Politics

From exam rooms to operating theaters to medical schools, racism is not an aberration in American healthcare, it is embedded in its foundations. In this urgent and illuminating panel, physician-activist Dr. Vanessa Grubbs, Public Law Professor at UC Berkeley School of Law Dr. Khiara M. Bridges, and award-winning investigative journalist and professor Nicole Carr confront the structures that continue to endanger Black lives. In Negligent by Design, Dr. Grubbs argues that anti-Blackness in medicine is not accidental but systemic, woven into diagnostic tools, training, and institutional culture. She challenges healthcare professionals to move beyond symbolic gestures and commit to structural change. In Expecting Inequity, Bridges exposes the persistence of racism in maternal healthcare, revealing that even affluent Black women face disproportionate risk in pregnancy and childbirth. Drawing on in-depth research, Bridges shows how class privilege cannot shield patients from racialized neglect. In The Price of Exclusion, Carr uncovers the hidden history of Black medical pioneers and the deliberate policies that excluded them from power. Through investigative reporting and personal history, she traces how that legacy fuels today’s health disparities. Together, these authors explore how medical racism is reproduced across generations and what it will take to dismantle it. Join us for a powerful conversation moderated by University of San Francisco sociologist and bioethics scholar Dr. Jennifer James, author of the much cited, “Reproductive Justice and Abolition: Important Lessons Black Feminists Have Been Teaching Us for Years”. This discussion calls for more than awareness, it demands transformation, centering accountability, justice, professional responsibility, and the urgent work of building a healthcare system that truly values every life.

As women’s rights are increasingly violated in the US, the historical narratives and personal accounts of this crucial panel discussion will remind us of the work we’ve already done and inspire us to continue pursuing a world where women are truly free. Just Pills: The Extraordinary Story of A Revolution in Abortion Care documents journalist Rebecca Kelliher’s research into the little-known history of mifepristone and misoprostol, better known as the abortion pills, which are safe, cheap, and clinic-less means of ending a pregnancy that are already changing the fight for abortion access as we understand it. Prior to the approval of abortion pills in the 1990s and 2000s, however, women’s options were severely limited. In her historical novel Where the Girls Were,Kate Schatz writes about a pregnant teenager’s struggle with agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers in 1960s San Francisco. Shame, faith, and morality all shape a woman’s choice to abort or carry to term, and Judy Juanita reflects on self-induced abortion and California’s Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 through the poetry, fiction, essays, and creative nonfiction in Abortion (or Woman As Threefold Murderess) which reveal that choosing to abort is not simply a political or moral issue of right and wrong, but one tied to safety, survival, and the meaning of life itself. Moreover, abortion care is ethical care, grounded in competence, compassion, sensitivity, as exemplified by Shelley Sella, a board-certified OB-GYN and the first woman to openly practice third-trimester abortion care in the US. In her book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third Trimester Abortion Care, Dr. Sella challenges preconceived notions of who gets abortions and why, inviting readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify third-trimester abortion, which is still often stigmatized and misunderstood within both the anti-abortion and pro-choice movements. Carole Joffe, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences and author of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion, will moderate this panel honoring the women affected by abortion and pregnancy, the hard-working individuals who have kept abortion afloat in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s destruction, and the continued help urgently needed if we want to sustain our right to abortion care.

As authoritarian assaults increasingly restrict our media, championing press freedom and critical media literacy is more important than ever. From The Censored Press editorial board member T.M. Scruggs is State of the Free Press 2026: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, a collection that highlights the year’s most significant independent journalism—including original, investigative reports on ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, and police violence—and tracks emerging threats to press freedom. Political analyst and critical media literacy scholar Nolan Higdon will bring expertise about podcasting, digital culture, news media history and propaganda, and critical AI literacy, offering insights from the media spotlight. As an educator of the next generation of media actors, award-winning journalist and UC Berkeley journalism professor Lisa Armstrong will discuss what it means to steward a future of free and responsible press. Frances Dinkelspiel, award-winning author and journalist, will bring unique perspectives as a co-founder of Cityside, the nonprofit news organization behind Berkeleyside, Oaklandside, and Richmondside. Moderated by TBD, this timely panel brings together distinguished voices from media to reflect on how we fund, create, and educate about media in an age when press freedom and democracy are under attack.

Eighty years of lessons from the Black freedom struggle, labor movements, and internationalism illuminate the path forward in our fight for democracy and never-ending commitment to building a better world. In a multi-generational conversation, legendary Civil Rights organizer Walter Riley andcommunity organizer, musician, and journalist Jesse Strauss will offer insights from their book, Civil Rights and Structural Attacks, drawing parallels between past movements and present injustices. Raised among the entrails of chattel slavery in Durham, North Carolina, Riley brings decades of movement experience from mobilizations against Jim Crow apartheid laws, to student and labor organizing with early Black Panther formations, to organizing against South Africa’s apartheid system as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer. His more recent work involves supporting infrastructure for Haitian movement-building and confronting police violence in Oakland. Strauss is the co-creator of the first-ever daily abolitionist radio show Law & Disorder andan anti-imperialist and abolitionist cultural worker who was raised in Oakland and Berkeley (unceded Ohlone/Chochenyo land). He was also a producer for Al Jazeera during the so-called “Arab Spring” and “Occupy” movements, and together with Riley, they will reflect on the importance of political action as the primary venue for learning and reflection in this insightful and vital conversation moderated by writer, director, and musician Boots Riley.

The Trump administration is terrorizing our communities with mass deportations, militarized raids, and brutal detainment, tearing families apart and unlawfully withholding immigrants in inhumane conditions. As historian Ana Raquel Minian points out, this is only the latest chapter in a saga in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. This imperative panel will trace back to the 1800s with Minian’s In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, which braids together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homeland for the promise of America: a Chinese refugee, a European war bride, a Cuban exile, and a Central American asylum seeker. Personal accounts give this history a human face, as with The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest,Satsuki Ina’s memoir documenting her parents’ forcible removal from their home, their incarceration in wartime American concentration camps, and the generational struggle of Japanese Americans who fought for the restoration of their rights and clung to their full humanity in the face of adversity. As she traces the legacies of trauma, she connects her family’s ordeal to modern-day mass incarceration at the U.S.-Mexico border, which is what Daniel A. Olivas bases his modern retelling of “Waiting for Godot” on. Through a darkly comic absurdist lens, Waiting for Godínez: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts features the forever-waiting character Jesús, who is kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents each night to be deported and thrown into a cage that is left unlocked. Though these “black sites” of rightlessness exist out of view from the average American, their reach extends into our lives, all the way to the gradual unraveling of the right to bail and the presumption of innocence. Veronica Granillo brings a lawyer’s perspective from her experience working on affirmative and defensive asylum cases, U Visas, residency, and naturalization as the Senior Staff Attorney at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a community organization that provides services to support low-income immigrants and people fleeing violence and persecution. Moderated by Piper Kerman, justice reform activist and author of Orange is the New Black, the narratives of this panel allow us to see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, imploring us to reconsider this country’s policies in light of the fact that we are all human and deserve respect, dignity, and democracy as we make our way in this confusing and often indifferent world.

In the midst of white nationalism, global capitalism, and authoritarian regimes that drive individualism and isolation, a look to our past and envisioned futures reveals the prevailing strength of creativity and rebellion across time. By surveying a world that has changed dramatically since 1960 in her book The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit unveils the sheer breadth and scale of social, political, scientific, and cultural changes that have shaped a more interconnected, relational world which embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas. Because transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized, but change is inevitable, brought about by dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. Poet, performer, and director Saul Williams charts his own creative visions for change in Martyr Loser King, his graphic novel about a global cyberattack rebellion in a small East African country where the Black population and the land are exploited for the mining of the precious ore coltan. Simultaneously a cautionary tale and hopeful vision for the future, this cyberpunk fable raises incisive questions about capitalism, colonialism, and the future of technology. Moderated by writer, producer, and activist Christie George, who is working at the intersection of media, technology, and social change, this headlining conversation features the creative minds who are mapping and shaping the trajectory of our futures despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history.

Illustrator Morgan Sörne will join for book signing after this headliner conversation.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland

Drawing on the expertise of mindfulness educators, frontline organizers, and America’s greatest literary voices, this panel provides guidance for navigating political burnout and civic despair. On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World is professor Jeremy David Engels’ compact guide offering 27 powerful teachings of interdependence and how to show up for democracy with compassion, clarity, and courage. In this age of disaster, community-shaped strategies are essential for practically navigating the challenges posed by overlapping catastrophes, and Kailea Rose Loften and Kate Rose Weiner present engaging prompts, concise checklists, and heartfelt advice for building and sustaining durable mutual aid networks in Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities. Liza J. Rankow combines the compassion of a seasoned spiritual guide and the insightful analysis of a longtime grassroots activist in Soul Medicine for a Fractured World, which offers questions for reflection as well as an array of spiritual and healing practices to guide readers on an integrative path forward through healing and transformation, rooted in our kinship with one another, the Earth, and all of life. Diving deeply into a dharma of liberation, Rima Vesely-Flad examines the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through key Buddhist principles, revealing that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but also the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Whether you’re a seasoned activist or a tender-hearted citizen seeking a new path forward, this nourishing panel moderated by Rev. Dereca Blackmon of the East Bay Church of Religious Science is an invitation into the lifelong work of caring for one another in pursuit of our collective liberation.

What happens when visionary worldbuilding meets movement building? In this rare and unmissable conversation, acclaimed novelist Nnedi Okorafor, whose Africanfuturist fiction reshapes the boundaries of speculative literature, sits down with legendary organizer Marshall Ganz, architect of modern grassroots leadership models. Guided by writer, educator, and visionary thinker Walidah Imarisha, the conversation will travel across story and structure, imagination and power. Together, they will ask: How do the stories we tell determine the futures we fight for? How does organizing become a living narrative of hope and resistance? And how can collective imagination move us closer to liberation? This will be a gathering of minds that reminds us that crafting worlds and building movements are acts born of the same radical impulse: to dream together, and remake what has been made.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland