ProgressiveAustin.org / Calendar

Monday, Aug. 9 at 9:00am until August 25 at 5:00pm, Fort Hood, TX

Created By UnderThe HoodCafe: The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is preparing to deploy later this month. Among the 5K troops they are sending to the “winding down” war in Iraq are hundreds of wounded warriors! These Soldiers have already survived the fight, but Col. Allen, the Regimental commander, will put them back in harms way unless YOU ACT NOW TO STOP HIM! Call and Harass the 3rd ACR Brass!!! They need to hear your voice now. Tell them you oppose the deployment of wounded troops.

Friday, August 20, 6:30 pm, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 14311 Wells Port Drive (exit off I-35, west on Wells Branch Parkway)

St. Andrew’s Summer Film Series – “Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story”. This 1996 film starring Moira Kelly and Martin Sheen tells the story of Dorothy Day, a New York journalist who along with Peter Maurin established the Catholic Worker Movement and the activist newspaper “The Catholic Worker.” Controversial for her support of the economic system called “distributism,” she was often called an anarchist and did not hesitate to use that word to describe herself. Day sought to apply Catholic social teachings to make a difference in the lives of those who were suffering from homelessness and hunger during the Great Depression. A convert to Catholicism, Day has been an inspiration to both advocates for social justice in the religious and secular arenas.

7pm Saturday August 21, 2010, Club Primos, 1700 East 6th St.

“We are Strength:” Changing Worlds & Giving up the Spirit. Celebrating the work of Save Our Youth (SOY) & announcing a new project of Red Salmon Arts, Ex-Pinta Support Alliance (ESA). A Fundraiser for SOY & ESA featuring musica, poesia, silent art auction, y mas . . . Join us as we continue to honor the prison abolition work of our elder, raulrsalinas, working with young people & women inside/outside the jail machine.

More info to come . . . mark your calendars!

Saturday, August 28, 6 pm, 5604 Manor, 5604 Manor Road

Screening of “Nero’s Guests: The Age of Inequality,” documentary featuring journalist P. Sainath. The new documentary “Nero’s Guests: The Age of Inequality,” directed by Deepa Bhatia, tells the story of India’s agrarian crisis and the growing worldwide inequality through the work of award-winning journalist P. Sainath. For the past decade, Sainath has been reporting on the epidemic of farmers committing suicide in India as a result of the collapse of the rural economy. Sainath’s hard-hitting reporting for The Hindu newspaper forced other journalists to cover the story and government officials to act.

From the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York: “In this fluidly edited and moving documentary … P. Sainath’s energy and sense of outrage are contagious. As he visits the affected families and works every media angle at his disposal to get politicians to act, we see a society in denial, a lack of social justice for the poor and gaping wealth disparities in the country.”

In a 29-year career as a journalist, Sainath has won over 35 global and national awards and been called “the conscience of the Indian nation” by other journalists. In 2007, he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award — Asia’s most prestigious prize, often referred to as the “Asian Nobel” — for Journalism Literature and Creative Communications Arts for his “passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.”

The screening is sponsored by Association for India’s Development (AID) Austin and the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. For more information: (512) 524-3819 or austin@aidindia.org.

Sunday, August 29th 5pm, Texas State Employees Union, 1700 South 1st Street

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born in the United States to an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. She lived in Iraq as a child, returning to the U.S. at age 5. She earned her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Dr. Wasfi has made two trips to Iraq to visit her extended family since the 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion, including a three month stay in Basrah in the spring of 2006. She has brought her eyewitness account of life under occupation to 22 U.S. states; Capitol Hill in D.C.; Toronto and Vancouver, Canada; Madrid, Spain in 2007; and the 3rd International Iraq Conference in Berlin, Germany, in March 2008. Her talk in Austin will cover the devastating effects of the 1991 Gulf War, the economic sanctions, and the 2003 invasion and occupation. For more on Dr. Wasfi, including her writings, click here .

Dr. Wasfi will also be speaking at a press conference on Monday, August 30th, 10am at Under the Hood Café in Killeen. Other speakers will include State Representative Lon Burnam, Fort Hood soldiers and family members, and representatives of local peace and justice groups. This event has been organized as part of a national coalition effort to counter the administration’s claims of success in Iraq as the troop reduction begins this month. For complete statement and endorsers click here.

For more information email: info@codepinkaustin.com

Events sponsored by:
CodePink Austin
Texas Labor Against the War
Under the Hood Café
Veterans for Peace, Chapter 66
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Chapter 38
Texans for Peace

Sunday, September 19, 6 pm, 5604 Manor, 5604 Manor Road

Aviva Chomsky is a history professor and coordinator of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts. Her 2007 book “They Take Our Jobs!” And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration provides a careful analysis of the overheated rhetoric around immigration policy in the United States, debunking the 21 biggest myths and stereotypes in today’s debate. In her talk, Chomsky will sketch the outlines of a sensible immigration policy.

Her latest book, Linked Labor Histories, looks at globalization as a long historical process with labor history at its center. The book examines how employers have used regional inequalities to gain access to cheaper workers through immigration, which along with plant relocation gives companies weapons to discipline their workers.

“Much of my scholarly work can be traced back to the year I spent working for the United Farm Workers union back in 1976-77,” Chomsky said. “I credit that experience with sparking my interest in the Spanish language, in migrant workers and immigration, in labor history, in social ovements and labor organizing, in multinationals and their workers, in how global economic forces affect individuals, and how people collectively organize for social change.”

The $10 donation at the door will benefit 5604 Manor, the new progressive community center launched by the Third Coast Activist Resource Center and Workers Defense Project.

For more information, contact Robert Jensen at (512) 471-1990 or rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

Sunday, September 26, 12:30 pm, Congregational Church, 408 West 23rd Street

The Congregational Church of Austin will host the first forum in a quarterly series on social and economic justice. In September the focus will be on the Texas criminal justice system. Speakers Kristin Houlé of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Diane Claitor of Texas Jail Project, and Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership (organizing to eliminate for-profit prisons) will talk about the work they are doing and what we can do to push for change during the next legislative session.

Free parking is available across the street at the Co-op Parking Garage at the corner of 23rd and San Antonio.