June 18, 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, Happy Juneteenth! Greens welcome the federal recognition of Juneteenth, the oldest national celebration of the end of slavery in the US. At the same time, we'll continue to fight for more material victories, such as defunding the police and military, a Green New Deal, and free healthcare, housing, and education for all. We also wanted to wish everyone a Happy Pride month! Although we'll miss doing our traditional voter outreach this year at the Civic Center, we'll discuss at next week's meeting what other outreach events we'll be able to participate in. Finally, thanks to the high vaccination rates and low COVID prevalence in SF, we're happy to be able to safely welcome you all back to in-person meetings! We'll be meeting at our office in the Redstone Building in the Mission. Details and agenda items are below: *===========================* What: SF Green Party Monthly Meeting Where: Redstone Bldg (2940 16th Street, near South Van Ness) #301, SF When: Wed, June 23, 7-9 pm We're returning to in-person meetings in June! Agenda: * Mask protocol - see below * Intros * Discussion with "Recall School Board" campaign leaders * Planning - What outreach / events should we do to grow our membership this Summer? * KPFA update - Rich * GPCA online plenary report-back - Barry * Decisions on 4 GPCA online votes. SF casts our online votes in GPCA elections in proportion to the preferences of our active membership. Please read about the 4 elections in advance, here: https://int-cagreens.nationbuilder.com/sga_vote_216_to_220_6_2021 Mask protocol: since we don't know in advance who might be coming to the meetings, the CC's suggested protocol will be to ask at the beginning if everybody present is fully vaccinated, and if so, masks would be optional. If anybody is not vaccinated, we would all wear masks during the meeting. 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@sfgreens.org *===========================* What: KPFA election Where: online, for KPFA members When: now through July 7 For Greens who are members of our local Pacifica radio station, KPFA, we've endorsed a NO vote on the proposed new Pacifica bylaws. If you are KPFA member, you should have gotten a ballot by email on June 7, or a postcard in the mail. More info is on our website: https://sfgreenparty.org/endorsements/96-endorsement-against-new-kpfa-bylaws and here is the article on Greenbaiting that we linked to: https://sfbayview.com/2021/05/march-madness-mccarthyism-at-kpfa/ *===========================* Below are some more online events -- as before, almost all of them are free. (The listed times are the local Pacific time zone times). Sat, 6/19, 8:30 am -- George Floyd’s Legacy -- A moment of remembrance and an insight into the George Floyd Foundation underscoring the importance of racial equity -- Shareeduh Tate and Tera Brown, members of the Floyd family, present this moment of remembrance and an update on the George Floyd Foundation initiatives. Moderated by Tezlyn Figaro, political consultant and senior Advisor for the George Floyd Foundation https://www.eventbrite.com/e/george-floyds-legacy-registration-154760176855?... Sat, 6/19, 10 am -- Detroit Public Library Author Series Presents: Annette Gordon-Reed -- Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond -- Annette Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Her other books include Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History and a biography of Andrew Johnson, and with Peter S. Onuf she co-authored Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. The Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, Gordon-Reed’s honors include the National Humanities Medal, a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and the Frederick Douglass Prize: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/detroit-public-library-author-series-presents-a... Sat, 6/19, 5 pm -- Understanding Juneteenth: An Online Presentation -- Learn the history of Emancipation Day as a holiday, now commonly referred to as "Juneteenth," and how it has been celebrated throughout the US. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger led thousands of federal troops to Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed. We want to make sure that with the commercialization of the celebration we don't forget the true significance and importance of the holiday. It is vital that the history of Emancipation is not distorted or lost; this is why we are hosting this presentation: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/understanding-juneteenth-an-online-presentation... Sun, 6/20, 8 am -- Artificial You: AI and the future of your mind -- Can robots really be conscious? Can we merge with artificial intelligence (AI) as tech leaders like Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil suggest? Is your mind just a program? -- Join Susan Schneider, author of Artificial You, as she examines what AI can truly achieve -- Given the rapid pace of progress in AI, many predict that AI could advance to human-level intelligence within the next several decades, and from there, quickly outpace it. Susan will urge that while it’s inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions, it’s up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it’s crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with ‘tools’ they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/artificial-you-ai-and-the-future-of-your-mind-t... Mon, 6/21, 10 am to Fri, 6/25 -- Reactionary Digital Politics: Ideologies, Rhetorics, Aesthetics -- A five-day series of interdisciplinary conversations about online politics, right-wing populism and reactionary ideologies -- 6/21: Reactionary Ideas and Ideologies, Online & Off; 6/22: Mapping Online Extremism & the Far Right; 6/23: Reactionary Rhetorics & Aesthetics; 6/24: Reactionary Politics and Digital Platforms; 6/25: In Conversation with Whitney Phillips and Quinn Slobodian -- Phillips is co-author of You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape; and Slobodian is author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism and the co-editor of Nine Lives of Neoliberalism -- Please see the Eventbrite page for more descriptions and participant bios: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reactionary-digital-politics-ideologies-rhetori... Mon, 6/21, 10:30 am -- William Blake vs the World, with John Higgs -- Join us for a wild journey through culture, science, philosophy and religion to better understand the mercurial genius William Blake in the twenty-first century. Blake famously experienced visions, and it is these that shaped his attitude to politics, sex, religion, society and art. Thanks to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, we are now in a better position to understand what was happening inside that remarkable mind, and gain a deeper appreciation of his brilliance. His timeless work, we will find, has never been more relevant -- In his book and talk, cultural historian and novelist John Higgs will return to a world of riots, revolutions and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion. Higgs's previous books include: The KLF, Stranger Than We Can Imagine, Watling Street, and The Future Starts Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-blake-vs-the-world-john-higgs-tickets-1... Mon, 6/21, 10:30 am -- How Empire Turned People into Patients: Big Pharma's Early Modern Roots -- During the eighteenth century, trends in overseas trade, enslaved labour, and colonial warfare hastened a turn toward viewing individuals as interchangeable patients who could be targets of similar medicines. Before germ theory, antibiotics, or x-rays—before so much of what people think makes medicine “modern”—a key part of how we relate to our bodies was reshaped by the exigencies of the early modern British empire. Drawing on historical examples from my book, Merchants of Medicines, this lecture traces the emergence of an expectation that people could be interchangeable patients from the late seventeenth century to the ramifications of such an idea in today’s “big pharma.” -- Zachary Dorner is a historian and an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Maryland (USA), and author of Merchants of Medicines: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-empire-turned-people-into-patients-big-phar... Mon, 6/21, 2:30 pm -- End Poverty Action: National Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers One Year Campaign Kick-Off -- Join our virtual rally on June 21st, when the Poor People’s Campaign will launch a one year campaign fighting forward every day against poverty and other systemic ills towards a massive, generationally-transformative Moral March on Washington and Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly in one year in June 2022. We are demanding of our government a Third Reconstruction in America that addresses poverty and low wages from the bottom up, as well as systemic racism, voter suppression, health care access, and other critical human rights issues. Drawing on the transformational history of the First Reconstruction following the Civil War and the Second Reconstruction of the civil rights struggles of the 20th century, the Third Reconstruction is a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies that center the 140 million people living in poverty or with low wages in this nation are also good economic policies that can heal and transform the nation: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/06/12/18843166.php Tue, 6/22, 11 am -- William Thompson Forum: Eve Olney on "The Living Commons: Reconfiguring the Social for Unknown Futures" -- The Living Commons is a holistic, social and ecological living, working and learning scheme with a focus on aiding the economic and culturally disadvantaged. It is informed by Murray Bookchin’s concept of communalism/libertarian municipalism; Cornelius Castoriadis’s ‘project of autonomy’ as an alternative ‘social imaginary’; and Silvia Federici’s challenges to the patriarchy. This talk explores the project’s conceptual framework, past and current developments, and objectives around social change -- Olney is an artist, activist, educator and researcher. Her latest essays can be found in Passepartout’s issue 40, ‘New Infrastructures’ (2021) and the book Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century (2021): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-thompson-forum-tickets-148062772739?aff... Wed, 6/23, 5 pm -- The Sea Is Rising and So Are We: A Discussion with PM Press Climate Authors -- Participate in a dialogue on taking climate action from PM Press authors: Cynthia Kaufman, author of The Sea is Rising and so Are we: A Climate Justice Handbook; Jeremy Brecher, who has three books on the climate with PM Press, the most recent of which is Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual; and Eddie Yuen, co-author of Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth -- The Sea is Rising and So Are We is an invitation to get involved in the movement to build a just and sustainable world in the face of the most urgent challenge our species has ever faced. The book explains how to engage in productive messaging that will pull others into the climate justice movement, what you need to know to help build a successful movement, and the policy changes needed to build a world with climate justice: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-sea-is-rising-and-so-are-we-a-discussion-wi... Thu, 6/24, 5:30 am -- Crafting Worlds in Common -- Craftspace and Crafting the Commons Research Network warmly invite you to attend 'Crafting Worlds in Common', a half day symposium followed by a guided virtual tour of We are Commoners exhibition -- Keynote speaker: Professor Peter Linebaugh, author of: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All; and Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance -- Key contributor: Torange Khonsari , a researcher in the field of Cultural and Civic Commons -- The keynote will be followed by four panel discussions on the themes of: Searching for the commons, Commoning in an individualised world, Creating commons and Common futures -- Recently, the idea of the commons has made a comeback in the humanities and the social sciences, as well as in contemporary forms of activism, and has gathered traction both as a way of imagining ecological and political futures, and of finding ways to live in an increasingly privatised and austerity-blighted world. At the same time, an array of community-oriented craft initiatives that draw on the politics of the commons have emerged, including makerspaces, online networks and repair shops. Enabling peer-to-peer exchange of knowledge, tools and materials, they disrupt industrial capitalist production and resist the individualism of intellectual capital and consumer culture: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crafting-worlds-in-common-tickets-156905477507?... Thu, 6/24, 11 am -- Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom -- A discussion of Murray Bookchin's theory for the way to a sane, sustainable and ecological future. The Ecology of Freedom is indispensable reading for anyone who's tired of living in a world where everything is an exploitable resource -- With Debbie Bookchin, a long time journalist and author who is currently active in the municipalist movement and in the Emergency Committee for Rojava; Dan Chodorkoff, a cultural anthropologist who specializes in urban anthropology and utopian studies, and the co-founder of the Institute for Social Ecology with Murray Bookchin in 1974; and David Wengrow, professor of comparative archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, who, with David Graeber, co-authored many articles and their forthcoming book The Dawn of Everything, which will be published in 2021: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/murray-bookchin-the-ecology-of-freedom-tickets-... Thu, 7/1, 10 am -- Social Guarantee Launch -- Come and join us as we discuss why we need a Social Guarantee! The Social Guarantee enshrines every person’s right to life’s essentials: education, health and social care, a decent home, childcare, nutritious food, clean air and water, energy, transport and access to the internet. For this to happen, all people must have access to collectively provided services that meet their needs, as well as to a fair living income -- With Ann Pettifor, economist and author of The Case for The Green New Deal; Kate Raworth, economist and creator of Doughnut Economics; Georgia Gould, Leader of Camden Council; and Chaitanya Kumar, Head of Environment and Green Transition at the New Economics Foundation: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/social-guarantee-launch-tickets-158078327533?af... *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news@sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.