A New World From Below: An Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarian Convergence at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum
Going the to US Social Forum in Detroit next week? Well, here’s something to warm your little anarcho-heart. AK Press has teamed up with nine other collectives to try to make anti-authoritarian ideas a bit more visible, and fun, at the gathering. The project is called “A New World from Below: Anarchists and Anti-Authoritarians at the Social Forum.” It involves a track of workshops taking place at the Forum itself, as well as a second offsite location/convergence space for unscheduled meetings and activities, as well as a selection of forums & workshops that are not listed as a part of the full USSF program. The offsite location will also host free meals every day and a Friday night book release party (with free beer!). Be there! Here’s the scoop:
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A New World from Below
Anarchists and Anti-Authoritarians at the Social Forum
Detroit, June 23-27, 2010
http://anarchistussf.wordpress.com/
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We believe that social forums can greatly contribute to strengthening social movements both in the United States and internationally. The ecological destruction and economic disaster, coupled with disillusionment about the Obama presidency, makes the 2010 U.S. Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit an urgently needed convergence. We hope to bring what’s unique about anarchist and antiauthoritarian organizing to the social forum, and spark conversations not only about strategies of resistance but also visions of reconstruction from the bottom-up.
To that end, the New World from Below Organizing Collectives will be hosting the New World from Below workshop track within the USSF. This track will bring together a variety of talks, panels, and workshops organized by anarchist and antiauthoritarian collectives from across the continent. These will all take place in the USSF’s spaces at Cobo Hall and surrounding locations.
Collective of Organizing Collectives
AK Press
City from Below
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
Manifesta Musicians’ Collective
Midnight Special Law Collective
Red Emma’s
Solidarity and Defense
Team Colors Collective
Trumbullplex
**THE SCHEDULE SO FAR**
The schedule so far looks amazing. Over 33 workshops organized within the Social Forum have signed on to the New World From Below convergence at the USSF, and we’ve got a jam packed schedule of events in the evenings at the convergence center.
The New World from Below workshops will take place both within the “official” USSF schedule and at the anarchist convergence space, so as to be part of the official USSF schedule, but also to get the word out on many other self-organized workshops as a part of our presence.
Workshops and Events as of 6/10/2010
(keep checking back in as we will be constantly updating this page!)
New World From Below convergence center open hours
Thursday June 24 -Saturday June 26 * 10AM-6PM
Besides our program of evening events and free meals starting on Wednesday evening, the convergence center will be open during the day – stop by for info on what’s going on, to have a cup of coffee, pick up a schedule, drop off or pick up material from the free literature tables, or get in touch at anarchistussf@gmail.com to arrange to use the space for self-organized caucuses and workshops.
Another Detroit’s Been Happening!
Art show at the Trumbullplex (4210 Trumbull) celebrating the radical past and future of Detroit.
Official opening is June 21st, call 313.758.7144 for more info and opening hours.
TUESDAY JUNE 22nd
Detroit Highlighted: Fender Bender
Fender Bender Detroit
Tuesday, June 22 * 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: W2-61
Our goal is to provide a safe space for women and people of marginalized gender identities to learn about and work on bikes in an inclusive and supportive atmosphere. In conjunction, we aim to provide a forum for discussion and resources for the ongoing work that must be done to address oppressive gender stereotypes, and all forms of oppression across the spectrum of our daily lives. (Fender Bender has open shops every Saturday in June from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. and an all-inclusive skill share on Tuesday, June 22 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Hub, 3611 Cass Avenue in Detroit.)
Detroit Highlighted: The Hub of Detroit
The Hub of Detroit
Tuesday June 22 * 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: W2-68
Join us as we discuss our work: The Hub of Detroit is a full-service bicycle shop servicing the Cass Corridor and greater Detroit. It is open six days a week and fills a void in Detroit’s bicycle service market, including the sale of bicycles, accessories and parts, and bicycle repairs. All profits from The Hub of Detroit bike shop support youth and educational programming provided by The Hub nonprofit in the form of Back Alley Bikes programming, and outreach youth and educational partnerships in the community. The Hub bike shop also offers mechanical support staff for various area bicycling events as well as a place to train the adults of the future in our mechanics-in-training program.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 23rd
Class Struggle Anarchism in the Twenty-first Century: Recentering on People’s Movements
Common Action, Buffalo Class Action, organizations affiliated with Anarkismo, Workers Solidarity Alliance, and the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference
Wednesday, June 23 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Woodward Academy: 1435
This workshop will focus on what has been at the heart of anarchism since its birth in the nineteenth century: a commitment to furthering the class struggle of working peoples. Anarchists affiliated with Anarkismo and the Class Struggle Anarchist Conference will discuss the workplace and neighborhood organizing we are doing in cities across the country. Members will share their experiences working on movements to strengthen the working class, including topics on tenants’ rights organizing, workplace struggles, antimilitarism work, struggles to preserve public education, preventing sexual violence, and working against white supremacy. We will discuss the relevance of anarchist politics to the economic crisis that is destroying cities across North America as well as the attendant racism, sexism, and nationalism that is heightened by such a crisis. We will also look at the challenges anarchists face in supporting truly democratic and participatory social movements in the twenty-first century.
Join in the Whirlwind: A Cooperative Panel on Research and Movement Building
Team Colors Collective, Turbulence Collective, Chris Dixon, and other friends
Wednesday, June 23 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Cobo Hall: O2-42
For the past three years, the Team Colors Collective has been asking organizers, activists, artists, and theorists, “Will you join us in the middle of a whirlwind?” as we have sought to understand the current composition and strength of radical movements in the United States. In utilizing the metaphor of a whirlwind to describe the myriad of struggles that are taking place currently and those that have been blowing across the planet over the past decade, Team Colors has conducted an inquiry and examination of movements in the United States. In cooperation with other organizers and activists, in this workshop we will explore the importance of research to movement building as we seek a return to radical community organizing—toward making a revolution possible!
Popularizing Radical Politics: How We Convey Our Ideas and Ideals
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Wednesday, June 23 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Wayne County Community College: 349
Radical political thought is often hard to communicate to wide audiences for the very simple reason that it is viewed as, well, “radical.” But if we seek to expand our politics beyond our already-established milieus, we must find a way to transcend this seeming barrier. The subject of this panel discussion is exactly that: What are effective ways of engaging with those who do not already agree with our message, clearly communicating what our actions and words mean to say, and still further, using this messaging to then draw new people to our ideas? Participants in this discussion will draw on their backgrounds in writing, design, media, and other forms of dialogue to present various perspectives on communication between radical activists and those they desire to influence, politicize, and perhaps join them.
Self-Publishing a Radical Comic Book: How to Do It, and Why
World War 3 Illustrated
Wednesday, June 23 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * TWW: 3
Editors of World War 3 Illustrated will explore the process of self-publishing a comic book that deals with social issues from a radical perspective and explain why they have been doing this for thirty years. We will deal with the technical aspects of self-publishing, such as printing and distribution, the aesthetic concerns of artists trying to transform personal experience into political comics, and the organizational issues of a collective editorship. We will start by describing the process of building and creating the magazine, but go on to discuss with the participants the projects they might want to do and how they might benefit from our experience.
Resisting State Repression, Defending the RNC 8
RNC 8 Defense Committee
Wednesday, June 23 * 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.* WSU Old Main: 1129
This workshop will include background and an update on the case of the RNC 8, anarchist/antiauthoritarian political organizers from Minnesota charged with conspiracy for helping organize resistance to the 2008 Republican National Convention, as well as a strategizing session to help create a movement response to their October trial. The RNC 8 were preemptively arrested and charged with terrorism before the 2008 RNC after their group, the RNC Welcoming Committee, had been infiltrated for a year and a half. Targeted because of their political ideologies and associations, they have been fighting their conspiracy charges (successfully getting two terror charges dropped) and preparing for their joint trial. The desired outcome of this workshop is to create concrete plans for both supporting the RNC 8 during trial and defending everyone’s ability to organize toward a world based on justice and liberation for all.
Responding to an Amnesiac Culture with Grassroots Social History
Shaping San Francisco
Wednesday, June 23 * 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. * WSU Old Main: 1133
The San Francisco Bay anchors a stunning environment, inspiring visitors and residents for generations, but the Bay and its urban surroundings are themselves the product of sharp social struggles. Shaping San Francisco is a project presenting the city’s untold and forgotten histories. In our workshop we will present the project, and demonstrate how this model can be applied to cities everywhere. Our forty-five-minute demonstration will course through labor history, ecological history, the Bay Area before European arrival, the role of various immigrant populations, transportation (Underground Railroad to the Transcontinental Railroad to containerization), housing, and much more.
Sledgehammer Visions, Housing Actions: Direct Action Solutions to the Housing Crisis
World War 3 Illustrated, Picture the Homeless, and Miami Workers Center
Wednesday, June 23 * 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. * TWW: 3
We will start with a short PowerPoint presentation of posters, cartoons, photos, and other documentation of the squatters’ movement in New York City in the 1980s, which seized empty buildings to provide low-income housing, then go on to a discussion with activists about how similar tactics are being used to address the current crisis.
Your City from Below
Red Emma’s and the Baltimore Development Cooperative for The City From Below
Wednesday, June 23 * 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: O2-42
Drawing on the “Represent Your City!” discussion held at the City from Below conference in Baltimore last year, this workshop will provide an open space for activists and organizations working in an urban context to share stories, strategies, and successful models with each other. This will be a participatory workshop—everyone who attends will be encouraged to speak about what’s going on in their city. Our goal is to get beyond the surface of projects and campaigns, and explore what’s common (and what’s not) in the less-visible, long-term, and infrastructural struggles over “the right to the city.” We’ll let the participants’ contributions shape the dialogue, but will also offer questions like: How are you working to implement a vision of real urban democracy? How have you built successful grassroots and citywide alliances “from below”? How has the ongoing economic crisis impacted organizing? Where have things gone wrong?
Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today!
Shaping San Francisco
Wednesday, June 23 * 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. * WSU Old Main: 1133
In other words, Jobs Don’t Work! This panel will examine how hard many of us are working, precisely when we’re NOT at our paid jobs. Wage labor and capital turn most jobs into a waste of time at best, or actively destroy the planet. We will investigate a range of productive, ecologically minded, and time-consuming behaviors that represent a logical place from which to engage in radical labor organizing—the work that many of us are already doing! The panelists include author Chris Carlsson, Julie Rosier of Detroit Red Thread Theater, Emily Ramsey from the Los Angeles Bike Kitchen, Azibuike Akaba, staffer at Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) project based in Oakland, CA, and Arlen Jones of Los Angeles’ La Bici Digna.
Reclaiming the Right 2 Survive
Reclaim! and Right 2 Survive
Wednesday, June 23 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Cobo Hall: D3-23
In Portland, Oregon, Reclaim! and Right 2 Survive are organizing a rebel alliance by facilitating, supporting, and coordinating autonomous occupations of unused land, buildings, and bank-foreclosed homes. Our efforts aim to create community control of land and build the self-management of our communities’ health, safety, and well-being. This workshop is a reflection of our experiences in organizing to move community members into bank-foreclosed houses. We will teach how our community is resisting the housing crisis through horizontal occupation support networks and direct action.
Evening program at the New World From Below Convergence Center (Spirit of Hope Church)
Dinner
Food Not Bombs and the Detroit IWW
Wednesday, June 23 * 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. * NWFB
Free food!
Welcome to the New World From Below
New World From Below Organizing Collectives
Wednesday, June 23 * 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. * NWFB
The official opening of the convergence center, opening remarks about the convergence and the program of events.
Opening night celebration
with DJ Ruckus of Detroit’s Solidarity and Defense
Wednesday, June 23 * 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. * NWFB
Enjoy some local music and get some midweek anarcho-socializing in.
Facilitated Discussion Sessions
Wednesday, June 23 * 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. * NWFB
THURSDAY JUNE 24th
Building Ecosocialism
Capitalism Nature Socialism
Thursday, June 24 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Woodward Academy: 1476
The worldwide destabilization of nature called the “ecological crisis” is the defining question of our time. There are innumerable effects of this planetary disease, and one overarching cause: the relentless and chaotic growth of the capitalist system. It follows that organizing, say, against climate change also requires organizing against capitalism—or conversely, to take an anticapitalist stance requires a commitment to healing the wounds that society has inflicted on nature. Our workshop will try to develop the linkage between capitalism and ecological damage as well as bringing “ecological integrity” into the vision of a postcapitalist society. An organization called the Ecosocialist International Network has been in existence for three years, and includes chapters in Britain, France, Turkey, Greece, Brazil, and elsewhere. We hope that this social forum will birth a U.S. chapter. The workshop presenters are Eddie Yuen, Joel Kovel, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill.
La Bici Digna/A Bike Worth Living For: Community Bike Co-ops as a Resource for Community Empowerment and Innovation
LA County Bicycle Coalition
Thursday, June 24 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Cobo Hall: O3-45
La Bici Digna is a community bicycle education space using critical pedagogy to empower immigrant and working-class cycling communities in Los Angeles in mechanics, collective decision-making, and self-management. We strive to provide the material and social resources to transform the bicycle from a mode of transportation many adopt out of economic desperation into an adaptable technology that can improve quality of life, foster community self-care, and incite creative potentials that are not constrained by market forces. Through work and play, our goal is to promote the bicycle as a technology and social activity that prefigures creative personal and social freedom.
Artists and Movements: The Justseeds’ Portfolio Projects
Interference Archive and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
Thursday, June 24 * 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. * Woodward Academy: 1473
Members of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative will present two projects: Voices from Outside: Artists against the Prison Industrial Complex and Resourced, a collection of handmade prints tackling issues of climate change, resource extraction, and environmental justice. In this session, which will include a digital presentation, panel, and participatory discussion, we will discuss how artists and activists can work together on campaigns that support both artistic creation and social movement goals.
Direct Democracy and Autonomy: Collectives, Assemblies, Self-Organization
Institute for Anarchist Studies and Friendly Fire Collective
Thursday, June 24 * 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: W2-64
For many of us, political organizing isn’t about the demand for justice and equality in specific instances but rather the transformation to a just and egalitarian society. This starts with the way we work: from the bottom up. Over the past decade there has been a resurgence in nonhierarchical organizing based on antiauthoritarian models, including everything from small collectives, large general assemblies, housing cooperatives, participatory economic models, and more. Through these methods of organizing, people are able to prefigure their desired society while maintaining a participatory framework in the present. Yet even as the advantages become evident and these forms spread, top-down organizing throughout the Left is still the norm, if not in name then in practice. In this workshop, antiauthoritarian organizers discuss various models of nonhierarchical organization, along with their uses, benefits, setbacks, and successes, drawing on personal experiences and contemporary examples of direct democracy and autonomous structures.
False Solutions and Real Solutions to Climate Change
Institute for Social Ecology, Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Biofuelwatch, Rising Tide, Institute for Policy Studies, ETC Group, Global Justice Ecology Project, and others
Thursday, June 24 * 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: D3-22
The challenge of global climate disruption has created new opportunities for corporate profiteering, marketing of “technofixes,” and further commodification of the earth. Many of these “false solutions” will in fact worsen global warming and stand in the way of changes that must be made. Policies to market carbon and offset emissions, unproven and costly technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration (“clean coal”), “advanced” bioenergy, GMO “climate-ready” crops, nuclear expansion, and natural gas as a “bridge fuel” are all examples of false solutions. This workshop will look at the false solutions and their direct impacts on our communities, and then turn toward a collaborative and wide-ranging discussion of genuinely renewable, community-centered solutions, rooted in the principles of climate justice. This is part of an ongoing effort to build a “People’s Vision” for U.S. climate action that is just, effective, realistic, and potentially transformative.
Prison Justice People’s Movement Assembly
Resistance in Brooklyn, Free Mumia Coalition, Freedom Archives, Jericho Amnesty Movement, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, RNC8 Defense Committee, Ordinary People’s Society, and War Resisters League
Thursday, June 24 * 1:00 to 5:30 p.m. * Cobo Hall: O3-45
The United States is a prison empire: racist mass incarceration, political repression, torture, and widespread criminalization. The organizations struggling against this state violence have been limited by geographic isolation, generational gaps, and the sheer amount of work to be done. Although we face particular challenges by region or circumstance, we share a vision of justice and solidarity against confinement and control. This assembly would be a vital step in making our work more national in scope and coordinated in action. Organizations involved in antiprison and prisoner support work will identify points of unity and plan shared actions. The assembly will emphasize strategic areas of collaboration and resistance to racist and political repression. It is organized by a network of groups organizing against prisons and the drug war, in support of political prisoners and formerly incarcerated people.
Antiauthoritarian Praxis in Times of Economic Crisis
Friendly Fire Collective
Thursday, June 24 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Woodward Academy: 1472
This panel features anarchists from around the United States on the topic of the financial crisis, centered on issues covered in the journal Cascade, published especially for the U.S. Social Forum by the Friendly Fire Collective. Some of the questions explored in the journal are: Why has there failed to be large-scale radical-leftist resistance to the crisis, and how can we imagine building projects to combat the crisis in the future? Panelists will discuss why it is critical that antiauthoritarians develop cohesive and convincing arguments for alternatives to capitalism in North America. Not only is it necessary to make transparent the structures of domination at work under the crisis but we also must imagine the tools with which to dismantle them. We hope that this combination of analysis and strategy can be a breeding ground for new and exciting anarchist praxis in the United States over the coming years.
Are We Addicted to Rioting?
Pittsburgh Organizing Group
Thursday, June 24 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Woodward Academy: 1472
In the aftermath of recent mobilization in Pittsburgh and Vancouver, anarchists and global justice activists have hotly debated the efficacy of militant street protest as a tactic or strategy in broader struggles for liberation. Some critics have pointed to black blocs and property destruction tactics as divisive and unnecessary, calling instead for a return to more community-based organizing models. Other organizers have argued that militant tactics are helpful in catalyzing resistance. In this workshop, members of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group will examine the efficacy of militant street protest in Pittsburgh and beyond as well as recent calls to abandon such protest in favor of local community organizing efforts. Presenters will share personal experiences from the streets and the grassroots organizing efforts leading up to the Pittsburgh G-20 summit.
Conspicuous Production: Defining the Role of Cultural Workers on the Left, a Manifesto
desde al lado, Left Turn Magazine, and Global Action Project
Thursday, June 24 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Woodward Academy: 1436
This is an open invitation for cultural workers (media makers, puppeteers, musicians, visual artists, printers, muralists, graffiti artists, and others) to collectively create a manifesto to frame and locate the importance of our work in social justice and revolutionary movements. The session will not only serve to bring attention to each other’s work but also create a sense of the why and how we use our work to oppose the status quo as well as imagine and create the ways that we create a revolutionary project. The manifesto—or the process itself—will also seek to answer questions of accountability, and ways in which we can measure the effectiveness of our work. We hope the manifesto is created in ways that utilize the many skills, imaginations, and ideas of those who participate in the session.
Legal Support for Activists and Organizers
Midnight Special Law Collective
Thursday, June 24 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * WSU Cohn: 224
Planning an action? Don’t know what to do about the legal situation? This workshop is for you! Legal support is an essential part of any direct action, and is most effective and accountable when it is done by folks who are directly involved in the organizing. From preparing your friends for arrest to organizing long-term court support, this skills-based workshop will empower you to provide legal support for a small action. We use role-plays and other participatory learning methods to cover topics such as: arrestee needs and how to meet them; tracking folks through the jail system; dealing with emergencies; finding and working with attorneys; and keeping cases political. We aim to offer you the tools and skills you need to help navigate your friends through the system safely and successfully. This workshop will be given by nonlawyer activists and is intended to be accessible to other nonlawyers.
Evening program at the New World From Below Convergence Center (Spirit of Hope Church)
Dinner
Food Not Bombs and the Detroit IWW
Thursday, June 24 * 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. * NWFB
Free food!
Hip-hop Fandango: Student/Farmworker Alliance Fund-raiser at USSF!
Thursday, June 24 * 8:00 p.m. to midnight * NWFB
Featuring:
* Rebel Diaz Arts Collective
* Olmeca
* Son Solidario
Donations of $7 to $20 at the door, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. BYOB.
This event is organized by the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the New World from Below Organizing Collectives.
The Student/Farmworker Alliance is a national network of students and youth organizing in direct partnership and solidarity with farmworkers to eliminate sweatshop conditions and modern-day slavery in the fields. It organizes closely with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a membership-led community organization in southwest Florida comprised largely of Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in agricultural and other low-wage jobs throughout the state. The alliance believes that only farmworkers can speak for themselves. It is dedicated to working with farmworkers for change, but will not act on their behalf. Instead, the Student/Farmworker Alliance takes its lead from the workers themselves. This affirms a belief in direct action and direct democracy, where people and communities act through their own power to control and change their own lives.
Facilitated Discussion Sessions
Thursday, June 24 * 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. * NWFB
FRIDAY JUNE 25th
Community-Supported Publishing: Print Media Strategies for Movement Building
AK Press
Friday, June 25 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Woodward Academy: 1443
For centuries, print media has been an essential part of movement building. From the hand-produced leaflets, pamphlets, and newspapers of our past to today’s more widely distributed magazines and books, the ability to print and distribute information plays an integral role in developing and sustaining community structures. What are the ways in which Left and community-oriented publishers both sustain and are sustained by the movements from which they grew? We will also look at strategic ways in which collaborations between the radical print media and like-minded organizations and political projects can strengthen movements for social change.
To Care Is to Struggle: Voices and Strategies on Care, Support, and Social Reproduction
Team Colors Collective, Benjamin Holtzman, Ashanti Alston, Philly Stands Up, and others
Friday, June 25 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Cobo Hall: DO-03A
This workshop will explore movement-building strategies centered on questions of care and support. Team Colors and friends will look at the how-to of creating initiatives around intimate violence, physical and mental illness/health, different abilities, child care and parenthood, gender and transgender health issues, and burnout. We will include voices organizing around care work; those examining the continued gendered nature of unwaged house and reproductive work; and collectives addressing health care, intimate violence, mental health, and other experiences and realities. Our intent is to interpret “care and support” broadly, focus on creating movements that address these experiences and realities generally, and discuss the need for initiatives organized around these experiences and realities, politically and practically.
From Climate Crisis to Collective Commons: Renewable Energy from Below
Institute for Social Ecology
Friday, June 25 * 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. * WSU Old Main: O134
Control over energy technologies and resources has long been a major factor in defining human power relations. In the current transition to renewable energy, social justice is far from inevitable and will only come about as the result of decisive collective action. If strategic steps are taken, the transition to renewable energy can offer a historic opportunity for communities to assume democratic control over their territories, resources, and lives; build more egalitarian relations of production and exchange; and catalyze a global reawakening to the social and ecological importance of the “collective commons.” Join us in discussion with activists, theorists, and community leaders as we look at new models for a just transition to renewable energy. Co-chaired by Brooke Lehman of the Institute for Social Ecology and Tiokasin Ghosthorse of First Voices Indigenous Radio.
Research for the Revolution: Radical Research Strategies for Movement Building
Team Colors Collective and Midnight Notes Collective, with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, Radical Reference, Dan Tucker of AREA Chicago, Julie Perini, Chris Carlsson, and others
Friday, June 25 * 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. * Cobo Hall: D2-10
This workshop will explore research techniques to strengthen our movements, campaigns, and organizations. The first half will consist of short presentations on different approaches to research; the second half will consist of small group discussions and practical skills development. While coordinated by the Midnight Notes and Team Colors collectives, numerous other organizations will be participating. Panelists will include radical theorists and scholars, community organizers, academics and public intellectuals, geographers and cartographers, research librarians, and artists. Topics include: coresearch, community listening sessions, class composition, radical cartography, interventionist and radical art practices, and the importance of theory. This workshop incorporates both strategies as well as nuts-and-bolts skills, and offers various strategies to produce knowledge about and from our movements as well as the communities of which they are a part.
Another Economy Is Possible: Communities in Solidarity
Common Action
Friday, June 25 * 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. * WSU Cohn: 222
Our current economic system isn’t working for people or the planet. What visions do you have for another economy—an economy based on the values of solidarity, equality, freedom, democracy, and sustainability? We will explore historical and contemporary examples of alternative economics in practice as well as discuss strategies for organizing for a new economy. This workshop is part of our work in the Northwest, where we ask participants to tell and write their stories of how the economic crisis has impacted them personally. We also explore the “intersectionality” of economic oppression, or how economic structures support and are supported by racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. We also point toward democratic and participatory, rather than state-directed, structures as possible solutions.
Reanimating Social Movement Histories through Visual Culture
Interference Archive and Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
Friday, June 25 * 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. * WSU Cohn: 224
In this workshop, participants will learn about the importance of culture in social movement history. The presenters (Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee) have done extensive archival research to unearth the history of social movement cultures through posters, video, sound, and other materials. This will be a multimedia presentation with case studies of moments in which cultural production played a crucial role in movement development (including Antiapartheid, Antinuclear, and other movements). A participatory discussion will follow the presentation about the possible role that culture can/is playing in movements today, and the ways that learning history can activate and inform present struggles.
Weaving Urban Fabrics: Spaces and Strategies for Building Social Justice Networks in the City
Red Emma’s and the Baltimore Development Cooperative for The City From Below
Friday, June 25 * 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. * Westin Book Cadillac Hotel: WB1
This workshop draws on our experiences with organizing the City from Below conference in 2009 and the STEW grassroots fund-raising dinners that followed as well as the lessons we have learned in Baltimore working on associated projects like Red Emma’s, Participation Park, the Indypendent Reader, and 2640. It will explore the potentials and pitfalls of creating intentional, grassroots spaces with an eye toward helping build and sustain informal networks and networking between different social justice struggles taking place in the same metropolitan region.
Challenging Homeland Repression
Save Our Civil Liberties and National Lawyers Guild
Friday, June 25 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Woodward Academy: 1437
Using the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit as a starting point, this workshop will chronicle human rights and civil liberties abuses surrounding recent summits, political conventions, mass mobilizations, and other public events. Right-wing groups are given free rein to carry firearms in public and protest events where the president is present, yet progressives, people of color, workers, and immigrants are often met with repression, detention, and violence. This workshop will probe the larger historical and political context for the ever-increasing militarization of the police and the heavy-handed crackdown on dissent that continues to flourish in the Obama administration. Topics include the proliferation of “less-lethal” weapons, use of “pain compliance” techniques, local collaborations with federal law enforcement, surveillance, preemptive arrests, and grand juries and informants. The “Miami Model” and “Green Scare” will also be discussed alongside strategies to challenge homeland repression. Presented by Naomi Archer, Luis Fernandez, David Meieran, and Debbie Russell.
Community-Based Exchange: Exploring Mutual Aid Models
Rock Dove Collective
Friday, June 25 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Cobo Hall: 02-42
This popular education-style workshop will draw on our experiences building a mutual-aid based resource for community health and wellness. We’ll share a brief history of how we came together and evolved our collective’s work. Early on, we made a commitment to improve access to mainstream and alternative wellness modalities in activist communities and among traditionally marginalized groups. This has meant promoting mutual aid, low-cost, and free wellness via our provider network, referral services, tip sheets, and monthly skill shares. We’ve always placed self-care and support as our highest priority. While we organize around health, it’s our hope that this model of community-based exchange will be useful for other collectives looking to explore mutual aid projects (exchanging services for barter or trade). By sharing the strengths and challenges of our work, and insights from participants, we’re hoping to expand our sense of possible strategies for supporting thriving communities.
Homeless Resistance
Picture the Homeless
Friday, June 25 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * WSU Old Main: 1137
As the housing crisis deepens, more and more people are being displaced from their homes—living on the streets, in shelters, tent cities, and foreclosed homes, and doubled up with friends and family. The cops routinely harass these same folks, and the targeting of low-income people of color is a central strategy of government when neighborhoods begin the process of gentrification. But what are homeless people doing about it? Starting from the assumption that homelessness is an intentional consequence of the capitalist system, this workshop explores the hidden history of homelessness as the result of conscious policies of displacement, and brings together the broader social justice movement to discuss the pioneering work of Picture the Homeless in New York City to reclaim vacant property, challenge racist patterns of law enforcement, and ensure that economic development benefits all of the city’s residents.
Teaching for Social Justice: Spaces for Radical Education
The Experimental College of the Twin Cities and Resistance in Brooklyn
Friday, June 25 * 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. * Cobo Hall: D3-26
This workshop is designed to bring together radical educators working within a variety of institutional and organizational settings. Through panel presentations and participant discussion groups, we will facilitate a dialogue on the relationships between educating, organizing, and movement building as well as the obstacles and advantages of “teaching for social justice” within different kinds of educational institutions. Panel presentations will address topics including curriculum development, popular education pedagogy, free schools, and social justice in the college classroom. Following panel presentations, participants will form smaller discussion groups based on shared interests and strategic concerns.
Evening program at the New World From Below Convergence Center (Spirit of Hope Church)
Dinner
Food Not Bombs and the Detroit IWW
Friday, June 25 * 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. * NWFB
Free food!
New World from Below Collaborative Book Party
Come celebrate recent radical publishing with AK Press, Autonomedia, the Institute for Anarchist Studies, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Microcosm Publishing, Team Colors Collective, PM Press, author Jordan Flaherty and artist Seth Tobocman, and many others.
Friday, June 25 * 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. * NWFB
Beer and wine will be served, books will be available for sale, and a short presentation from current radical authors will take place at 8:00 p.m., including:
* Benjamin Holtzman, editor of SICK: A Collaborative Zine on Physical Illness (Microcosm Publishing, 2010)
* Cindy Milstein, author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations (AK Press,2010)
* Jeff Conant, author of The Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista
Insurgency (AK Press, 2010)
* Jordan Flaherty, author of Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena 6 (Haymarket, 2010)
* Josh MacPhee, editor of Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today (PM Press, 2009)
* Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, authors of Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas (Microcosm Publishing, 2010)
* Seth Tobocman, author and artist of Understanding the Crash (Soft Skull, 2010)
* Team Colors Collective, editors of and contributors to Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (AK Press, 2010)
* Turbulence Collective, authors of What Would It Mean to Win? (PM Press, 2010)
SATURDAY, JUNE 26th
Saturday program at the New World From Below Convergence Center (Spirit of Hope Church)
Brunch!
Food Not Bombs and the Detroit IWW
Saturday, June 26 * 11:30 to 1:30 p.m. * NWFB
Recover from the madness with a free brunch.
Dinner
Food Not Bombs and the Detroit IWW
Saturday, June 26 * 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. * NWFB
Free food!
Postconvergence Celebration and Folk/Punk Show at (A) USSF!
Saturday, June 25 * 8:00 p.m. to midnight * NWFB
Featuring:
* The Last Internationale
* Born in a Cent
* And more artists TBA
Donations will be taken at the door, but no one will be turned away for a lack of funds. BYOB.