hupcollective

Towards Collective Liberation: The Catalyst Project Program for the US Social Forum, June 27th-July 1st

It is with tremendous joy that we send you our program. Our anticipation for the Social Forum is building and we look forward to joining with thousands of comrades working to build the movements we need. This program is not ours alone, we are collaborating with 23 wonderful organizations on the sessions that follow. We look forward to seeing many of you in Atlanta. Please send this out to your friends and networks. Any help you can provide with outreach is much appreciated.

Catalyst Project works from the assumptions that we need to build grassroots political power in working class communities and communities of color, that women's, transgender and gender variant leadership is central to building dynamic and powerful movements, and that there is a need to organize people who have race, class and gender privilege to participate in building movements led by oppressed communities for collective liberation. We are rooted in the belief that we need a praxis-oriented practice of drawing lessons from our work to advance our vision and understanding of the world. These are the assumptions that shape our program.

1. "You Can't Kill the Spirit": Solidarity Organizing in the Movement to Rebuild New Orleans

Thursday 1-3, Room 1402 at the Westin Hotel

A workshop by the Catalyst Project and People's Hurricane Relief Fund

Panelists: Akua Jackson, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an organizer from New Orleans INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence and the Women's Health and Justice Initiative, Ingrid Chapman, Catalyst Project and Kali Akuno from the People's Hurricane Relief Fund ( Collapse )

2. Throwing Down Against Empire: Military Veterans Speak-Out on Practical Strategies to End War

Saturday 3:30-5:30, Room 1202 at the Westin Hotel

Organizations: War Resisters League, Catalyst Project and Iraq Veterans Against the War

Participants: Greg Payton (Vietnam Veteran), Aimee Alison (Gulf War Veteran), Diedra Cobb (Iraq War Resister) IVAW rep TBA

Moderators: Steve Theberge and Clare Bayard

Can we build an anti-war movement that not only ends the occupation of Iraq, but also challenges the foundations of war? This panel will bring together Veterans of the Vietnam, first Gulf, and Iraq wars to share their experiences of resistance and organizing and discuss how you can support GI resistance, the Conscientious Objectors movement and counter-recruitment as core strategies for building a successful anti-war movement.

3. GI Resistance & Solidarity Movement Against War & Empire

Friday 1-3, Choir Room at Trinity United Methodist Church

Organizations: Courage To Resist, Iraq Vets Against the War and Catalyst Project

The G.I. resistance/solidarity movement is made up of organizations and people engaged in work, ranging from counseling to legal advocacy to political campaigns supporting public resisters and their families. Currently there is no umbrella, network, or clearinghouse where we can all come together to exchange information, coordinate and collaborate, and strategize together. At the Social Forum we aim to bring together the different elements of this movement to build more cohesion and strengthen our work and our movement.( Collapse )

4. "Battle for the Hearts and Minds": White Anti-Racist Organizing Visions and Strategies

Saturday 1-3, Room 1205 at the Westin Hotel

A Catalyst Project workshop with presentations from Mel Pilbin of the Heads Up Collective and Amy Dudley of the Rural Organizing Project. ( Collapse )

5. Another Politics is Possible: Living the Vision from Below and to the Left

Friday 10:30-12:30, Georgia Ballroom East Room at Renaissance Downtown
Organizations: LA Garment Workers Center, Sista II Sista, INCITE!, Coalition of Immokalee workers/Student Farm worker Alliance, Center for Immigrant Families, Regeneracion Childcare, Pachamama Childcare collective, Harm Free Zone, Left Turn Magazine, Catalyst Project, and Refugio.
What does it mean to "live the vision" for social justice—to actualize the transformative world we desire within the present-day life of our organizations and movements? ( Collapse )

6. Building in Context: Movements Across Generations

Friday 10:30-12:30, Mezzanine Left Room at Atlanta Civic Center

Organizations: Resistance in Brooklyn; Catalyst Project; Institute for Multiracial Justice, Southerners on New Ground

Panelists: Elizabeth Betita Martinez; Mandy Carter; Meg Starr; Clare Bayard; Moderated by Matt Meyer
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*If any radio journalists want to record any of the sessions please contact chris@collectiveliberation.org

As you know, each month we send out an email with articles and essays. Because there are many excellent events happening before the next calendar will be sent out, here is a link to a list of events on our blog:
http://hupcollective.livejournal.com/12437.html

This week marks the 40th anniversary of occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by Israel. Here is a sampling of the many articles on the topic:

Sanctions are Needed To Save Israel From Itself, by Chris Hedges
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13009

For Palestinians, Memory Matters: by George Bisharat
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/14/1188/

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA lays out a devastating assessment of the current reality of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and ends by adding his voice to the call for one democratic, secular state in Israel and Palestine.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6994.shtml

Robert Jensen speaks out about a colleague’s hypocrisy with regards to Israel and calls for Boycotts:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/weinbergs-claim-of-moral-high-ground-rings-hollow-in-face-of-bigoted-remark/

The Shin Bet and the Persecution of Azmi Bishara, by Jonathan Cook
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/the-shin-bet-and-the-persecution-of-azmi-bishara/

Also, please come to this Friday night event to celebrate Palestinian Resistance: http://hupcollective.livejournal.com/12045.html

Washington's Wars and Occupations: Month in Review #25
May 29, 2007, By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerra
http://hupcollective.livejournal.com/11669.html

Another great Tim Wise essay
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12982

Calendar for Early June
June 7:

Beyond Resistance, Toward Liberation
Eleventh Annual Artists Against Rape
A Night of Healing and Liberation through the Arts!

Thursday, June 07
Brava Theater
6 pm Silent Auction | Performance 8 pm

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JUNE 9:

Another World is Possible! Another U.S. is Necessary!
U.S. Social Forum - Upcoming Bay Area Events!
Dance all the way to Atlanta : DJ's, dancing, silent auction and surprises!
Leftist Lounge IV
Saturday, June 9, 8 PM - 2 AM!
@ Balazo Gallery
2183 Mission St. @ 18th, San Francisco
$5-20 sliding scale (No one turned away) Wheelchair accessible!
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Voices of Iraqi Workers
2007 Solidarity Tour
Coming to San Jose , Santa Cruz , Berkeley & San Francisco

June 10th – June 12th
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JUNE 13

USSF Bay Area Meeting, Wednesday, June 13
6:30 PM; @ UNITE/HERE Local 2 in San Francisco
209 Golden Gate Ave., b/w Leavenworth and Hyde
closest BART is Civic Center, wheelchair accessible

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JUNE 16th

If you would like to become a volunteer counselor, or otherwise get involved as a volunteer at the Tenants Union, join us for the part I of our counselor training series!
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International Jewish Voices of Dissent
June 14th at 6:30 PM
474 Valencia @ 16th Street, San Francisco, 2nd Floor Auditorium

Join Sara Kershnar and Mich Levy ( Collapse )


June 18th: Rally for SF 8

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CELEBRATING PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE
Asserting Our Narrative; 59 Years after the Nakbah
When: Friday June 8th, 6:30 - 9:30 PM
Where: SF Women's Building, Auditorium
3543 18th St. at Valencia
** Our Pictures ** Our Stories ** Our Dance
********************************************************************************************
* Short Film * Palestinian Narratives * Photo Exhibit *
* Dabkeh * Political Discussion*
********************************************************************************************
** Our Narrative ** Our Struggle ** Palestine's Alive


Palestinian and Arab community activists have come together to honor the 59th year of our continuous resistance and unbroken steadfastness in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Join us for an evening packed with cultural expressions of our resistance.

Program includes music, speakers, performances by Al-Juthoor (Palestinian Dabkeh Troop), and more. The night will also feature a photo exhibit documenting our displacement and ensuing struggle for freedom. This is an event not to be missed!

The Nakbah is the Arabic word for "catastrophe." It marks the creation of the "State of Israel" in Palestine in 1948, where the Zionists expelled over 750,000 Palestinians, massacred thousands more, and destroyed hundreds of villages .Today, nearly 5 million Palestinians are struggling to return and many more are fighting for equality and justice. After nearly six decades of dispossession, we make sure that our struggle continues and the Nakbah will never be forgotten.
Sliding Scale Donation: $10-20
Nobody turned away for lack of funds.
For more info, write to lilac939@yahoo.com

Hatta Al-Awda
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Herman Bell is now in the SF County Jail.
Write him:

Herman Bell - 2318931
SF County Jail
850 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

His information is also up to date at the support website and on the downloadable brochure
www.freetheSF8.org

Washington's Wars and Occupations:
Month in Review #25
May 29, 2007
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

IRAQ: "HANDWRITING IS ON THE WALL"

This time the admission came from a senior military official of Washington's
only remaining major ally:

"The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working," said
Alastair Campbell, the outgoing defense attache at the British Embassy
in Baghdad
May 20. According to Britain's Sunday Telegraph, Campbell also disclosed that
U.S. commanders had decided that the criteria for "success" would be only
a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's bombing of
the al-Askari
Mosque in Samarra. That means 800 dead Iraqis a month - a figure that
the Telegraph
admits "few would regard as anything remotely approaching peace."

The administration's utter failure in Iraq is the driving force behind Bush's
loss of public support and the fracturing of his right-wing coalition.
The latest
poll (May 24) shows opposition to the Iraq war at an all-time high: 60% say the
U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq; 76% - including a majority of Republicans -
say that the additional U.S. troops sent this year have had no impact
or are making
things worse. Bush's overall approval level is just 30% compared to
63% disapproval.

Bush won some breathing space when the majority of House and Senate
Democrats caved
in to "don't-stab-our-troops-in-the-back" demagogy and approved Iraq
war funding. But defeat in Iraq and popular disgust with the war are
here to stay.
Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell predicted a change: "I think
the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the
fall." He added the Republican spin that Bush "is going to lead"
this policy shift and the White House leaked its standard scam that
Bush is "considering
major troop reductions next year." But the President will be even weaker in
September than he is now.
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CELEBRATING PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE
Asserting Our Narrative; 59 Years after the Nakbah

When: June 8th, 6:30 - 9:30 PM
Where: SF Women's Building, Auditorium
3543 18th St. at Valencia

Palestinian and Arab community activists have come together to honor the 59th year of our continuous resistance and unbroken steadfastness in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine . Join us for an evening packed with cultural expressions of our resistance.

Program includes music, speakers, performances by Al-Juthoor (Palestinian Dabkeh Troop), and more. The night will also feature a photo exhibit documenting our displacement and ensuing struggle for freedom. This is an event not to be missed!

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Dear friends and allies,

As you've probably heard, the US Senate is currently debating an immigration
proposal that would be devastating to immigrant communities. Among other
things, it would require families to separate in order to apply for
residency, it would fail to provide legalization to the vast majority of
undocumented folks, it further criminalizes immigrants, creates a new Bracer
Program, and would further militarize the US/Mexico border. No bill is
better than this bill!

PLEASE JOIN THE SF DAY LABOR PROGRAM / WOMEN'S COLLECTIVE, ALONG WITH BAY
AREA IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS, TO DENOUNCE THIS IMMIGRATION BILL IN 2
DAYS OF ACTION!!

1) Friday, June 1, 11-1, Press Conference and Direct Action at Sen.
Feinstein's Office, 1 Post St. (At Montgomery BART)

2) Saturday, June 2, 7-10 am, Rally and vigil at Sen. Feinstein's house, 30
Presidio Terrace (@ Lyon and Washington)

What is happening in Lebanon?
http://electronicLebanon.net

Laurie King-Irani
Electronic Lebanon

A survey of US television and radio news over the last 24 hours has told me the following:

- Bombings and gunfights in Lebanon. Again.

- Breathless analyses on US news programs about Al-Qaida's spread to the shores of the
eastern Mediterranean.

- Analysts using the "cookie cutter" approach to this new development by citing the events
of 1975-1976 and the tensions between Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.

- CNN's putative Lebanon analyst, Brent Sadler, characterized Palestinian refugee camps in
Lebanon as "breeding grounds for terrorism," but now, according to Mr. Sadler, it's
Islamic-flavored terrorism.

This is all very ominous, anxiety-provoking and compelling "infotainment" -- and
completely in line with the distorted views of US foreign policy makers.

Such simplistic and knee-jerk reactions to Lebanon's current travails are too easy, and not
up to the standards of good and responsible journalism.

I've spent much of the past 48 hours trying to get a better grasp on what is really going on
in Tripoli. It's not easy to do, and it occured to me this morning that this may, in fact, be
the story: the difficulty of interpreting these events stems from the lack of a
comprehensive understanding of the ways that dramatic changes throughout the region,
and indeed, the world, are echoing through Lebanon's war-damaged sociopolitical
landscape.

Yesterday, Robert Fisk, the veteran war correspondent and author of the best book on
Lebanon's decades of agony, Pity the Nation, observed in The Independent</ i> that:

"Not since the war -- yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to
forget -- have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a Lebanese
city....The bloody events in Lebanon yesterday passed so swiftly -- and so dangerously for
those of us on the streets -- that I am still unsure what happened."

Well, if Robert Fisk is confused, how can Brent Sadler be so sure he knows what is going
on in Lebanon? It's easy to point fingers at Syria, to invoke the shadowy and amorphous
threat of Al-Qaida, to blame the Palestinians, or (in fine Lebanese fashion) to see a
complex and nefarious plot underlying the bloodletting in Tripoli.

Any eruption of large-scale violence in Lebanon is cause for concern, since so many
related regional crises are "hot-wired" through Lebanon, and the war that raged there
during the last decades of the 20th century was in fact three wars: A local, regional, and
international confrontation that intersected and metastasized in horrific ways. For those of
us who have lived in, and love, Lebanon, the fear of the 1975-1991 war's return always
lurks in the back of the mind.

The events of the last week, however, cannot be explained in relation to that earlier war,
nor entirely in relation to the murky mysteries surrounding the assassination of former
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, or even last summer's brutal Israeli assault on Lebanon. Nor
are the disturbing developments in Tripoli rooted in Palestinian-Lebanese tensions. Of
course, US commentators have been quick to peg the Syrians and Palestinians as the
culprits. But that is too simplistic.

What's now happening in Lebanon requires a much more subtle and fine-grained
interpretation, one that takes on board the reverberations of political developments from
Baghdad to Washington, while attending to emerging social and economic conditions in
the Middle East. The situation is much more complicated, fluid, unbounded, and therefore
ominous than CNN's "experts" seem to grasp. There are new aspects to the current
violence, perhaps most noteworthy is the emergence of a militia in Lebanon that has no
clearly delineated connection to any particular family or traditional ethno-confessional
leadership in the Lebanese context. There is some new political logic or system at work
here, but it is irresponsible to present simple or pat explanations.

Over the next few days, Electronic Lebanon will be providing more insights into, and
analyses of, the latest outbreak of conflict in Lebanon. For now, however, I'd like to outline
some issues and realities that any comprehensive and valid explanation of this week's
events must include:

1. A huge demographic swell of youth is now coming into their majority, and they have no
real leadership or clear focus for political action, nor do they see much hope or options in
the current political and economic system.

2. Shifting global configurations are key to any explanation of what is happening in
Lebanon. Although the US remains the world's leading military power, that is no longer
relevant or important to the regional politial system. US influence is on the wane, its status
and reputation completely sullied during the last six years of the Bush Administration's
disastrous and delusional "War on Global Terror." In fact, the US has now become more of
a pariah or liability for the region's elite, particularly in Lebanon, where the government is
characterized as "Pro-American, pro-democracy," while the Opposition (led by Hizbullah)
is deemed a dangerous terrorist force. Iraq, as well as the horrors in Occupied Palestine,
are now "exhibits A and B" in how and why not to trust the US. The US has given not only
itself, but the very concept of democracy, a bad name in the region.

3. Although al-Qaida makes the news a lot, I don't think it (whatever "it" is) commands the
attention, respect and support in Lebanon or Palestine as does Hizbullah, the only group
in the region to successfully challenge and defeat the Israeli Army.

4. Shifting regional oppositions are also key to understanding this week's events in
Lebanon. The Palestinian movement as an institution, i.e., the movement-turned-
establishment of the 1960s-mid-1990s, is no more, although people are still very moved
and mobilized by the Palestinian tragedy. Hamas is no longer a unified organization.
Leftist groups are weak. Rapidly growing gaps between rich and poor mean that there's
not much chance of middle class, broad-based movements for change or reform. But then,
those sorts of social movements are usually rooted in national identity and nation-state
projects, and the nation state is no longer a big draw, or at least not as big a draw as
religion, family, ethnicity -- or movements for justice, usually theologically defined (but
not always; Egyptian secular and leftist activism is now back on the streets of Cairo).

5. The largely manufactured tensions between Shi`is and Sunnis in Iraq (or, to be more
precise, the "Lebanonization" of Iraq encouraged by the United States) will ultimately
reverberate elsewhere, probably to the detriment of US allies like Jordan, Saudia Arabia
and Egypt. And for non-allies, or quasi-allies, like Lebanon and Syria, this poses real
dangers.

6. The ability of groups like Al-Qaida (and again, I don't think that this group exists in the
way that the US government or media present it as existing) to do seriously dramatic
actions does not hinge upon grass-roots support. They are not a broad-based movement,
but could do (or people claiming to be them could do) major attacks that could influence
various players' moves in the region and beyond.

7. It's no longer an "either/or" situation, and maybe it never was. It is not as if people have
a choice: pro-US or anti-US. The situation now seems fluid enough that some new
groupings and ideologies could emerge, that don't look to either the West or various
permutations of political Islam to design a new project.

A major political firestorm may overtake the Middle East this summer. It's hard to predict
just how it might start, and harder to predict what it will devour. The time for preventing
disasters, such as the one now emerging in Lebanon, is long past, though. The
irresponsibility of the United States had a lot to do with this. Although it is hard to define
the new forms of leadership and political projects emerging in the Middle East, one thing
is certain: they won't be directed from, or funded by, Washington, DC. Nor will they be
comprehensible to mainstream US news reporters and analysts who remain blinded by
past events or official explanations that tie everything to "terrorism."

Laurie King-Irani is a cofounder of Electronic Lebanon. She teaches social anthropology in
Washington, DC. Her blog is Zinjabeelah.

Around Globe, Walls Spring Up to Divide Neighbors
by Bernd Debusmann

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For Palestinians, memory matters, It provides a blueprint for their future
by George Bisharat
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Unity and Struggle Episode 2, and April/May Newsletter for the People's Hurricane Relief Fund
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Iraq War Is Lost, but the Killing Goes On
by Max Elbaum

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Why Israel is After Me
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