AREA and the Chicago Underground Library Welcome the Alternative Press Center to Chicago

It is a rare occasion in which two young organizations get to throw a coming out party for a 40 year old institution. Alternative Press Center recently relocated its archive of independent media to Chicago after several decades in Baltimore and is excited to be welcomed by AREA and CUL. APC hopes that librarians, academics, students, teachers, researchers, and concerned citizens of Chicago will come out for a night of complimentary drinks and snacks to say hello and check out a unique local resource.

Friday, October 24th 2008 7-9pm
2040 N. Milwaukee Ave. on the 2nd floor (Location is not handicap accessible). Come and drink from 7-8 and stay for a short talk on the history of the APC and contribute ideas for the new era of their organization after relocating to Chicago. Read more about the organization’s history at www.altpress.org.

Further Info:
This event is part of AREA’s Infrastructure series about cultural and political resources, networks and institutions. It also coincides with AREA’s upcoming issue on the legacy of 1968 due out Dec 6th at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. For further information, visit areachicago.org.

The Chicago Underground Library is at underground-library.org.

Any remaining questions can be addressed to mburford@altpress.org.

Stealing the Vote in 2008

A panel discussion, open to the public, featuring Frances Fox Piven, Lorraine Minnite and Margaret Groarke, all political scientists and authors of Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (to be published early 2009), and Jackson Chin, a lawyer with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The event will be moderated by Miles Rapoport, president of Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action, and former Secretary of State of Connecticut.

Frances Fox Piven teaches political science at CUNY Graduate Center. Piven has served as vice-president of the American Political Science Association and the President of the American Sociological Association. Among her books are: Regulating the Poor (1972), Why Americans Still Don’t Vote (2000), Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006).

Lorriane Minnite teaches political science at Barnard College. She has written several studies about voter fraud as well as NYC politics. She served on a committee addressing New York’s Recovery from 9/11 and has written about the impact of post-9/11 responses on immigrant communities in NYC.

Margaret Groarke teaches government at Manhattan College and is director of its Peace Studies Program. In addition to her current work on voter disenfranchisement she has written about community organizing and local mortgage issues.

Jackson Chin is a senior staff lawyer with LatinoJustice PRLDEF (formerly called the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund). He has litigated cases in voting rights, immigrant rights, employment discrimination, civil and constitutional matters affecting Latinos and immigrant groups. Chin previously was a lawyer for Safe Horizon’s Immigration Law Project, Center for Immigrant Rights, The Legal Aid Society, and the Chinese Staff and Workers Association in NYC.

The event is organized and Sponsored by the History and Democracy Seminar in the Horowitz Center, Steinhardt; co-sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice, the Institute for Public Knowledge (all at NYU) and the Judson Memorial Church; Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action; and the New Press, publisher of Keeping Down the Black Vote.

Rinku Sen book signing and lecture

Rinku Sen, publisher of Colorlines magazine and author of The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization, will sign her new book and give a talk at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum in Chicago on Thursday, October 9, from 6:30-8 p.m. Immediately preceding this event will be a networking dinner from 5:30-6:30 p.m. for anyone who works on or is interested in working on immigration issues.

For more information, visit the Hull House Museum’s Web site or call the museum at (312) 413-5353. The museum’s address is:

University of Illinois at Chicago
800 S. Halsted (MC 051)
Chicago, IL 60607-7017

To read “White Progressives Don’t Get It,” an In These Times article by Sen, click here.

David Moberg and Bill Fletcher to Discuss the Labor Movement After the Bush Era

The Labor Movement and Progressive Politics in the Post-Bush Era

Location: UE Hall, 37 S. Ashland, 1st floor, Chicago, IL

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Purple Bench Productions brings My Name Is Rachel Corrie to the Chicago stage. Edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, this moving play is a one-woman show adapted entirely from Rachel Corrie’s emails, letters and journal entries.

ABOUT THE PLAY:A young, idealistic college student and peace activist, Rachel Corrie traveled to Gaza in 2003 to protest the violence between Israel and Palestine. Working with the International Solidarity Movement, she acted as a human shield in efforts to protect Palestinian homes from Israeli bulldozers. Only a few months into her work in the region, Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer razing a Palestinian home. The situation surrounding her death was immediately controversial—was Rachel a naïve political pawn, or was she a brave activist who died for the cause of helping other people?

The play celebrates Corrie’s passionate drive to help people and change the world by providing a window into her ideals, relationships and experiences in times of war and peace. In 2005, My Name is Rachel Corrie opened to rave reviews in London. Set for a New York premiere in 2006, the play met with controversy when the New York Theater Workshop indefinitely postponed its production due to mounting concerns about the play’s content.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:Purple Bench Productions is excited and honored to produce this Chicago premiere, directed by Emmy Kreilkamp and assisted by Matthew Zaradich. The one-woman production stars Chicago actress Jessie Fisher, a recent graduate of the School at Steppenwolf and a teaching artist for Lookingglass, Writers’ Theater and the Actors Gymnasium.

WHEN: Currently running. Playing Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Closes October 5, 2008.

WHERE: The Artistic Home - 3914 N. Clark Street - Chicago, IL

TICKETS: $20. Purchase them online at www.purplebenchproductions.com. For more information on Rachel Corrie, please visit the Rachel Corrie Foundation.

Panel Discussion of David Sirota’s “The Uprising” at In These Times

In These Times welcomes David Sirota for a panel discussion of his New York Times bestseller The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. Sirota will be joined by Thomas Geoghegan, Barbara Ransby, and Laura Washington for a provocative conversation about the history of The Uprising and its roots in Chicago’s activist politics, from Saul Alinsky’s community organizations to the 1968 Democratic convention and beyond. Signed copies of The Uprising will be available at the event.

David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times, a syndicated columnist, the author of Hostile Takeover, a co-chair of the Progressive States Network, and a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future.

Laura Washington is a senior editor at In These Times, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University, and a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Thomas Geoghegan is a Chicago-based labor lawyer. His most recent book is See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation.

Barbara Ransby is an associate professor of African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the executive director of The Public Square, and the author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision.

The Uprising was released on May 27, 2008. Click here for more information.

National Conference For Media Reform - June 6-8, 2008

Join In These Times, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Arianna Huffington, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Juan Gonzalez, Van Jones, Lawrence Lessig, Sen. Byron Dorgan, FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, thousands of media reform advocates, independent media, reporters, bloggers, and organizers at the National Conference For Media Reform, sponsored by Free Press, June 6-8, 2008, in Minneapolis, MN.

Over three days, the conference will feature 60 fascinating panel discussions and workshops plus inspiring speeches, multimedia presentations, film screenings, roundtable meetings with policymakers, regional caucuses for you to meet media reformers from your home state, and dozens of receptions and parties. We will focus on broadening the media reform movement, envisioning the future of our media system, harnessing new technology for change, and achieving concrete policy victories through sustainable organizing.

For more information and to learn how to register, visit http://www.freepress.net/conference

Bill Moyers Interviews Reverend Jeremiah Wright

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL TO AIR FIRST TELEVISION INTERVIEW WITH REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT SINCE CONTROVERSY WITH BARACK OBAMA

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright will be interviewed on PBS this week by Bill Moyers in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama.

Wright, who retired in early 2008 as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama is a member, has been at the center of controversy for comments he made during sermons, which surfaced in the press in March.

The interview with Bill Moyers will air on Bill Moyers Journal on Friday, April 25 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings at www.pbs.org/moyers).

PBS’s critically acclaimed public affairs series Bill Moyers Journal stays on — and often ahead of — the news cycle with analysis, interviews, and reports every week.

For Chicago readers: This episode of Bill Moyers Journal will air on Friday, April 25th at 9:30 p.m. and again on Friday, May 2 at 9:30 p.m. on Channel 11, WTTW.

Guantánamo: America’s Gulag.

The Ethical Humanists present a discussion with H. Candace Gorman. This event is FREE, with a 
social hour, snacks and refreshments following the program.

Averting Another Catastrophe: The Folly of an Attack on Iran

Join internationally renowned scholar-activists in a panel presentation and discussion on this critical issue and our responsibility for it. This is a FREE event with donations encouraged.