Teach-in on Today's Great Depression

Every July day has Laborfest events, some of which are missing from the red letter listings. This "al fresco" textbook for all of us will teach the importance of a general strike which we need to put an end to the profit motive that is the cause of the budget "crisis" and war. On July 17, we learn how labor organized in the 1930s Great Depression to a point where we almost had a revolution.

July 17, 2009 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM FREE
Niebyl Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
Class Struggle Against the Economic Meltdown: Lessons from History for Fighting Back Today
Economic meltdown? Recession? Depression? What are we to do? How will the working class fare? Where will the catalyst for change come from? What lessons can we learn from the past and what are people already doing to fight back and create solidarity where they live and work?
Featuring working class historian Gifford Hartman, who will revisit the Great Depression and how the working class self-organized survival strategies such as eviction resistance, relief office occupations, mass strikes and other direct actions for providing for basic needs and community self-defense -- that were taking off well before the New Deal began. He will also survey the history of class struggle since then, as well as exploring possibilities of applying these ideas for resistance today.
Robert Ovetz will guide a brainstorming session about how we can respond to and survive the brewing storm and build and expand projects from the bottom up that already envision the “future in the present.”
See also:
http://www.marxistlibr.org/
http://www.laborfest.net/2009schedule.htm