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Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science

820 Barrows Hall, Social Science Matrix at UC Berkeley 820 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA, United States

Traditional economics measures the ways in which we spend our income, and doesn't attribute worth to the crucial human interactions that give our lives meaning. Clair Brown, an economist at UC Berkeley and a practicing Buddhist, has developed a holistic model, one based on the notion that quality of life should be measured by more

In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte: Book Talk with David Bacon

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Please join us for a conversation with activist and photographer David Bacon to talk about his new book, In the fields of the North / En los compos del norte. In this landmark work of photo-journalism, Bacon documents the experiences of some of the hardest-working and most disenfranchised laborers in the country: the farmworkers who

Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a traditional company town dominated by Chevron. This largely nonwhite city of 110,000 suffered from poverty, pollution, violent street crime, and poorly funded public services. But in 2012, when journalist Steve Early moved to Richmond, he encountered a community that

Gold Rush Stories: Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss, and Luck

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

In less than ten years in the nineteenth century, more than 300,000 people made the journey to California, some from as far away as Chile and China. Dreamers and eccentrics, they included the first African American judge, an early feminist, and a self-styled emperor. Historian Gary Noy's new book, Gold Rush Stories: 49 Tales of Seekers,

In a Field of Patriarchy: Gender Politics and Freedom Dreams During the United Farm Worker Movement

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Absent in farmworker historiographies are the voices of farmworker women who speak of patriarchal and racialized exploitation in post World War II California. For many, patriarchal power originated in domestic violence, strict gender roles and autonomy-denying social conditions. Using original oral interviews, this presentation foregrounds the patriarchal relations within the Mexican farmworker community, and traces

Hard Work Is Not Enough: Gender and Racial Inequality in an Urban Workspace

In this talk, Professor Davis will discuss African American women’s experiences as bus operators in a San Francisco Bay Area transit firm from 1974-1989, during the height of affirmative action hiring. Through a series of interviews with these transit operators alongside correspondence between management and union leaders, grievance and arbitration data, as well as litigation

Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

The San Francisco Bay Area is currently the jewel in the crown of capitalism—the tech capital of the world and a gusher of wealth from the Silicon Gold Rush. It has been generating jobs, spawning new innovation, and spreading ideas that are changing lives everywhere. It boasts of being the Left Coast, the Greenest City,

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

In Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press), Clausing makes the argument that Americans, especially those with middle and lower incomes, face stark economic challenges due to rising income inequality and wage stagnation. But these problems do not require us to retreat from the global economy. On the contrary, an open economy overwhelmingly

From Coors to California: David Sickler and the New Working Class

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Join us for a conversation with David Sickler, one of the most creative and successful union organizers in the country. Starting out working on an assembly line in Colorado’s Coors Brewery, Sickler went on to lead breakthrough campaigns that transformed the US labor movement and to become an influential labor advocate within Los Angeles City

The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

When Steven Burd, CEO of the supermarket chain Safeway, cut wages and benefits, starting a five-month strike by 59,000 unionized workers, he was confident he would win. But where traditional labor action failed, a novel approach was more successful. With the aid of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $300 billion pension fund, workers

Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area

Room 370, Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA, United States

Dr. Peter Cole discusses his highly anticipated book - Dockworker Power. Often missed in commentary on today's globalizing economy, workers in the world’s ports can harness their role, at a strategic choke point, to promote their labor rights and social justice causes. Cole brings such overlooked experiences to light in an eye-opening comparative study of Durban,

Author Talk – Scott L. Cummings on Blue and Green: The Drive for Justice at America’s Port

IRLE Director's Room 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation’s largest port. In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America’s largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in