Presidential Priorities. A Time for Peace in the Middle East #EthicsInTech

Thu, Feb 11, 2021 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM PST

Register here.

Middle East Conflict, Iran Nuclear Deal, Conventional Weapon Sales and Nuclear treaties will be discussed in this forum over tea!

About this Event

A night to reflect on what we hope to see from President Joe Biden’s administration as it relates to Middle East Politics. Hosted by Vahid Razavi a Iranian-American author, activist and entrepreneur and founder of Ethics In Technology, a 501c 3 nonprofit.

Speakers:

NORMAN SOLOMON went to his first antiwar demonstration in 1967 and has been active in peace and social-justice movements since then. His books include The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media and War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Norman founded the 22-year-old Institute for Public Accuracy, where he’s executive director, and in 2011 co-founded RootsAction.org, where he’s national director. As a syndicated columnist, he wrote the weekly “Media Beat” for 17 years, challenging patterns of mainstream media bias. Norman was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions, where he was a coordinator of the independent Bernie Delegates Network. More information about his background is here.

REESE ERLICH is an adjunct professor of International Studies at the University of San Francisco. As a freelance journalist he files for PRI, CBC (Canada), The Progressive, VICE News, and Foreign Policy, among others. He writes a nationally distributed column “Foreign Correspondent,” which appears every two weeks in The Progressive, 48 Hills.org and other websites. He received a Peabody Award in 2006 and “best depth reporting” awards in 2002 and 2006 from the Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California). Erlich received a commendation for 50 years of outstanding journalism from the California State Senate in 2018 and another commendation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 2018.

HASSAN EL-TAYYAB is front man of the band American Nomad and an award winning singer/ songwriter. Hassan El-Tayyab is FCNL’s lead lobbyist on Middle East policy. He is also responsible for representing FCNL within the various coalitions that work on these issues.

Prior to joining FCNL in August 2019, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he led their lobbying work to advance a more progressive foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition’s war in Yemen.

BRETT WILKINS is Ethics In Tech board member. Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams (commondreams.org) and a member of the activist writers’ group Collective 20 (www.collective20.org). He is also an officer of the San Francisco Berniecrats, an Our Revolution affiliate. His writing, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com. .

NIMA RAHIMI is a Commissioner on the San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission and has helped lead special hearings on the crisis at the border, the status of DACA, the Trump travel ban on Muslim majority nations, and on the Yemen Civil War. He has advocated for abolishing ICE and to expand our state’s sanctuary laws to further protect our at-risk immigrants. Nima has served on the Iranian American Bar Association board for the past seven years and on the board of Pars Equality Center’s Generation Plus for the past four years.

Rik Center is author of the book “If You Can’t Change Your Mood, Change Your Mind – mindful reflections toward self-discovery” and is Cofounder of the Mindfulness Care Center where he’s developed workshops around mindfulness and the resilience of unwinding somatic experiential stress anxieties. He’s spoken over the years to various organizations and businesses around meditation and mindfulness. Rik has an ongoing Mindful-Somatic private practice helping clients unwind and dissolve high levels of traumatic anxiety and PTSD. Since Covid-19, he offers 2 weekly online mindfulness meditation groups and a weekly Grief & Loss Group. Rik has served as a Buddhist-Interfaith Chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital and CPMC. He presently sits on the Professional Advisory Group for CPMC/Sutter Health Hospitals in San Francisco. He’s been a practitioner of the Japanese Martial Art “Kyudo” The Way Of Bow and has a side project in partnership writing a suspense thriller screenplay.

Host:

VAHID RAZAVI is an Iranian-American and technology veteran of Silicon Valley, Vahid has founded tech firms and advised and worked in senior management roles in Silicon Valley. He has published two books, The Age of Nepotism and Ethics In Tech and Lack Thereof. As a lifelong activist and humanitarian he has published hundreds of articles and videos on various social issues including the tech industry and social injustice. He has previously worked for companies such as Amazon Web Services, Fast Search, Exodus Communications, and Qwest Communications. He was the founder of cloud computing company BizCloud.

Comedians:

DEBI DURST Forged in the crucible of improvisational theater at a young age, Debi has performed with every improv group known to humanity in the Bay Area. This begins with The Committee, Spaghetti Jam, Femprov, The Comedy Underground, The National Theater of the Deranged, Papaya Juice, The Dinosaurs of Improv, The Marsh Jam and currently The Bad Aunties. She produces San Francisco’s Comedy Celebration Day and The Big Fat Year End

Jeanette Marin is a stay-at-home mom by day and a stand-up comedian by night. She gravitates towards jobs with long titles and very little pay. When she is not hiding from her children in a closet, she delights audiences by saying what mothers are never supposed to admit in public! In 2019, she was in the S.F. International Comedy Competition and a featured comedian at the Cinequest Film Festival.

Aundre the Wonderwoman A Bay Area comic who says of her career, “I woulda been famous by now, but I gotta work!” By day, she works as an attorney advising lawyers who represent clients on California’s death row. By night, she is one of the Bay Area’s most popular comics. She was a semi-finalist in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition and received the “Stand Up For Justice” award for her work against the death penalty.