PANEL: What Everyone Should Know about Resisting State Repression

WHERE: First Unitarian Church of Oakland; 685 14th St, Oakland, CA


WHEN: Sunday, October 26th at 7pm; Doors open at 6:30pm

VIRTUAL OPTION: We'll be live streaming tonight's event at https://www.youtube.com/@GreenandRedPodcast. Please subscribe and follow.

Join us on October 26th at 7pm for a panel on resisting state repression. The panel will feature journalist and author Will Potter, Meg Calaw with Gabriela Berkeley, civil rights and criminal defense attorney John Viola, Sara Kershnar from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and other panelists TBA.

President Trump has designated the anti-fascist movement as a terrorist organization. While, in fact, it’s an opportunity for his administration to target and destroy a broader network of left and progressive groups. We’re living in challenging times with crises around war in the Middle East, renewed McCarthyist attacks on free speech, corporate domination of everyday life, escalating climate disasters and, now, a fascist takeover of our government.

As Will Potter has said, “The intention is to capitalize on this to crack down on their opponents and to consolidate authoritarian power.”

We’re also living in a time where large numbers of people have taken to the streets to confront those responsible for these crises. Today’s state repression is aimed to eliminate that opposition.

This panel will explore the ongoing conflict between democratic resistance movements and state repression and lessons that we can use to push back against this authoritarian takeover.

Panelist Bios//

**Will Potter is an award-winning investigative journalist and TED Senior Fellow who exposes political repression and the erosion of civil liberties. His reporting and commentary have appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Rolling Stone. He is the author of “Green is the New Red” and his new book is “Little Red Barns: Hiding The Truth, From Farm To Fable.”

**Meg Kalaw is an organizer with Gabriela Berkeley, a local organization of Filipina women that fights for genuine liberation and national democracy in the Philippines. Currently, Gab Berkeley is waging the Chevron Out of the Philippines campaign, to expose the corporate plunder that multinational corporations like Chevron enact in the Philippines and the particular impacts on peasant and indigenous women and children. Meg is also the regional coordinator of the International League of People’s Struggles NorCal, a regional alliance of anti-imperialist organizations in the Bay Area who are united under fighting state repression and promoting international solidarity.

**John Viola is a Bay Area civil rights and criminal defense attorney.

** Chris Carraway is a staff attorney with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project – a law school clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law that represents animal rights activists in criminal cases around the country. Chris also represents a Cop City defendant, numerous pro-Palestine campus encampment defendants, and was himself a defendant in the 2017 J20 Trump Inauguration case. Before joining the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, Chris was a public defender in Colorado for nearly a decade. You can learn more about the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at Aaldp_du (Instagram, twitter); aaldp-du (bluesky), aaldp.com

**Donations on a $5-20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Co-sponsored by Green and Red Podcast, Diablo Rising Tide, XR SF Bay, Oil and Gas Action Network and Bay Resistance.