CJTC Calendar of Events (UCSC) 4/10 - 4/15

Mexico Solidarity Network presents: National Speaking Tour on Mexico's Social Movements
April 10th UCSC Baobab Lounge, Merrill College 6pm

The current political situation in Mexico is of great social discontent and unrest, as well as tremendous state repression. From the Acteal masacre, to the Guadalajara repression, to the cases of Lazaro Cardenas, Atenco, and Oaxaca, international human rights organizations have denounced that in Mexico there is a grave problem of human rights violations and impunity. In 2006 only, the Atenco people and zapatista supporters were detained, killed, raped and tortured by local, state and federal police; the Oaxaca teachers, general population and independent journalists were repressed,detained, tortured and the Mexican social and political situation and participate to prevent future human rights abuses and demand democracy, peace and justice with dignity for all mexican social movements from the left and from below.

The MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK will be featuring a panel composed of a journalist/activist, an academic-activist and a well-known academic and political analyst, who will be speaking about the current Mexican political climate and contemporary social struggles for self-determination.

For more information please email Irene Sanchez at imsanche [at] ucsc.edu.

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The Middle East After Iraq: Is the United Nations Still Relevant? Is the United States?
Lecture with Jeff Laurenti, Policy Director of the United Nations Association-USA

Wednesday, April 11, 12:00 PM
*snacks provided*

Cosponsored by the United Nations Association of Santa Cruz, College Nine Co Curricular Programs, CGIRS, and the UCSC Model UN Club.

For more information, contact Erin Ramsden eramsden @ucsc.edu, 459-4069.

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"Indigena as Scribe--The (W)rite to Remember" with Cherrie Moraga
Thursday, April 12 at the Merrill Cultural Center, 7PM

For over 25 years, Cherrie Moraga has been dedicated to work centered on building community amongst diverse peoples. Cherrie Moraga's plays and publications have received national recognition, including a TCG Theatre Artist Residency Grant in 1996, the NEA's Theatre Playwrights' Fellowship in 1993, and two Fund for New American Plays Awards. She is the author of the now classic Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Paso Por Sus Labios (1983/2003) and The Last Generation (1993), published by South End Press of Cambridge, MA. In 1997, she published a memoir on motherhood entitled Waiting in the Wings: Portraits of a Queer Motherhood (Firebrand Books) and has just completed a new memoir on her mother's passing from Alzheimer's in 2005 entitled Send Them Flying Home.

As a leading Chicana lesbian writer, she has helped set the stage for generations of creative writers, performers, scholars, and activists. To ensure connections with UCSC undergraduate and graduate students, Moraga will lead a writing workshop with graduate women of color and a dialogue with aspiring performance artists and playwrights.

Since Cherrie Moraga's work is read in classrooms from LALS to Feminist Studies to Theatre Arts, we expect that her visit will facilitate discussions amongst students, staff, faculty and the broader community interested in drama, queer studies, and connections amongst Chicana/o and Native peoples. The Chicano Latino Research Center in collaboration with the Chicano Latino Resource Center will post a reading list of Moraga's work and arrange spaces of discussion prior to her public address.

For questions or concerns contact Susy Zepeda at szepeda [at] ucsc.edu

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The Center for World History Presents a Lecture Series: Itineraries in the Muslim Mediterranean, 1350-1950: Individuals, Change and Memory in a World Region

Marc Baer (History, UC Irvine)
"Sabbatai Zevi, I Wait for Thee: A 17th Century Ottoman Jewish-Muslim Prophet and his Followers"
Monday, April 16th at 3:30 PM
Cowell College Conference Room

Can a person be Jewish and Muslim at the same time? This is one of the questions raised by Marc Baer's lecture on Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th century Jewish rabbi and would-be prophet. Baer's lecture traces the origins of the Donme (as Zevi's followers were called). As we'll see, this history provides an interesting perspective from which to reconsider the interwoven histories of Jews and Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean.

Mark Baer is Assistant Professor History at UC Irvine. He is currently completing a book on the Donme in Ottoman Salonika and Turkish Istanbul. A recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship, he is currently doing research at Freiburg University in Germany.

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CJTC Eighth Annual Spring Speaker with Van Jones, "Growing Greener, Growing Together: Sustainability, Social Justice, and the Future of the Progressive Movement"
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at the College's Nine and Ten Multipurpose Room

Van Jones is the founder and National Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a national organization in Oakland, CA, that has focused on positive alternatives to incarceration and violence in urban America. Jones and the Center helped launch an initiative in 2000 called Books Not Bars which today supports the largest advocacy network of parents of incarcerated children in the United States and includes the parents or grandparents of more than 25 percent of all of California's youth prisoners.

How do you go from addressing incarceration to tackling global warming? Jones has always been an expert at building bridges between issues and people. He is one of the few people to have been both arrested in the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, and then invited three years later to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the premier gathering of global economic leaders, to receive as a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" award. And he has been a passionate advocate for the environment - serving as a board member of the Rainforest Action Network and Bioneers - but consistently focused on how this can blend with issues of social equity.

Jones is now writing a book called Green-Collar Jobs: How To Beat Global Warming, Cut Poverty & Unite America in which he places the poor and the disadvantaged at the center of a new, solution-based environmentalism. Jones also serves on Oakland Mayor-elect Ron Dellums' Green Economic Initiatives Task Force, helping to champion the idea of aggressively attracting eco-friendly employment and businesses to inner-city Oakland. His argument: the coming battle to save the planet could actually result in a sort of eco-apartheid unless we are able to make sure that low-income areas and communities of color are early participants in the creation of new "green-color" jobs and industries.

Van Jones is a powerful and inspirational speaker, and follows a distinguished series of orators from our past spring series. We think he will be of special interest to our students - partly because of his role as a progressive activist and intellectual, partly because of his blending of environmental, spiritual, and social justice concerns, and partly because he truly represents a new generation of leadership, one that has learned not just to protest but to prescribe, not just to critique but to build bridges between unlikely allies.

View a clip of Van Jones on the CJTC website.

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Please call 831.459.5743 or email cjtc [at] ucsc.edu for more information.
Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community
For more information on upcoming events or CJTC research projects, please see our updated website: http://cjtc.ucsc.edu
phone: 831.459.5743
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email: cjtc [at] ucsc.edu

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