Strike Debt Bay Area

As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt. Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid. We are not a loan. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits. Subscribe to...

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Book group Saturday, 8/31, 5:00 pm PDT (virtual)

We'll be discussing the first five chapters of Soiidarity: The Past, Present and Future of a World-Changing Idea by Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor. Email [email protected] for the link to the virtual meeting.

“A window into what is possible when we reject the politics of division, trade individualism for interconnectedness and prioritize coming together for the greater good.” —Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone

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Book group, Saturday, July 27: The Path to a Livable Future

We'll meet by video at 5pm PDT on July 27, discussing The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, by Stan Cox. Join us! Email [email protected] for the link.

"Above all, he shows that a healthy, just, sustainable future is possible if we reduce our ecological footprint and share the earth's gifts equitably. For this we need to organize, resist, imagine, and forge another path together."--Vandana Shiva

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Book group Saturday, 6/22, 5pm, by video: The Persuaders

We’ll be discussing the second half of THE PERSUADERS: At the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridharadas. Email [email protected] for the link.

“The Persuaders is the book we need right now. ... Persuading in a time of extremes is not easy, but Giridharadas proves it’s possible. Readers will walk away more optimistic and more capable of forging coalitions in their own lives and in the world.”—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us

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Book group Saturday, 5/18, 5pm online

We'll be discussing the first four chapters of THE PERSUADERS: At the Frontlines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridharadas. Email [email protected] for the link.

“An incredibly hopeful book . . . Every now and then, I come across something that makes me think in a completely new way, and this was one of those times. . . . It’s just so good.”—Brené Brown, Unlocking Us

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Book group Saturday, April 20, 5pm

We'll read and discuss Marjorie Kelly's WEALTH SUPREMACY, the whole book. We meet virtually: email [email protected] for the link.

"Setting out entrenched systemic problems, [Kelly] lucidly and compellingly counters them with inspiring systemic solutions. If you want to understand the economy we’ve inherited and create an economy worth bequeathing to our children, read this book." -- Kate Raworth, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS

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Book Group Saturday, January 15, 5:00 pm on Zoom

Happy anti-capitalist New Year! We'll be finishing Amaia Pérez Orozco's THE FEMINIST SUBVERSION OF THE ECONOMY: Contributions for Life Against Capital. We'll discuss chapters 3-5, but we can go back to the earlier part as well. Email us at [email protected] for the Zoom link.

“Through a rigorous, relentless exposure of the destructive logic governing capitalist development, Orozco sets the foundations for a feminist politics capable of subverting the myths propagated by capitalist economy and radically transforming the conditions and ends of our social reproduction. A must not only for feminists movements but for all engaged in the struggle to create a more just society.”—Silvia Federici

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Book group Saturday, 12/9, 5pm PST on Zoom

We're reading the introduction and first two chapters of <I>The Feminist Subversion of the Economy: Contributions for a Life Against Capital</i> by Amaia Pérez Orozco, Translated by Liz Mason-Deese. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.

"Amaia Pérez Orozco’s contributions for life against capital remind us of our humanness—and the contributions of ecofeminism to dismantling hierarchies, exploitation, and invisibleness—in order to fulfill our collective responsibilities to establish a good life for all. The Feminist Subversion of the Economy well articulates the road to creating a clear commitment to achieve the interconnections and solidarity that will create and sustain a better world.”

—Jessica Gordon-Nembhard

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Book Group: END TIMES by Peter Turchin

We meet on Saturday, August 19, at 5:00 pm PDT on Zoom. You can email us for the Zoom link. We'll read the first two (long) chapters of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin.

“History is hopelessly complex and unpredictable’: so say most historians. If they were right, we would all be in deep trouble, helpless against a myriad of looming disasters. But Peter Turchin has pioneered a new science of making history predictable–by applying methods that had already succeeded in other complex fields. You’ll want to know what he sees lying ahead, and what we can do about it.” 

—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns Germs and Steel

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Poverty, By America: book discussion July 15

We'll meet on Saturday, July 15, by Zoom. We'll discuss the second half of POVERTY, BY AMERICA, by Matthew Desmond. Email us for the Zoom invitation; feel free to come if you missed the first part.

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Book Group Saturday, 2/11, 5:00 pm

We'll discuss CANNIBAL CAPITALISM by Nancy Fraser.

“Nancy Fraser has produced the most elegant theory yet of capitalism in our age - capitalism not in the narrow economic sense, but capitalism in the sense of a total omnivore, a system that cannot stop devouring everything around it, destroying the lives of people and nature. This is Marxist theory for our age of crisis - and, we shall hope, of reckoning.”

– Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

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Book Group meets Saturday, January 14, 5pm on Zoom

We'll discuss the second half of LESS IS MORE by Jason Hickel. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link

“Jason Hickel shows that recovering the commons and decolonizing nature, cultures, and humanity are necessary conditions for hope of a common future in our common home. By extracting less we leave more for other species, other people and future generations, thus creating well-being for all. In an ecologically interconnected world, less is more.” -- Vandana Shiva

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Book Group Saturday, 12/17, 5pm PST.

We'll discuss the first half of LESS IS MORE by Jason Hickel, on Zoom. Email [email protected] for the link to join us.

We just finished our re-read of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS by Kate Raworth, and her comments on this book helped us choose it:

“A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times. Jason Hickel takes all we've been told about growth and development and turns it inside out, offering instead a radically possible vision of a post-growth future. If you’re looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.” — Kate Raworth, economist and author of Doughnut Economics

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Book group Saturday, November 12, 5:00 pm PST--revisiting DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS

The very first book we read for this group was Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, and it remains one of our very favorites years later. We will discuss the second half of the book and the new afterword. Raworth and an international team of followers have moved the Doughnut Economics project a great deal further in that time. DEAL (Doughnut Economics Action Lab) has dozens of stories from all over the world, which we are also discussing. Email [email protected] for the link.

“Can anyone seriously suppose that today’s economic orthodoxies are going to bring the world back from the brink of chaos? We need to fundamentally rethink the way we create and distribute wealth, and Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics provides an inspiring primer as to how we must now set about that challenge. I hope it ushers in a period of intense debate about the kind of economy we now so urgently need

Jonathon Porritt, author of The World We Made

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Book Group Saturday, October 8, 4:30 pm PDT: revisiting Doughnut Economics

The very first book we read for this group was Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics, and it remains one of our very favorites years later. Plus, Raworth has moved her Doughnut Economics project a great deal further in that time with DEAL (Doughnut Economics Action Lab) with stories from all over the world, which we are also going to discuss. We meet on Zoom and will discuss the first half of the book. Email [email protected] for the link.

“What if it were possible to live well without trashing the planet? Doughnut Economics succinctly captures this tantalising possibility and takes up its challenge. Brimming with creativity, Raworth reclaims economics from the dust of academia and puts it to the service of a better world.”

—Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity without Growth

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Book Group Saturday, 9/10, 5:00 pm PDT

We'll be discussing the second half (last four chapters) of BEYOND MONEY by Anitra Nelson, on Zoom. Email [email protected] for the Zoom invitation.

'If you had to choose one book to read on making the next political economy it should be this one. It will have you bristling with political energy'

- Professor Adam David Morton, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia

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Book Group Saturday, August 13, 5:00 pm PDT

We'll be discussing the first four chapters of BEYOND MONEY: A POST-CAPITALIST STRATEGY, by Anitra Nelson. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link. We'd love to have you join us!

‘Takes monetised economies head-on, demonstrating how they exacerbate ecological devastation and socio-economic inequality, and provides examples and pathways towards non-monetary economies based on real values. Does a great service to movements seeking social and ecological justice for all humans and other life forms’

- Ashish Kothari, founder of Kalpavriksh and co-editor of 'Pluriverse'

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Book Group Saturday, July 16, 4:30 pm

We’re reading THE RED DEAL: Indigenous Actions to Save Our Earth, by The Red Nation. We’re continuing to meet on Zoom. Email [email protected] for the Zoom link. We'd love to have you join us.

“Five hundred years of European colonialism, which produced capitalist economic and social relations, has nearly destroyed life itself. Technology can be marshaled to reverse this death march, but it will require a vision for the future and a path to follow to arrive there, and that is what The Red Deal provides.”

—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States