Portside

Re: An Impeachment Trial Without Witnesses Would Be Unconstitutional (Judy Atkins)
Re: The Republicans Have Revealed Their Impeachment Strategy—Lying (Alba Grace Pereira Medina; Roberto Rosario; Marisol Febo; John Benson; David Jones; Miriam Bensman)
Coming Revolution  --  cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Re: Introducing the Teen Vogue 2020 Youth Voter Committee (Showing Up for Racial Justice-Rural SURJ of NorCal; Suzanne Prescott)
Re: The ‘Deal of the Century’ is Apartheid (Mona McCurley Wright; Philip Specht; Walter Lippmann; Nesbit Crutchfield; Linda Crowley; Barry Cuthbert; Bonnie Rodriguez; John Meyerson; Susan Radosh; Jane Bush; Yakov Pipman; Julia Bruno)
Spin Cycle  --  cartoon by Mike Thompson
Re: The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an `Aberration' (Hope de Waardt-Jemerson; Disraelly Gutierrez Jaime)
Re: The High Cost of Having a Baby in America (Jim Price)
Re: The Forgotten Socialist History of Martin Luther King Jr. (Ivan Avilés Medina; Joe Grogan; Geoffrey Jacques; Dale Jacobson; Calvin St. James)
Re: Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms (Leanna Noble)
Re: Why Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise in the United States (Kipp Dawson; Jeanne Paradise; Robert Supansic)
Re: Defender and Spearheads (Carl Davidson)
Re: When Capital Threatens to Strike in Your City (Miguel Tamargo)
Re: 'We Are Living by the Sword': The Regrets of an Israel Founder's Son (Mike Glick; Kipp Dawson)
Re: Israel Is Systematically Poisoning One Million Palestinian Children (Susan Crews; Yvette Potts Crumpley; Barry Cuthbert)
Re: Charlie Chaplin and Truly Modern Times (Dan Morgan; Carole Travis)
Re: Meet the CEOs Raking It in from Trump’s Aggression Toward Iran (Mary Kay Baum)

Resources:

The Union Member's Complete Guide: POWER TOOL FOR LABOR! (Hard Ball Press)

Announcements:

Jane McAlevey has it out with Nato & Francesca - San Francisco - February 1 (PianoFight)
Book Talk - Stuart Schrader - Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing - New York - February 6 (NYU Center for the United States and the Cold War)
Romero Troupe of Colorado Presents “I Didn’t Choose Palestine; It Chose Me: Personal Stories of Transformation - Denver - February 20 (Friends of the Center for Freedom and Justice)
125,000 Paper Cranes to Washington, D.C. in June 2020 for Tsuru for Solidarity’s “National Pilgrimage to Close the Camps” - June 5 - 7 (Manzanar Committee)

 

Re: An Impeachment Trial Without Witnesses Would Be Unconstitutional
 

I think it’s time for those who are in states with Republican Senators to put the pressure on them to vote to release us from the tyranny of Trump and vote for truth and impeachment

Can some one start an online petition aimed at the Republican Senators?

Judy Atkins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Republicans Have Revealed Their Impeachment Strategy—Lying
 

They probably can't be stopped now, but when November comes around you can eliminate them with your vote.

Alba Grace Pereira Medina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

If Trump and the GOP gets away with this...this will be the beginning of the end.

Roberto Rosario
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

The people in the USA have to realize that they have let this man have the power to do whatever crime or corrupt act there is against the law and the constitution. Now he is publicly admitting his obstruction of justice and nothing happens. People in the USA should be in the streets protesting 

Marisol Febo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Its worked for the President and repeated like gospel by the shills of Fox News, what will break this is the next election.

John Benson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

The Senate is going to insult the intelligence of the nation. This is political suicide. They will lose any chance of controlling any power in house or senate for years. America will seek the truth and hold them accountable.

David Jones

     =====

In a normal trial, the judge is empowered to stop advocates like Cipollone from openly and obviously lying to the court and the jury. In a normal trial, the judge would have been empowered to cut Cipollone off, mid-lie if necessary, and demand that he “approach the bench.” There, he’d be admonished for lying to the jury. If he continued with the lie or did it again, a judge could hold Cipollone in contempt, or even declare a “mistrial” and force the whole process to start again.

Chief Justice John Roberts has no such power here. Mitch McConnnell’s rules do not allow Roberts to hold anybody in “contempt.”

Miriam Bensman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Coming Revolution  --  cartoon by Mike Luckovich
 

Mike Luckovich
January 30, 2020
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Re: Introducing the Teen Vogue 2020 Youth Voter Committee
 

As part of Vogue's #TeenVote2020 project, 12 young people will be its sounding board for all things related to the presidential campaign.

Showing Up for Racial Justice-Rural SURJ of NorCal
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

THIS TEENVOGUE ARTICLE POINTS OUT THE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS

"We noticed that pundits and politicians often talk about the importance of the “youth vote,” but ultimately don’t pay much attention to how young people feel about presidential elections, much less politics and the social issues that matter to them."

How can parents and other older voters approach younger voters in a meaningful way to create useful discussions about voting?
If you have an article with data about younger voters and the coming 2020 election, please cite it here

Suzanne Prescott
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The ‘Deal of the Century’ is Apartheid
 

    “The ‘Deal of the Century’ resurrects and restores grand apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.“

Mona McCurley Wright
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

This plan is similar to when South Africa established "homelands" for blacks, totally surrounded by, and controlled by, the dominant government.

Philip Specht
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Under President Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders, airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum. Israel will be allowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel, the state that actually rules over them.

President Trump’s plan for racial control and segregation should sound disturbingly familiar. Indeed it should immediately bring to mind the Bantu homelands which were the cornerstone of South Africa’s ‘grand apartheid’. While ‘petty apartheid’ was the term used to describe racial segregation on buses and public facilities, ‘grand apartheid’ referred to the many laws which enforced territorial and political separation between black and white South Africans.

Walter Lippmann
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Back to the racist future. Shame. Nazi's fascists, and advocates of Apartheid.

Nesbit Crutchfield
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Homelands? Bantustans

Linda Crowley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

An American nazi and an Israel nazi walked into Gaza one got indicted and the other got impeached

Barry Cuthbert
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

"Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan physically and politically separates Palestinians by placing them within a non-contiguous homeland (Areas A and B and Gaza), and declaring them citizens of that homeland. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan grants the Palestinian homeland autonomy over civil matters like education and healthcare, while critical areas such as trade, immigration, and security will remain under Israeli control. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan is political sleight of hand: a thinly veiled attempt to claim that Israel, a state that rules over roughly the same number of Jews and Palestinians, is actually a Jewish-majority state. Also like apartheid South Africa, the Trump administration claims the homelands are a temporary solution."

Bonnie Rodriguez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

While Trump is peddling racism across the globe take a minute to read this article, let it sink in a couple of minutes and then tell me I’m anti-Semitic for comparing the Israeli government’s policies to apartheid.

John Meyerson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

This ‘Peace Plan’ is not. The world needs REAL Peace for Palestinians and Israelis— not Apartheid. Can you tell the difference between pre- 1990 South Africa, and current day Israel? I cannot.

Susan Radosh
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

The mockery of yesterday s’ announcement put forth by trump and Netanyahu absolutely insults all reason and reasonable people. Both bullies cut from the same cloth sad that these have actually climbed their way to the top of the bully pulpits of the world.

HOW AWFUL CAN TWO HUMANS BE?
B E Y O N D !!!

Jane Bush
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

A cynical joke coming from two corrupt and criminal “leaders”. The opposition and struggle against the racist apartheid must continue.

Yakov Pipman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

The U.S. gifts Israel nearly 53 billion dollars annually so that it can bully, steal from, and commit genocide on the Palestinians. The Palestinians and the Hebrews have had a long-standing dispute over their slightly differing religions which Israel uses as justification for its land-grab.

Julia Bruno
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Spin Cycle  --  cartoon by Mike Thompson
 

Mike Thompson
USA Today

Re: The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an `Aberration'
 

    "No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy...that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy."

Hope de Waardt-Jemerson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

That’s a problem of capitalism and white majority rule: “Justice is the interest of the strongest.” (Plato) There can be no democracy in this system. “No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy...that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy.

Disraelly Gutierrez Jaime
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The High Cost of Having a Baby in America
 

another ad for Medicare for All

Jim Price
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Forgotten Socialist History of Martin Luther King Jr.
 

As Americans honor King on his birthday, it is important to remember that the civil rights icon was also a democratic socialist, committed to building a broad movement to overcome the failings of capitalism and achieve both racial and economic equality for all people.

When African-Americans sought not only to be treated with dignity, but guaranteed fair housing and education, many whites abandoned the movement. In King’s words, as soon as he demanded “the realization of equality”—the second phase of the civil rights movement—he discovered whites suddenly indifferent.

Ivan Avilés Medina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Thank you for this excellent summary of some of King's thoughts/actions.  He continues o be an inspiration for all those struggling for justice and peace. 

Joe Grogan
Bolton, Ontario/Canada
Retired OPSEU member-Region 5

     =====

It's a nice article, but kind of limited. King's democratic socialist associations were well-known during his lifetime. He published in periodicals like Liberation (ed. Dave Dellinger, A.J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin), and anyone that peruses his writings knows that he was in constant public dialogue with socialist ideas. It was, of course, the Cold War, and public discourse about socialism was at that time a far different thing than it is now. Then again, there's that famous 1957 Highlander School photo, taken at the famous progressive school in Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr. is sitting next to Marxist author and editor Abner Berry. The white supremacists bought newspaper advertisements and billboards around the South showing the photo, captioned "Martin Luther King at Communist Training School." King's associations with left wing unions District 65 and 1199, and his hiring and (after Robert F. Kennedy threatened to jail the civil rights movement if he didn't do it) the firing of Marxist theorist and activist J. H. O'Dell (who was one of the responsible personalities in setting up SCLC's voter registration program), were all performed in public. King was a leftist, and though it's useful to always remind ourselves of this fact, we must not continue to fall into the circular-style thinking of repeatedly "rediscovering" it.

Geoffrey Jacques
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

"King considered the Poor People's Campaign to be the vehicle for this next phase of the movement precisely because it offered both material advances and the potential for stronger cross-racial organizing. For King, only a multiracial working-class movement, which the Poor People's Campaign aspired to be, could guarantee both racial and economic equality." 

I've tried to argue this with the politically correct (identity politics) types. Not successfully. They prefer an easier formula, it seems. Anything but working class politics.

Dale Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

It was absurd to believe that blacks leaving slavery or even segregation would be able to benefit immediately from greedy capitalism.. on a large scale

Calvin St. James
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms
 

shows importance of struggles of 1960s and70s and today by POC to win ethnic ad labor studies in academia as well as access to source records/documents. Onward to protect such programs' research, analysis and writing which celebrates and arms our movements!

Leanna Noble
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Why Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise in the United States
 

Even though the Holocaust was so recently just behind us when my peers and I were born, for most of us aware of social justice issues, anti-Semitism took a spot way behind the anti- lack racism which was so pervasive so violent, so in-your-face, so omnipresent, so deep, everywhere. Including among us young Jews, anti-Semitism was mostly (as Shakespeare would put it) “long ago and in another country, and, besides, the wench is dead.”

Even our parents who had fought the Nazis, and our grandparents who had escaped them and their European (and American) anti-Semitic predecessors preferred the security they found in assuming it would not “happen” here.

Of course, we know now we were wrong.

“During the past decade, social media has amplified the voices of white supremacists and anti-Semites, but it is Trump who has lent them legitimacy and emboldened them to come out of the shadows.”

Kipp Dawson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Because of the genocide, theft and cruelty of Israelis towards Palestinians. Why Israel? Sadly, people become what they hate.

Jeanne Paradise
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

While we regularly speak of racism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia as separate things, in truth ethnic hatred is not divisible. When Trump singled out Muslims as the great threat to the country, racists and anti-Semites did not feel impelled to remain silent. At Charlottesville, Confederate flags accompanied chants of “Jews will not replace us!” Attacks on one ethnic group only give license to attacks on others. The history of racism in this country was long created space for anti-Semites and other haters. Whether Trump is ignorant of this fact is hard to tell; certainly, he has welcomed the support of all of them. And they may well correspond to his own private attitudes. Consider his rather blithe anti-Semite remarks before audiences of his Jewish supporters.

Robert Supansic

Re: Defender and Spearheads
 

I had a good friend, Perry Cartwright, RIP. an old Cockranist and MR devotee, who fought fascism 'prematurely' by joining the RAF in Canada and then flew these bombing missions. One day a Brit top brass told them not to bring any bombs back and not to drop them in unpopulated areas or at sea. One flyer spoke up and said, 'but we're to destroy the German war machine?' To which the officer replied, 'Not just the war machine. I want you to destroy the German working class.' Perry told me that was where he was transformed from anti-fascist to revolutionary socialist.

Carl Davidson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: When Capital Threatens to Strike in Your City
 

Good argument for strong social democrat government at every level. When speculation dictates economic policy, its time to regulate.

Miguel Tamargo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: 'We Are Living by the Sword': The Regrets of an Israel Founder's Son
 

From the story, “ I ask how he sees the future for the Palestinians?

“What can I say? I feel very bad about it. And I am not afraid to say that the treatment of the Palestinians today is Nazi treatment. We don’t have gas chambers, of course, but the mentality is the same. It is racial hatred. They are treated as subhuman,” he says.

Yaakov is well-aware that he - a Jew - will be accused of “antisemitism” for saying such things, but says he believes Israel is “a criminal state”.

“I know they will call me a self-hating Jew for saying that. But I cannot automatically support my country, right or wrong. And Israel must not be immune from criticism. Seeing the difference between antisemitism and criticism of Israel is crucial. To be honest, I am amazed how in 2019 the world outside accepts Israeli propaganda. I really don’t know why they do,” he says.

“And remember that the very aim of Zionism was to release Jews from the curse of antisemitism by giving them their own state. But today, the Jewish state by its own criminal behaviour is one of the most serious causes for this curse.”

Mike Glick
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

My mom was among the Jews who was (for a moment) excited by the creation of Israel in 1948, seeing it as a strong defense against the anti-Semitism which wrecked such havoc for so long, including the then-so-recent Holocaust. I had my own (brief) excitement about Israel when I read Leon Uris' "Exodus."

It did not take either of us long to recognize that the creation of this Zionist state meant (and depended on) the oppression of the people-like-us who were living in that land who were not Jewish, ie, the Palestinians. My mom was active in groups like Women in Black -- Jews who stood together in solidarity with Palestinians against aggressions by the Israeli government. I started there and soon became convinced that Zionism in power depends on this kind of oppression, and I am one of the Jews who is anti-Zionist. Today a growing number of Jews are coming together to publicly oppose particular acts of the Israeli government; some also are rejecting Zionism per se. ALL of us across this spectrum have been called anti-Semitic by fervent Zionists.

This article is an important contribution to an important discussion.

Kipp Dawson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Israel Is Systematically Poisoning One Million Palestinian Children
 

A Holocaust perpetrated upon people, by the very Holocaust survivors of WWll?
Horrendous

Susan Crews
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

What Israel does to Palestine is unconscionable.

Yvette Potts Crumpley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Why is Israel doing this? It's genocide. History will remember this as a holocaust of Palestinians

According to the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel is required under International Law to provide the ability for Gaza and the West Bank to sustain an environment of livability. Israel will argue, however, that Gaza specifically is not occupied; that it withdrew in 2005. However it still controls the population registry, the entries and exits, all imports and exports, the electromagnetic sphere, the armistice lines (what Israel calls the border), the territorial waters, airspace as well as having a monopoly on the electricity in Gaza. Israel controls Gaza through and through; meaning that if Israel does not declare an occupation, it is a de facto annexation of the territory.

Barry Cuthbert
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Charlie Chaplin and Truly Modern Times
 

Also: A King in New York is a 1957 British comedy film directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin in his last leading role, which co-stars, among others, his young son Michael. The film presents a satirical view of the McCarthy communist-hunt era and certain other aspects of United States politics and society. The film, which was produced in Europe after Chaplin's exile from the U.S. in 1952, did not open in the United States until 1972 (Wikipedia).

Dan Morgan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Charlie Chaplin personally sent a copy of the movie to the Flint SitDown strike in January 1937.   My father told me about how wonderful it was and how much he and everyone enjoyed it.  So surprisingly perfect and funny.

Bob Travis was the leader of the 1937 Flint Sit Down Strike, a turning point in the inclusive organization of working people beyond craft tradesmen. The strike won recognition for the United Auto Workers as the sole recognized bargaining agent for all of the manufacturing workers (production and skilled trades) at 14 General Motors plants across the United States.  Travis was officially chosen as the Director of the Flint SitDown Strike by the UAW leadership. At the time Travis was the first president of UAW Local 14  the Local for a Chevrolet transmission plant in Toledo Ohio.  Travis was the first union leader to win a strike against GM, albeit a short small one.  Travis successfully negotiated a settlement with GM's powerful William Knudsen.  Travis was sent from Toledo in the summer of 1936 to replace his friend, mentor, comrade Wyndham Mortimer from the Cleveland GM plants.  Travis was the leader and strategist of that breakthrough strike that physically occupied General Motors property for 44 days and nights, crippling production and bringing General Motors, at the time the biggest employer in the country, to its knees.  Travis was the first UAW official to raise the idea of local leadership councils by employer.

Carole Travis

Re: Meet the CEOs Raking It in from Trump’s Aggression Toward Iran
 

"look at how the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors were affected by this surge, using the most recent SEC information on their stock holdings."

Mary Kay Baum
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

The Union Member's Complete Guide: POWER TOOL FOR LABOR!
 

Two Power Tools for Unions!

Here’s an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to how you can get the most out of your job in a unionized workplace -- from understanding what a union is and how it operates to how you can get the most value out of your union card and what you can do to make your union more successful.
* Understanding how unions operate
* Getting your say in contract demands
* The full story on union dues
* A union's responsibility to its members
* Getting help with workplace problems
* Your union card's bonus benefits
* A member's rights and responsibilities
* Labor laws that affect you
* How to file a grievance
* Your union steward's role
* Contact info for every union
Newly revised for Janus and Social Media Campaigns!
List price: $15.00
Available from Hard Ball Press with steep discounts for unions & labor education programs, and from booksellers everywhere.

his handy pamphlet is a great companion to the Union Member book. It introduces new members and potential members you are organizing to the rights and benefits of union membership.
List price: $2.50.
Steep discounts available from Hard Ball Press.

Hard Ball Press
415 Argyle Rd., 6A, Brooklyn, NY
Phone: 917 428 1352
info@hardballpress.com

Jane McAlevey has it out with Nato & Francesca - San Francisco - February 1
 

Saturday, February 1, 2020  --  5:00 PM – 6:00 PM PST

PianoFight
Main Stage
144 Taylor St
San Francisco, CA 94102

At long last, the labor organizing book talk & live podcast recording in a night club with alcohol and obscenities that everyone has been waiting for.

Organizer Jane McAlevey in conversation with comedians Nato Green & Francesca Fiorentini. Jane's new book out from Harper Collins called "A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy" provides an excellent occasion to upend the normal book chat with a comedians.

JANE MCALEVEY is an organizer, author, and scholar. She is currently a Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center, part of the Institute for Labor & Employment Relations. Her third book, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy, argues that despite, if not because of, the withering attacks on working people from the US Supreme Court, conservative state and local governments, and the corporate class, the survival of American democracy depends on rebuilding unions.

Her first book, Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell), published by Verso Press, was named the “most valuable book of 2012” by The Nation Magazine. Her second book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, published by Oxford University Press, was released late in 2016. From 2010-2015, she earned a Ph.D., followed by a two-year Post Doc at the Harvard University Law School. She is a regular commentator on radio and TV.

San Francisco native NATO GREEN is the country’s only semi-functional hybrid of comedian, writer, and union organizer.

Nato Green released his second comedy album The Whiteness Album on Blonde Medicine Records, appeared in the film Sorry to Bother You. The Whiteness Album was named by the NPR show Bullseye with Jesse Thorn one of the best comedy albums of 2018.

Nato’s writing has appeared in the LA Review of Books, the San Francisco Examiner, In These Times, VICE, Truthdig, Huffington Post, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Rumpus, and The Bold Italic.

His first comedy album, The Nato Green Party, was released in 2012 by Rooftop Comedy. Nato has been named San Francisco’s Best Comedian by the SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Huffington Post, SFist, and CBS. Nato is the creator of Iron Comic, the hit Iron Chef-spoofing comedy game show. His comedy has been featured in Audible Comedy Originals including the Comedy Show Show, the Guest List, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Sounds Like America. He’s appeared on numerous podcasts including RISK!, the Dork Forest, Pod Damn America, WTF with Marc Maron, Put Your Hands Together, WBUR’s You’re the Expert, KQED’s Truth Be Told, KALW’s Kamau Right Now, Porchlight, Muni Diaries, and Fake the Nation with Negin Farsad.

Nato wrote for Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell on FX, the show that the New York Times recently called “five years ahead of its time,” and toured nationally with W. Kamau Bell & Janine Brito as Laughter Against the Machine.

Nato has also been a union organizer for twenty years, working as an organizer, union rep, and negotiator with UFCW, ILWU, CNA, SEIU Local 1021, and founding Young Workers United, the country’s first worker center for young and immigrant workers in the low-wage service sector. The Episcopal Archbishop once called him the antichrist.

Journalist, activist and stand up comedian FRANCESCA FIORENTINI has spent most of her life comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable -- from the streets to the screen to the stage. Most recently, she hosted "Red White & Who" on MSNBC.

As a host and producer, Francesca helped Al Jazeera Media Network successfully launch the online news channel AJ+ in 2013. She has captured online audiences with viral hits like "The Real Deal with the U.S. Mexico Border"and "How America is Already Socialist."

In the Spring of 2016 Francesca launched Al Jazeera's first comedy show. Newsbroke is a weekly scripted deep-dive into nuclear power, the war in Afghanistan, immigration policy and other totally non serious topics.

Francesca has also been a correspondent with “Explorer” on the National Geographic Channel since 2016. For her NatGeo work on draconian abortion laws in El Salvador she won a Media Excellence award from Planned Parenthood in 2018.

Francesca regularly speaks dick jokes to power on stage as a stand up comic. She has been featured on the podcast Lovett or Leave It (2018), the BBC Arts Hour (2018), and is a regular contributor to The Young Turks.

PianoFight’s not just a theater, it’s also a restaurant and bar!

PianoFight's restaurant, bar, and both theaters are fully ADA accessible.

Welcome to PianoFight! We are a community-driven indy arts venue that takes pride in partnering with local artists to make great shows, mouth watering eats and delicious cocktails adding up to a uniquely San Francisco experience. Our two intimate theaters and cabaret stage host music, comedy, plays, dance, film screenings, drag, magic, variety shows and more, while our restaurant and bar serves up new American bites and classic cocktails. We provide space and infrastructure to hundreds of artists, who create and stage 1,500 performances for over 50,000 audience members each year.  During the day, we are the home base for the offices and classrooms of community non-profits like Tenderloin Walking Tours and Code Tenderloin which runs a job-readiness program for TL residents.

Contact

Book Talk - Stuart Schrader - Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing - New York - February 6
 

Stuart Schrader will discuss his book Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing (University of California Press, 2019) on Thursday February 6 at 4:30 PM. Tim Weiner will moderate the discussion. A reception with wine and cheese will follow the lecture. This event is sponsored by the Center for the United States and the Cold War and NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.  

Stuart Schrader is the Associate Director of the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship and Lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. He previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for the United States and the Cold War and at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. He is the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing (University of California Press, 2019), as well as numerous scholarly and popular articles.

Tim Weiner is the author of five books, including Legacy of Ashes, his history of the CIA which won the National Book Award, Enemies: A History of the FBI, and One Man Against The World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon. His journalism on secret government programs received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. As a correspondent for The New York Times, he covered war and terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, and other nations.

Thursday February 6 at 4:30 PM.

Tamiment/NYU Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
Room 251
New York, NY 10012

RSVP: tamiment.events@nyu.edu

Romero Troupe of Colorado Presents “I Didn’t Choose Palestine; It Chose Me: Personal Stories of Transformation - Denver - February 20
 

Thursday, February 20  --  6:30pm

Mercury Cafe in the Jungle Room
2199 California Street
Denver, CO 80205

125,000 Paper Cranes to Washington, D.C. in June 2020 for Tsuru for Solidarity’s “National Pilgrimage to Close the Camps” - June 5 - 7
 

Japanese Americans from across the country will gather next spring in Washington, D.C., June 5-7, 2020, for a National Pilgrimage to Close the Camps. We plan to bring 125,000 paper cranes, or tsuru, as expressions of solidarity with immigrant and refugee communities that are under attack today. The 125,000 cranes represent the members of our community who were rounded up and incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps during World War II, including both Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans.

Standing on the moral authority of our own unjust incarceration, the protest will demand that no matter where someone came from or how they arrived to the United States, they be treated with dignity and respect. We will stand with immigrant communities to condemn the policies that dehumanize them, including ICE detention; jailing and separation of parents, families, and children; and the Muslim ban.

The planning is being led by Tsuru for Solidarity, a non-violent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates.

“We expect this to be the largest gathering of Japanese Americans since World War II, when we were forcibly removed from our homes and incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps,” said Mike Ishii, one of the lead organizers.

Fold-ins: We invite supporters to organize local Tsuru Fold-Ins to bring tsuru to Washington, D.C., or mail them to us by May 1, 2020. Details, including where to send tsuru, are available on our web site: https://www.tsuruforsolidarity.org.

For updates and registration information: Please sign up on our e-mail list (opt in on our web site, http://www.tsuruforsolidarity.org) to be notified about registration for the Pilgrimage. Information about lodging and other costs will be provided when registration opens in early 2020.

Partners and endorsing organizations: Current endorsers and partners include: Densho; Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) National; JACL Chicago; Portland JACL; Japanese Community Youth Council; Japanese Americans for Justice; Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago); Karen Korematsu and the Fred T. Korematsu Institute; Manzanar Committee; Minami Tamaki LLP; Minoru Yasui Legacy Project; National Japanese American Historical Society; New York Day of Remembrance Committee; Nikkei Progressives; Oregon Nikkei Endowment; Peggy Saika; and Tule Lake Committee.

We invite partners nationwide to join the D.C. action by lending their name, organizing fold-ins, sending members, and raising funds to support the action. Please contact tsuruforsolidarity@gmail.com if you would like to add your organization’s name and support.

Manzanar Committee
1566 Curran Street
Los Angeles, CA 90026-2036

By phone: (323) 662-5102