AKSC 2nd Annual Conference 2019

“The struggle and liberation of one oppressed group are tightly coupled with the struggle and liberation of all oppressed groups. AKSC stands for such united struggle to liberate all the oppressed”

We cordially invite all the progressive people like you to come and join hands together for Ambedkar King Study Circle Annual Conference 2019

Saturday, Sep 7, 2019 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM

“Odd Fellows Cupertino 70”
#20589 Homestead Road, Cupertino
California – 95014

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INAUGURATION AND KEYNOTE ADDRESS

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Dr. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Director – Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy Maulana Azad National Urdu University(MANUU), Hyderabad, INDIA

Dr. Kancha Ilaiah an Indian political theorist, writer, and activist for Dalit rights. He is the Director of Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. His contributions includes as the member of the National Research Committee constituted by the Ministry of Social Justice, member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), member of the Planning Commission Sub Committee to formulate an agenda for land reforms for the XI Five Year Plan, member of the UGC Constitutional Committee to oversee the implementation of OBC reservations in all Central and State universities in India, former member of Executive Council of Periyar Maniammai University (Tamil Nadu) and former member of the National Book Trust, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India, New Delhi.

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SPEAKERS AND SPECIAL GUESTS

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Dr. Suraj Yengde

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Cambridge, MA – USA

Dr. Suraj Yengde is an award-winning scholar and activist from India. He is an inaugural post-doctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Suraj is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) in the nation’s history.

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Ms. Boona Cheema

Chair-Person, Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless and Mental Health Commission, California – USA

Ms. Boona Cheema has been a tireless advocate for the homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 40 years. She was Executive Director of Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency. She is currently the Chair at the Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless Commission and also the Chair for the Berkeley/Albany Mental Health Commission.

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Mr. Kunal Shankar

Columbia University, New York – USA and Former Reporter at FRONTLINE Magazine – India

Mr. Kunal Shankar is an M.A. Candidate at Columbia University. He was most recently with Frontline Magazine based out of Hyderabad, India and has been a journalist for the past 15 years. He has covered a wide range of issues – from human rights violations; corruption in India’s higher judiciary; drought and climate change, to the maturing of the country’s transgender movement.

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Ms. Rachel Herzing

Director, Center for Political Education, San Francisco, CA – USA

Ms. Rachel Herzing is the director of the Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. Ms. Rachel has been an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of policing and imprisonment for over 20 years. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She was the director of research and training at Creative Interventions – a community resource developing interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services.

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Mr. Anto Akkara

Award-winning Investigative Journalist & Author, New Delhi – India

Mr. Anto Akkara firmly believes that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ has reported extensively from hotspots in South Asia on human rights concerns, religious issues, and social problems. He has covered extensively from the ground the massive Gujarat earthquake, 2004 tsunami devastation, Sri Lankan war, oppression in Myanmar, and the birth of democracy and devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015. He won a dozen national and international media awards such as Media in your Country Award of International Network of Young Journalists, Media in your Continent Award in 1995 of Geneva-based UCIP, Raoul Follereau Award of AIFO Foundation in Italy, etc.

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Dr. Hatem Bazian

Director, Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project Center for Race and Gender. The University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Hatem Bazian, Founder of Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project at the Center for Race and Gender, Berkeley, California – a research unit dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims. He launched the Islamophobia Studies Journal, which is published bi-annually through a collaborative effort among the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley, the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative for the School of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia, and Zaytuna College – the 1st Accredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the United States. In addition, Dr, Bazian is a weekly columnist for the Turkish Daily Sabah Newspaper and Turkey Agenda online magazine. Dr. Bazian is the founder and national Chair of American Muslims for Palestine, board member of the Islamic Scholarship Fund, Muslim Legal Fund of America, President of Dollar for Deen Charity, and Chair of Northern California Islamic Council. Adviser to the Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley.

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Ms. Sabiha Basrai

Co-ordinator, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

Works with racial justice organizers to fight against Islamophobia. Ms. Basrai is also co-owner of the media justice cooperative ‘Design Action Collective’, a member the Center for Political Education’s Advisory Board and a part-time faculty member in the University of San Francisco’s Department of Art & Architecture.

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REGISTRATION

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The registration fee includes

Friday: Meet & Greet with Dinner

Saturday: Welcome Kit, Lunch, Dinner,

Snacks & Tea and Networking

( Kids between age 4 and 11 will be provided childcare)

Reserve seat for you and/or for your group

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Register: https://tinyurl.com/AKSC-Conf2019
Go to top: AKSC Annual Conference 2019

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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

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Click above to view the full schedule

Highlights

Friday, Sep 6, 2019 Meet & Greet with Speakers & Special Guests. Dinner will be served

Saturday, Sep 7, 2019 Check-in, Conference, Discussions, Networking. Lunch and Dinner will be served

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FOR QUERIES

Email: akscsfba@gmail.com
Phone: 831-200-3282 | 415-683-0525 | 408-307-8913

Invitation

Ambedkar King Study Circle Annual

Conference

2019, Cupertino, CA

REGISTER for 2019 AKSC CONFERENCE

Thank you for all your overwhelming support for Ambedkar King Study Circle’s (AKSC) activities and programs for the past three years. A happy society is possible only by abolishing all forms of exploitation. The people who want to live in such a society have to involve themselves directly in building that society rather than living in a society whose rules, norms and standards are set by the top 1% of the wealthiest. Involving people in the process of building the society they want to live in is the foundation of democracy.

The people face a great challenge to build such a democratic society from the right-wing forces across the world. AKSC‘s 2018 conference invitation correctly pointed out that the RSS/BJP ‘will adopt more divisive tactics and new strategies to divide the people’ to score a victory in 2019 Indian parliamentary elections since they suffered a defeat in by-elections held between 2014 and 2018 in which they were NOT able to gain a single seat. The RSS/BJP won comfortably than they themselves expected in the Indian general election held in April-May 2019.

In India, the top 1% holds 51.53% and the top 10% holds 77.4% of the total wealth respectively. Brahmins and non-Brahmin forward castes earn 48% and 45% ABOVE the national average respectively whereas OBC, SC and ST households earn 8%, 21% and 35% BELOW the national average respectively. Indian capitalism which has created such inequality is inextricably coupled with the caste system dominated by Brahmin-Bania nexus in bureaucracy and corporate houses. The right-wing RSS/BJP uses the method of physical, cultural, social and economic attack on Muslim minorities, Dalits and Adivasis to divert the attention of a ruthless economic attack on the majority of the Hindu population themselves. It upholds the economic exploitation of the great majority through physical, cultural and social oppression of the minorities and other socially oppressed sections. Only by uniting all the exploited, system of overall oppression can be challenged.

In the USA, more and more people are attracted to the idea of socialism. Socialism carried ‘stigma’ in the past. In June 2019, Guardian has reported that 40% of Americans want to live in a socialist society of which 55% of women prefer socialism. Significantly more young people prefer socialism. The Harris Poll released in March 2019 revealed that 49.6 percent of millennials (born between 1981 and 1996, ages between 23 and 38 in 2019) prefer living in a socialist country.

AKSC holds the 2019 annual conference in this backdrop. Please REGISTER to educate ourselves through speeches and discussions to formulate the correct strategies and tactics to build a society that we want to live happily. Let’s uphold the principle of participatory democracy.

Saturday, Sep 07, 2019

9.00 AM to 6.00 PM

“Odd Fellows Cupertino 70” 20589 Homestead Road, Cupertino, CA, USA.

REGISTER for 2019 AKSC CONFERENCE

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Meet-and-Greet and Dinner

Friday, Sep 06, 2019

6.00 PM to 8:00 PM

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General Financial Contribution for AKSC – Contacts: akscfsba@gmail.com, 831-200-3282, 415-683-0525 and 408-307-8913

Regards

AKSC, 2nd Annual Conference Committee

Schedule

AKSC Conference Schedule and Program Detail