encuentro 5

Sunday, December 5, 2010, 1:00 - 7:00 p.m. Come hear about the social ventures that Global Potential leaders have created since they returned from their 45 days in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Nicaragua this summer 2010! Play drums like you are in the Bateys of the Dominican Republic. Participate in a yoga session. Paint a mural. Watch and learn how to dance capoera. Watch award-winning documentaries made by GP youth. Listen and create your own slam poetry. Donation: $7 (door)

Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. The Struggle to Unionize Starbucks: Join us as Starbucks organizer/barista, Anja Witek, discusses the truth about life behind the counter at Starbucks!

She explains how innovative solidarity unionism organizing has enabled the Starbucks Workers Union/Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to establish a foothold in an industry with the lowest union density in the United States. She discusses strategies behind the recent organizing at fast food franchise Jimmy John’s sandwich shops in Minneapolis.

Friday, November 12, 2010, 4:00 p.m. Speakers, film clips, music & discussion on the major questions affecting Haiti, 10 months on. Despite the earthquake, cholera, and hurricanes, why is aid money still held up? What do Haitians see as a vision for their future? How can we support them?

Come meet with a diverse group of students, Haiti activists, and community members. Discussion will focus on the key issues facing the 1.5 million displaced living in camps, what they have to say, and what our government has to do with it. We will draw connections between historical policy and the current aid effort. We hope to emerge with action ideas on how, as a group, we can work to effect concrete change.

E-mail, haiti.insolidarity@gmail.com for more information.

Monday, November 15, 2010, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. The “One Nation Working Together” rally brought together an unprecedented progressive coalition in Washington on October 2. Nationally, One Nation plans to continue its ambitious collaboration effort after the November election -- when such collaboration between labor, civil rights, environmental, social justice, housing, peace and youth groups will be more important than ever.

25th Annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters

Sunday, November 7, 2010, 8:00 - 5:00 p.m. [NOTE: This is Day 3 of the meeting, Days 1 & 2 take place in Cambridge at the Friends Meeting House, 9 Longfellow Park] The New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters provides an opportunity to gain the information and make the connections necessary in successfully doing war tax resistance/refusal/redirection (WTR). The gathering is for both new and experienced war tax resisters, as well as for those just testing the waters. Together we will share and expand our community of resistance to rampant US militarism and endless war.

Monday, November 8, 2010, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Join Uruguayan activist-intellectual and journalist, Raúl Zibechi, for a wide-ranging conversation about social movements and social change. The point of departure is his latest work, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces. It considers the largely indigenous social movements organizing in El Alto, Bolivia that both brought Evo Morales to state power and continue their challenges to the state. This event is co-sponsored with Boston Bolivarianos, the Global Economic Alternatives Network and the journal Socialism and Democracy.

Thursday, November 4, 2010, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. José Brito formerly worked at the Cerrejon mine in Colombia. He is a trade unionist representing thousands of workers at giant surface strip-mines. The Drummond and Cerejon mines produce 90% of Colombian coal exports. These help fire Massachusetts' Salem and Somerset electrical generating plants in addition to other generating stations in the United States.

Sunday, October 10, 2010, noon - 5:00 p.m. (followed, 5:00 - 7:00 with a reception). encuentro 5 is a Boston movement-building space and home to several of Boston'santiwar, pro-immigrant, environmental and economic justice projects(see website). We will be increasing the energy efficiency of our lighting, computer lab and rationalizing our networks and wiring. We will also be removing excess and obsolete equipment. Finally, we will se our/your creativity and artistic skills to make for a aesthetically pleasing space. All of this is to practice what we preach and make sure that our organizing and activism does not re-create the problems we challenge. The action ends with a reception (from 5:00 - 7:00)./

How to Get Involved Planning the Event: Fill out our volunteer e-mail
form at http://encuentro5.org/home/volunteer, e-mail info < at >

Saturday, September 11, 2010, 7:00 p.m. Join Sergio Reyes (Boston May Day Committee and Latin@s for Social Change) and Omar Sierra (sociologist and Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) for a survey of the radical changes and advances in Latin American constitutional development. Using his firsthand impressions of the process in Bolivia and a textual analysis of the new constitution of the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia, Reyes will provide his assessment and lead the conversation. Additional speakers and experiences will be announced shortly. Sponsored by the Boston May Day Committee.

Sunday, September 19, 2010, 1:00 p.m. Peace movement organization, New England United, will hold its regular regional meeting in Boston this month. It focuses on Civil Liberties. More information and agenda details can be found at http://newenglandunited.org/.

Friday, September 10, 2010, 7:00 p.m. The Community and Resistance Tour seeks to communicate about current struggles for justice and liberation, from the current BP Oil Drilling Disaster devastating the Gulf Coast to nooses hung in the northern Louisiana town of Jena. From women organizing inside prisons to cultural resistance. The tour also seeks to connect communities of liberation, and to build relationships between grassroots activists and independent media. This tour is for anyone interested in issues of health care, education, criminal justice, housing, or the ways in which systems of racism, patriarchy and other forms of oppression intersect with these struggles.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 p.m. Radical author and historian  Paul Street speaks about his new book: The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. Paul is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago. He is the author of four books to date: Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and (most recently) Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics.

Saturday, August 21, 2010, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Join the eminent scientist and activist Richard Levins for a thought-provoking conversation on "Failures, Errors & the Boundaries of Our Minds"

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of the New York's Brecht Forum, Richard Levins will speak to how the dialectical method allows us to understand and learn from our inevitable failures, errors and misunderstandings of both nature and society.