- The short film which will prompt the discussion is a contemporary reworking of an aria from Puccini’s opera La Boheme, in which Mimi, a poor seamstress in 1830s Paris is reimagined as a migrant textile worker in today's London, who sings of her heartbreak as she contemplates death from TB -- 'La Biotique' translates into English as 'biotics'; describing living or once living components of a community, for example organisms, such as animals and plants -- The discussion will explore the need to recognise our global health as an issue for the entire community of humanity, in order to address the challenge of AMR -- Rahila Gupta is a freelance journalist, writer and activist. She is a longstanding member of Southall Black Sisters (from 1989) , member of Women Defend Rojava UK and patron of Peace in Kurdistan. Her books include: Provoked, and she co-wrote the screenplay of the film which was released in 2007; and Enslaved, on immigration controls, was published in 2007. Her play, a monologue in verse, Don’t Wake Me: The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong, ran between 2012-14 and was nominated for a number of awards. Her epic poem Rubáiyát of Rojava was performed at the Prima Donna festival 2019 -- Sonali Naik QC specialises in public law cases and in all aspects of immigration, asylum and nationality law and practice. She is ranked in immigration in both Chambers UK 2020 and the Legal 500. Sonali is a senior practitioner with over 28 years’ experience. She was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2018. She has very substantial immigration and asylum experience in her High Court and appellate court practice, acting in various country guidance asylum cases: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rise-of-the-resistance-la-biotique-migrant-hea… Sun, 9/5, 11 am -- Anarchist Communism vs Big Tent Anarchism (Part of Antiuniversity 2021) -- Anarchism is a political tradition that unites a number of different anti-authoritarian currents and is seen as an alternative to the Leninist tradition. However, anarchism itself has been divided historically, to an extent over the ultimate goal, but largely over important issues of political analysis, strategy and tactics. The situation is the same today -- This session will look at the distinct tradition of anarchist communism to explore how it is both similar and different to other currents. Some of these differences are far from trivial and often put our current in opposition to those who have been grouped under what we call big tent anarchism. It is not a question of sectarianism, as we work with a wide range of anarchists in grass roots campaigns and projects, but with how we can best build an effective revolutionary anarchist movement -- The issues we will discuss are not just of interest to anarchists. Questions such as the role of organisation, insurrectionism, analysis of class, freedom and collective responsibility, attitude towards Labour, support for national liberation are relevant to all who are concerned with social transformation. We will address these questions in the context of specific contexts, from the Russian Revolution to today’s pandemic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anarchist-communism-vs-big-tent-anarchism-part… Sun, 9/5, 1 pm -- Medical Apartheid, by Harriet A. Washington. Book Circle For All Races -- The Resource Center for Nonviolence (RCNV) presents this series of antiracism book circles as an act of radical education and collaboration -- Medical Apartheid:THE DARK HISTORY OF MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON BLACK AMERICANS FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO THE PRESENT.-- Book Circle Open for all -- From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations -- It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions -- RCNV circles meet weekly on Zoom over the course of 8-12 weeks. This book circle will meet on Sundays from 1-3pm PT; it begins on September 5th and will run for 12 weeks: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington-book… Mon, 9/6, 11 am -- Poverty, Natural Capital and the Climate Crisis -- Sir Partha Dasgupta and Dr Rowan Williams -- This event will be streamed live from St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square -- Poor communities in the global south are facing the twinned crises of Covid-19 and climate change. Both emergencies require a radical shift in how we live our lives. But while we may have developed a vaccine for COVID-19 we have yet to discover a way to inoculate ourselves from climate breakdown. In this exclusive livestream from St Martin in the Fields, Sir Partha Dasgupta and Dr Rowan Williams will discuss how we can tackle the problem of climate change -- Sir Partha Dasgupta will trace the causes of ecological loss back to three concepts: power, knowledge and agency. Through this he will reveal why it is local communities and their local wisdom that are key to protecting natural environments. Only by drawing on the wisdom of indigenous peoples and giving power to local groups can we stave off climate change and create a sustainable future. Dasgupta will give the lecture, before joining Dr Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chair of Christian Aid in conversation: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poverty-natural-capital-and-the-climate-crisis… Mon, 9/6, 12:30 pm -- David Graeber Discussion/Reading Group Online: The Dawn of Everything -- Online Discussion about the work of Anarchist and Anthropologist David Graeber as part of https://antiuniversity.org festival -- The writings of anarchist and anthropologist David Graeber have broken open new ways to think about our world in ways that couldn’t simply be dismissed by the establishment. Insightful anthropology of the many examples for alternative organization of society informed his writing as much as his social movement involvement and careful analysis of bullshit economics. The Museum-of-Care was an idea suggested by David before he passed away last year during the pandemic. Taking its name from the fate of an aristocratic palace in the centre of Paris after the French revolution (it’s now a museum) this experimental collective combines art, activism and reading to explore a world with more care in it. Graeber’s work looks at Debt, Anarchist Anthropology, Bullshit Jobs and the many ways in which ‘another world is possible’ in the words of social movements today -- David Graeber in his work pointed out that not only is another world possible but many have already happened and everyday university histories of humanity tend to not tell these stories of alternatives. Join this online session to discuss work by David Graeber and David Wengrow (an archaeologist that David worked with). You can find this article “How to change the course of human history” that the two authors wrote in 2018 at: https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/ If you want to skim read this first, that’s great but we will also be starting off with a careful overview so you can also just bring your own experiences and join the discussion!: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/david-graeber-discussionreading-group-online-t… Mon, 9/6, 2 pm -- Violent Order: Racial Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Nature of the Police -- Join us for a book launch discussion of the nature of the police project and its rootedness in racial capitalism and settler colonialism -- Join David Correia, Melanie K Yazzi, Tyler Wall and Julie Sze in a discussion that will explore that idea that police and police violence are modes of environment-making. The police project, in order to fabricate and defend capitalist order, must patrol an imaginary line between society and nature, it must transform nature into inert matter made available for accumulation. Police don't just patrol the ghetto or the Indian reservation, the thin blue line doesn't just refer to a social order, rather police announce a general claim to domination—of labor and of nature -- Speakers: David Correia is a Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Properties of Violence, co-author with Tyler Wall of Police: A Field Guide, and co-author of Red Nation Rising Nation: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation -- Julie Sze is Professor of American Studies at UC Davis. She has written 3 books, most recently Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger and over 60 articles and book chapters, on environmental justice, the environmental humanities, geography, and public policy -- Tyler Wall is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the coauthor with David Correia of Police: A Field Guide -- Melanie K. Yazzie, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico. She also organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization committed to the liberation of Indigenous people from colonialism and capitalism: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/violent-order-racial-capitalism-colonialism-an… Thu, 9/9, 6 am -- CLES in conversation with... Kate Raworth -- The field of progressive local economics exists within a context of innovation in approach that is underpinned by social and environmental justice -- This new webinar from the Centre For Local Economic Strategies is designed to explore the intersections between our work on community wealth building (and other practically rooted approaches) and the work of other thinkers in the field -- Join us for a conversation on major ideas around economics, democracy and the future of public services -- Kate Raworth: Delivering the doughnut - the role of community wealth building -- On Thursday 9th September, Kate Raworth - economist, known for her work on “doughnut economics” will discuss the intersections between doughnut economics and community wealth building approaches -- Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on making economics fit for 21st century realities. She is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries, and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab -- Kate is a Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She is a member of the Club of Rome, currently serves on the World Health Organisation Council on the Economics of Health for All and has written extensively for media. The Guardian has named her as “one of the top ten tweeters on economic transformation”: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cles-in-conversation-with-tickets-154409096765… Thu, 9/9, 4:30 pm -- Re-imagining 'Quality of Life' and 'Social Wellbeing' -- Join The University of Newcastle’s Alternative Futures Research Network (UoN-AFRN) and New Economy Network Australia (NENA) for a post-capitalist workshop to discuss, challenge and re-define ‘quality of life’ and ‘social wellbeing’ -- This webinar hosts three world-renowned progressive thinkers, Professor Noam Chomsky - "Imagining the Future – if there is one!"; Associate Professor Ariel Salleh - “Some Ecological Feminist Thoughts on Wellbeing"; and Professor Gar Alperovitz - “Democratizing the Economy: Practical Advances and Long Term Strategy” -- GUEST SPEAKERS - PROF. NOAM CHOMSKY joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955, retiring as Institute Professor (emeritus) after 60 years, and taking a position as Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy -- PROF. ARIEL SALLEH is a member of the Global University for Sustainability; and Visiting Professor in Humanities at Nelson Mandela University. Her position is developed in Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and the postmodern, and Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: Women write Political Ecology -- PROF. GAR ALPEROVITZ, former Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is Co-Chair of The Next System Project and Co-Founder of The Democracy Collaborative, an organization devoted to developing community wealth-building approaches to local and national democratic reconstruction. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Atlantic, and many other popular and academic publications: Re-imagining 'Quality of Life' and 'Social Wellbeing' *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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Greenzine - Gubernatorial endorsement on agenda tonight
by Announcement list for SF Green Party, updated weekly 24 Aug '21

24 Aug '21

August 24, 2021 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty instagram.com/sfgreenparty mastodon.sfgreens.org/@sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, At our monthly meeting last month, we endorsed NO on the gubernatorial recall election. Although we strongly disapprove of Newsom's performance as Governor, we also have many concerns about the leading candidates to replace him, as well the plurality vote (rather than ranked choice vote) on his replacement, since a plurality vote will likely result in a winner with little popular support. We will also consider endorsing one of the Green candidates running to replace Newsom at our monthly meeting tonight; see the meeting agenda below: *===========================* What: Green Party Monthly meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, Aug 25, 7-9 pm We received answers to our gubernatorial recall questionnaire from Dan Kapelovitz and Heather Collins. We will consider making an endorsement at this meeting. We also agendized discussion of eliminating gas lines from SF buildings, as well as phasing out urban gas stations. Mask protocol: SF's COVID rules currently require people to wear masks indoors, even if everybody present is fully vaccinated. If you want to attend remotely, email cc(a)sfgreens.org to participate. Every 4th Wednesday the SF Green Party meets to discuss issues of concern, listen to interesting speakers, endorse events, plan outreach and more! Everyone welcome. All meetings are wheelchair accessible. To make a presentation or gain the SFGP endorsement of events and issues, please contact our SFGP County Council at: cc(a)sfgreens.org *===========================* What: KPFA election Where: online When: ballots were sent by email 8/16, vote before 10/15. If you're a KPFA member, please be sure to vote for the Rescue Pacifica candidates in the Local Station Board (LSB) election. It will be conducted using ranked choice voting. We have endorsed the nine Rescue Pacifica candidates, as listed below. (More info about Rescue Pacifica is here: https://rescuepacifica.net/ ). This year's election is vital to preserve democracy at KPFA and Pacifica! Individuals involved with the opposing faction worked to gut the powers of the LSB and they've filed lawsuits to try to take control of KPFA and the Pacifica network. Please use your democratic voting rights to maintain and strengthen the LSB by voting for the Rescue Pacifica candidates as your top nine choices! Please vote for all nine of the following candidates as your top choices (in any order): Rich Stone * Daniel Borgstrom * Don Macleay * James McFadden * Adisa Armand Donna Carter Pete Farruggio Amber Jayanti Elizabeth Milos * = Registered Greens; note that Rich Stone is a County Council member here in San Francisco. Thank you for standing up for democracy and supporting progressive, independent radio! *===========================* What: Online events When: various dates, see below Below are some more online events -- as before, almost all of them are free, and they're hosted across the country, as well as in Canada, the UK, New Zealand, and Ireland. (The listed times are for the local Pacific time zone). They cover a fairly broad range of topics, so please just ignore the ones you're not interested in. And of course, do feel free to forward as much or as little of this info to others as you'd like: Tue, 8/24, 4 pm -- The Doctrine of Discovery and the Legacy of Injustice -- How did the Doctrine of Discovery add to the legacy of injustice committed against indigenous people & what can we do about it? -- The recent discovery of mass graves in Saskatchewan, Canada, filled with the bodies of indigenous children from boarding schools demands that people in North America look deeply at the injustices that have been committed against Native peoples -- The Doctrine of Discovery not only enabled colonizers in their brutal conquest of the "new world" that caused a near genocide among Native peoples, it also prepared the way for Manifest Destiny, a devastating policy of the United States. These actions resulted in massacres of Native Americans and more forced removals and the beginning of faith-based boarding schools. It was in these schools where "educators" sought to "kill the Indian and save the man." -- Join this challenging discussion where we will demythologize the Doctrine of Discovery and reveal legacy of generational sin against Native Americans and learn how we can appropriately move forward in both lament and action. -- The discussion will be led by Mark Charles. The son of an American woman (of Dutch heritage) and a Navajo man, Mark teaches the complexities of American history regarding race, culture, and Christendom in order to help forge a path of healing and conciliation for the nation. He is the co-author of the book, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, and he authors the blog Reflections from the Hogan. Mark is currently an independent candidate for the presidency of the United States, advocating for a Truth and Conciliation Commission – a formal and national dialogue on issues of race, gender, and class: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-doctrine-of-discovery-and-the-legacy-of-in… Tue, 8/24, 5 pm -- Anti-fascism in the USA: Bill Mullen and James Tracy -- Join us as we welcome Bill Mullen, co-editor of The U.S. Anti-fascism Reader, and James Tracy, co-author of No Fascist USA!, for a talk about the history of anti-fascism in the United States and its lessons for activists today -- Bill V. Mullen is Professor of American Studies at Purdue University. He is the author of James Baldwin: Living in Fire (forthcoming); and UnAmerican: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution and Afro-Orientalism, and a founding member of the Campus Antifascist Network -- James Tracy is an author, organizer, and an Instructor of Labor and Community Studies at City College of San Francisco. He is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times and the author of Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco's Housing Wars -- About The U.S. Anti-fascism Reader: Since the birth of fascism in the 1920s, the United States has been home to its own distinct fascist movements, some of which decisively influenced the course of US history. Many on the left are unaware that the US has a rich antifascist tradition, because it has rarely been discussed as such. The U.S. Anti-fascism Reader reconstructs the history of US antifascism, showing how generations of writers, organisers, and fighters spoke to each other over time -- About No Fascist USA!: In 1977, a group of white anti-racist activists formed the first chapter of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, dedicated to countering the rise of the KKK and other far-right white nationalist groups. No Fascist USA! tells the story of that network, whose efforts throughout the 1980s––which included exposing white supremacists in public office, confronting neo-Nazis in street protests, and engagement with the underground punk scene––laid the groundwork for many anti-racist efforts to emerge since: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anti-fascism-in-the-usa-bill-mullen-and-james-… Tue, 8/24, 5 pm -- P&P Live! Robert S. Levine: THE FAILED PROMISE with Richard Bell -- Join Robert Levine as he discusses his newest book, THE FAILED PROMISE, with Richard Bell on P&P Live! -- Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson, in: The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson -- Robert S. Levine (Ph.D. Stanford) is Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity; Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism; The Lives of Frederick Douglas; Race, Transnationalism, and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies; and (upcoming from Norton) The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson -- Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pp-live-robert-s-levine-the-failed-promise-wit… Tue, 8/24, 6 pm -- Dispelling the Myths: "Critical Race Theory" in K-12 Classrooms -- Teachers of the Year discuss the controversy surrounding critical race theory. -- ***Interested attendees must RSVP via Eventbrite to receive the Zoom Webinar link and password 24 hours before event.*** -- Why are conversations about race, equity, racial justice and "Critical Race Theory" in k-12 classrooms so contentious now? Three experienced and acclaimed 2019 Teachers of the Year—AZ, UT, and AR--share their experiences and perspectives on the social and political debate taking the US by storm. In the wake of the US and global racial justice “reckoning,” where does this focus on Critical Race Theory fall and how does this “controversy” challenge the foundation of US education and race relations?: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dispelling-the-myths-critical-race-theory-in-k… Tue, 8/24, 6 pm -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in conversation with Alejandro Murguía -- Celebrating the launch of her new book Not A Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion -- Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States -- Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US's history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than 4 decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz-in-conversation-with-alej… Tue, 8/24, 10 pm -- Unravelling the Capitalist State: Crisis and Opportunity -- Sydney Environment Institute Doctoral Fellow Anna Sturman explores the capitalist state as a key terrain of inquiry for environmental and social justice movements -- A central concept that remains resolutely under-theorised in much climate and environmental scholarship is the capitalist state -- In conversation with this resurgent state theory literature and on-the-ground responses to compounding crises, SEI Doctoral Fellow Anna Sturman argues that what we may observe as disparate crises are internally related facets of the same crisis - or crisis tendencies - of capitalism. Moving past definitions of the state which see it as a unified and autonomous entity, instrumentally or structurally inclined to act in one way or the other, here instead the state is positioned as an internally contradictory set of social relations which can be worked on and through by different social forces -- As crisis tendencies continue to escalate, the state will be worked on and through by different social forces bent on achieving their aims. With the ongoing rise of the far-right, we can see that the stakes have never been higher. The time is now to return to a serious consideration of the capitalist state and how progressive forces might navigate it as part of a broader strategy to bring about a safer, democratic future -- Speaker: Anna Sturman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney and a SEI Doctoral Fellow. Her research interests include the political economy of climate change, the role of agriculture in programmatic socio-ecological transformations, materialist ecofeminist approaches to economics and theories of the state: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/unravelling-the-capitalist-state-crisis-and-op… Wed, 8/25, 4 am -- We Are All Mutants: CRISPR and Multispecies Futures -- AMOR MUNDI Multispecies Ecological Worldmaking Lab presents “We Are All Mutants: CRISPR and Multispecies Futures”: A Talk by Multispecies Ethnographer & Biotechnoscience Scholar Eben Kirksey -- In THE MUTANT PROJECT: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans, anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: Whose values are guiding gene editing experiments? And what does this new era of scientific inquiry mean for the future of the human species? -- In 2018, Dr. He Jiankui announced that he had created the first genetically modified babies—twin girls named Lulu and Nana—sending shockwaves around the world. As scientists elsewhere start to catch up with China’s vast genetic research program, gene editing is fueling an innovation economy that threatens to widen racial and economic inequality. Fundamental questions about science, health, and social justice are at stake: Who gets access to gene editing technologies? As countries loosen regulations around the globe, from the U.S. to Indonesia, can we shape research agendas to promote an ethical and fair society? -- EBEN KIRKSEY is an American anthropologist and Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He speaks widely at the world’s leading academic institutions including Oxford, Yale, Columbia, UCLA, and the International Summit of Human Genome Editing. Professor Kirksey holds a long-term position at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/we-are-all-mutants-crispr-and-multispecies-fut… Wed, 8/25, 9 am -- Who is Creating Existential Risk? (Why, and Why Should We Care?) -- In this panel, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk researchers will discuss an array of different hazards, ranging from AI to bioweapons, climate change to nuclear weapons -- Who or what are the primary creators of global risk? Should we be most concerned about individuals like the lone rogue scientist or hooded hacker, or place more responsibility with larger actors such as large corporations and states? To what extent should we think of actors as holding responsibility for risk, as opposed to it being something that emerges in a more distributed way? Why does this matter, and how might understanding the root causes and responsibilities around global risk help us to better mitigate them? -- In this panel, researchers from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) will discuss these questions for an array of different hazards, ranging from AI to bioweapons, climate change to nuclear weapons. They will consider the sources of existential risk in the past and present, what could change in the future, and what this means for the world. Panellists: Jess Whittlestone, Lalitha Sundaram, Tom Hobson, and Luke Kemp: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/who-is-creating-existential-risk-why-and-why-s… Wed, 8/25, 11 am -- The Divide by Jason Hickel -- Join author Jason Hickel and guests for a discussion on Global Inequality and its Solutions -- The richest eight people control more wealth than the poorest half of the world combined. Today, 60 per cent of the world’s population lives on less than $5 a day. Though global real GDP has nearly tripled since 1980, 1.1 billion more people are now living in poverty -- Join author Jason Hickel and guests for a discussion on The Divide - a provocative, urgent and ultimately uplifting account of how the world works, and how it can change for the better. The discussion will explore the reality that poor countries are poor because they are integrated into the global economic system on unequal terms, and that aid only helps to hide this: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-divide-by-jason-hickel-tickets-16382970606… Wed, 8/25, 12 noon -- Ethics in Tech – A Conversation Series -- From the moment you wake up and check your messages on Facebook or Twitter, to when you set your Google Nest for the night, tech giants wield unprecedented influence over our daily lives. With this enormous power comes an enormous potential for abuse. The information economy has led to profound challenges to personal privacy. Stalkerware takes advantage of security gaps in our personal digital infrastructure to turn phones and smart home products into tools for facilitating domestic violence. Online platforms are grappling with what it means to provide fairness and due process to their users. And across the tech industry, racial and gender-based discrimination scandals suggest a need to address toxic cultures. The question of how to impose ethical guardrails on these enormously powerful actors is among the most important challenges of this generation -- Our first session features Cory Doctorow, in conversation with Dr. Sarah Roberts -- Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the editor of Pluralistic and the author of young adult novels like LITTLE BROTHER and HOMELAND and novels for adults like ATTACK SURFACE and WALKAWAY, as well as nonfiction books like HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group -- Sarah T. Roberts is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Information Studies and holds an appointment in Labor Studies. She was recently appointed a Research Associate to the Oxford Internet Institute: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ethics-in-tech-a-conversation-series-tickets-1… Wed, 8/25, 3 pm -- Hemp and Biotech: An Earth Based Solution for 21st Century Challenges -- A monthly series highlighting hemp as an eco-solution to the climate crisis with conversations between industry Leaders and youth activists! -- Moon Mother Hemp Company and Earth Guardians are combining forces to host a virtual series designed to shine light on hemp as a dynamic solution to the current climate crisis. Each panel will focus on unique topics chosen by the Earth Guardians' Youth Council featuring industry specialists. Learn about hemp history, environmental benefits, justice & equity, daily uses, substitutions, and more! -- AUGUST WEBINAR: HEMP AND BIOTECH: AN EARTH BASED SOLUTION FOR 21st CENTURY CHALLENGES -- Many of the biggest challenges in the battle against our environmental crisis lie in the biotech space. However, today a number of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs are looking at those challenges through the lens of Hemp. Some of the most evocative uses of Hemp are as an alternative to plastic, packaging, and other low impact solutions to a sustainable economy and a more regenerative approach to the challenges of commerce and utility: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hemp-and-biotech-an-earth-based-solution-for-2… Thu, 8/26, 4 pm -- "Redeeming the Heart and Soul of America": A Conversation with Rev. William Barber -- Rev. William Barber is one of the best known social justice advocates in America today and his passion and eloquence has inspired millions of people. On Thursday night, August 26th he will be featured in a webinar hosted by the McClendon Scholar Program at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. He will be interviewed by Rev. William Lamar IV, pastor of the historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, DC. They will discuss personal faith, activism and social change and what needs to be done to "redeem the heart and soul of America.": https://www.eventbrite.com/e/redeeming-the-heart-and-soul-of-america-with-r… *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news(a)sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.

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