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Mutual Aid: Host an Anarchist Speaker
north america / mexico |
education |
press release
Wednesday August 19, 2009 03:59 by Cindy Milstein - Institute for Anarchist Studies
The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is proud to make available the following dynamic, politically engaged speakers: Ashanti Alston, Kazembe Balagun, Alexis Bhagat, Harjit Singh Gill, Matt Hern, Mark Lance, Josh MacPhee, Andréa Maria, Todd May, Cindy Milstein, and Shiri Pasternak. Each speaker will support the good work that your political group is doing, and in turn, will use some or all of any honorarium that your collective, university, or organization provides to contribute to the IAS as a project. In case you aren’t yet familiar with the IAS, we aim to encourage public intellectualism and popular education to critically explore social domination along with reconstructive visions of a free society. We provide grants to radical writers and translators worldwide, organize both the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition (RAT) conference and Radical Theory Tracks, offer editorial and publishing assistance, put out an online and print publication, "Perspectives on Anarchist Theory," to cultivate community among those interested in the development of anarchism, and are starting up a book series in collaboration with AK Press. The IAS is also part of a larger movement to radically transform society; moreover, we are internally democratic and work in solidarity with people around the globe who share our values. For more on the IAS, see http://www.anarchist-studies.org
Please look over the list of speakers below, all of whom are either current or past IAS board members, or have received an IAS grant. By hosting a speaker, you mutually aid both your own political work and the IAS. You not only create an exciting intellectual event in your community that can also underscore your own organizing efforts but you use your resources to support the work of the IAS and the radical scholars it supports. Your collective, college or university, infoshop or bookstore, or nonprofit organization is expected to provide all transportation costs, lodging or lodging costs (where applicable), and an honorarium. Each speaker will then donate from 50 to 100 percent of the honorarium to support the mission and projects of the IAS.
For more information and/or to schedule a speaker(s), please contact us by e-mail: speakers@anarchiststudies.org.
Speakers:
ASHANTI ALSTON is a former member of the Black Panther Party and ex-political prisoner. Formerly an IAS board member, he publishes the zine "Anarchist Panther" and has been a guest lecturer at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, speaking on the Panthers and the history of Black nationalist movements. He has spent time in Chiapas, Mexico, studying the autonomous structure of Zapatista communities and working on his memoirs. Ashanti resides in New York, where he is presently the national co-chair of the Jericho Amnesty Movement, and an active member of Estacion Libre, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and Critical Resistance.
Topics: lessons from the Black Panther Party; the history of Black nationalist movements; Black and postmodernist anarchism; and the relevance of the Zapatistas.
KAZEMBE BALAGUN is a writer, educator, and theorist living in New York City. A former member of the Student Liberation Action Movement and a current member of Estacion Libre, his writings cover the cross-sections of Marxism, anarchism, Black liberation, queer theory, movement history, and popular culture. Kazembe was awarded an IAS grant for his work-in-progress "Queering the X: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and the Third World." Currently, he is the outreach coordinator for the Brecht Forum.
Topics: queer theory; African American cultural history; and Black liberation.
ALEXIS BHAGAT is a sound artist, curator, and writer based in New York and India. He is the coeditor (with Lize Mogel) of "An Atlas of Radical Cartography" (Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008), a collection of art-activist maps and critical texts; the coeditor (with Greg Gangemi) of "Sound Generation" (Autonomedia, forthcoming), a colloquy based on interviews with twenty-one sound artists and composers; and cocurator of the Audience sound art festival. Alexis is active in peace and justice movements, walking throughout the world with the Nipponzan Myohoji buddhist order. He was a longtime board member of the IAS and a member of the "Perspectives" editorial committee.
Topics: anarchist perspectives on theory and history of art and architecture; buddhism and anarchism; connecting the peace movement to prison abolition and local autonomy; language and authority.
HARJIT SINGH GILL is a South Asian American activist and a board member of the IAS. Having completed undergraduate work in sociology and a master's degree in humanities, he is currently a masters in social work candidate, focusing on co-occurring disorders (substance abuse and psychiatric issues). Harjit’s political research interests also include the rethinking of national liberation struggles, and the formalizing of Anarchist People of Color (APOC) tendencies. His work is informed by a commitment to anti-imperialist, feminist, and queer-positive perspective toward collective liberation, and a keen interest in counseling/social work as liberatory practice. Harjit is a Unitarian Universalist, and maintains a vegan and straight-edge lifestyle. He spends as much time as possible in the company of his comrades in his hometown of Oakland, and travels whenever he can.
Topics: anti-imperialist legacies and national liberation struggles from an anarchist position; liberatory social services work; introduction to anarchism; moving punk beyond a subculture into a movement for social change.
MATT HERN lives and works in East Vancouver with his partner and daughters where he directs the Purple Thistle Centre and co-founded Car-Free Vancouver Day. His writing has been published on all six continents and translated into many languages, and he continues to lecture widely. He holds a PhD in urban studies and teaches at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. His most recent book is "Everywhere All the Time" (AK Press), and others include "Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better" and "Field Day: Getting Society Out of School." Hıs new book Back Home (fall 2009) is an examination of Vancouver’s development and design.
Topics: radically democratic urbanism; deschooling, alternative schools, critical pedagogy (and critiques of); safety/security/risk discourses; social ecology and counterinstitutions; and ecological urban design.
MARK LANCE is a professor of philosophy, and professor and chair of the program on justice and peace at Georgetown University. He is widely published on philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Mark has recently completed a book with Rebecca Kukla, forthcoming from Harvard University Press, called "'Yo!' and 'Lo!': The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons." At Georgetown, he teaches a yearly course on anarchism. He is a board member of the IAS, and was a member of the editorial collective of "Perspectives in Anarchist Theory." Mark has been an activist on a wide range of issues for over twenty years, and publishes in a number of activist journals. Currently, he is writing a book on "constructive anarchism."
Topics: Palestine; U.S. foreign policy; democratic theory; nonviolence; constructive anarchism; introduction to anarchism; and a wide range of issues in philosophy.
JOSH MacPHEE is an artist, curator, and activist currently living in New York. His work often revolves around themes of radical politics, privatization, and public space. He has had two books recently released: "Realizing the Impossible: Art against Authority" (AK Press, coedited with Erik Reuland) and "Reproduce & Revolt" (Soft Skull Press, coedited with Favianna Rodriguez). He organizes the Celebrate People’s History Poster Series and is part of the political art collective Justseeds.org. Recently, he curated a large-scale exhibition of the art and culture of international social movements titled Signs of Change, which opened in New York City in September 2008.
Topics: stencil pirates: a history of the street stencil; taking control of your visual landscape; and printing against the grain: activist printmaking from 1960s to now.
ANDRÉA MARIA is a journalist, researcher, and translator. She has organized for migration justice and against gentrification, and reported from occupied Iraq and Haiti. Andréa has been involved in local anti-poverty and Palestine solidarity efforts in Toronto, and was a board member of the IAS and co-organizer of the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference. She currently helps make television.
Topics: anti-imperialism inside fortress North America; international solidarity; new media and tactical resistance to capitalism; current international affairs from an anti-authoritarian perspective.
TODD MAY is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. He teaches and writes in recent French thought, particularly poststructuralism. Todd is the author of "The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism," and has written and spoken extensively on the relationship between poststructuralism and anarchism. In addition to his academic work, he has been involved in liberation struggles from gay rights to anti-apartheid work to the Palestinian rights struggle. While living in Pittsburgh, Todd was the co-coordinator of campaigns against aid to the Contras and the anti-Gulf War (I) campaign. He also served as national codirector of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and was a member of the IAS board.
Topics: the intersection of philosophy and anarchism; poststructuralism; anarchist theory; political theory; and Palestine.
CINDY MILSTEIN is a co-organizer of the Renewing Anarchist Tradition conference and the Radical Theory Track, a board member with the IAS, and a member of Black Sheep Books collective in Montpelier, Vermont. For many years, she taught at the "anarchist summer school" known as the Institute for Social Ecology. She does grassroots political work at home and public speaking anywhere else. Her work appears in anti-authoritarian periodicals and the following anthologies: "Realizing the Impossible: Art against Authority" (AK Press), "Globalize Liberation" (City Lights Books), "Confronting Capitalism" (Soft Skull Press), and "Only a Beginning" (Arsenal Pulp Press). Her own book, "Anarchism and Its Aspirations," is forthcoming on AK Press.
Topics: anarchism, direct democracy, contemporary anti-capitalist and horizontalist movement(s); capitalist globalization and today's changing statecraft; Murray Bookchin's legacy; and various current issues from an anarchist perspective.
SHIRI PASTERNAK is a Toronto-based writer, researcher, and organizer. She is the coordinator of Barriere Lake Solidarity Toronto--a solidarity group for the Algonquins of Barriere Lake--and for Abandonment Issues, a broad coalition of community groups in Toronto that are pushing for a Use-It-or-Lose-It bylaw to expropriate abandoned buildings and wasted infrastructure to turn into low-income housing. She has contributed chapters to "Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade, and the Globalization of Hunger" (Toward Freedom Press), "Gene Taboos" (SUNY Press, forthcoming), and to many journals and magazines, such as zmag, Critical Planning, Progressive Planning, and the Centre for Bioethics. Shiri is currently a board member of the IAS.
Topics: the commons and the co-optation of the commons; colonial history of property rights regimes; intellectual property; and anarchist theories of property.
Again, to contact us about booking these speaker(s), please e-mail: speakers@anarchiststudies.org.
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