Civil Rights Activist to Speak on
Challenges/Opportunities Feb. 22 as
Part of Black History Month Activities at UCSD

February 5, 2007

By Jan Jennings

Eric Mann, a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental activist for 40 years, will speak on specific challenges to society and how they create the opportunity for change, even upheaval, at 3 p.m. Feb. 22 in the Robinson Auditorium at the University of California, San Diego.

The title of Mann’s lecture is Building Left in the Age of the Right: Challenging Racism and Empire. It is part of UCSD’s Black History Month activities and is free and open to the public.

Challenges Mann references are the Black movement in the South, the Black movement in the United States, and the disaster in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. Such events create a crisis for the “system,” a moment of focus, when practical and ideological struggles force the “system” to new territory, to reassess values, and to deal with opportunity.

Mann is the director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. He has been a civil rights, anti-war, labor and environmental justice organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society, and the United Auto Workers.

Mann is the author of six books, his most recent, Katrina’s Legacy: White Racism and Black Reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Following his lecture, there will be a book signing.

The event is sponsored by California Cultures in Comparative Perspective and Groundwork Books. For further information contact David Pellow at (858) 822-5118.

 

Media Contacts:

Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684
Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404