Oakland's Road to Detroit: A Briefing on the United States Social Forum

Ryan Van Lenning Thu, 8 Apr at 9:34am

There's less than 80 days until the United States Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan--are you ready?

Come to a briefing about the United States Social Forum, where you can find out about what's happening there, what you can do to help, resources for getting there, and what other groups are doing to pave the road to Detroit!

When: Tuesday, April 13, 6:30-8:30

Where: 1433 Webster Street, Oakland

Whether you are working for affordable housing, public transit, food access, healthcare for all, clean energy, economic alternatives to capitalism, labor rights, peace, immigration rights, media justice, sustainable cities, or wnat to learn more about these issues, there's a place for your voice and energy.

The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is not a conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history.

We must declare what we want our world to look like and we must start planning the path to get there. The USSF provides spaces to learn from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.

About Ryan Van Lenning
Ryan Van Lenning is a writer and organizer focusing on issues of social justice and sustainability. He is also passionate about food justice/urban ag, anti-militarism, and building alternative economies in resilient cities. His work appears in Ecolocalizer, Truthout, Huffington Post, Terrain: Northern California’s Environmental Magazine, and Matador Change. Prior to becoming caught in the web of Bay Area ink-slinging and activism, he taught in the Humanities Department at a community college in Ohio, where he created courses in Environmental Ethics and World Religions: Peace and Violence. He is both a hyper-localist and a globalist, a home-body and travel-addict, and a city explorer and nature aficionado, just a few of the many paradoxes with which he is afflicted. Contact him at ryan@oaklandlocal.com, follow him on twitter @vanlenning, and find more at his blogs Pull the Root, Travelin' Bones, and Rumi and the Cholo.