2013 Workshop Schedule
Book Fair Workshop Locations:
The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Bluestocking Books
12pm – 1pm: Solidarity Organizing: Houston’s Toxic East End
This presentation will focus on organizers experiences in the largely Latin@ community of Manchester in Houston’s toxic East End which is surrounded by the petrochemical industry and is forced to breathe the cancerous emissions from tar sands refining.
2pm – 3pm: Anarcho-Feminist Panel
Round table discussion on topics revolving around: Architecture and Patriarchy, Property and Nuclear Patriarchy Family, Gender Revolution, Personal Experiences, Art and Creation, Education, Sex and Freedom, and Proposals. AN ALL ANARCHO-FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE!
4pm – 5pm: Ecodefense
The “ecodefense” panel will present recent environmental direct action happening around the country and discuss strategies for more cohesive resistance across urban, rural, and suburban landscapes. Many of the folks involved in frontline environmental direct action are anarchists or work in groups that use common anarchist practices and/or tactics. Presented by Jordan
5pm – 6pm: Flatbush Rebellion and the Murder of Kimani Gray
A discussion on how ultra left communists and anarchists in NYC have dealt with the events in Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY. What does it mean for multi-racial organizing in the city? What to do with race-baiting? Accusations of outsider agitation? Where was APOC and the POC left in the city? Where was the Black left?
7pm – 8pm: Prisoners Are Speaking: Are We Listening?
Presented by NYC Anarchist Black Cross, PM Press, and Resistance in Brooklyn and including panelists Marina Ortiz, Russell Maroon Shoatz III, with facilitation by Matt Meyer.Prisoners in resistance are speaking out in books, letters, artwork, and through deeds themselves. Some are imprisoned for their political actions in social movements, others are survivors of mass incarceration and politicized by experience and solidarity. They act and speak to incite, inspire, and leave movement legacies behind. Speaking against oppression, silence, invisibility, and oblivion, they call out for solidarity in and outside of the walls. For those of us who are not incarcerated: Are we reading? Are we listening? Are we responding? Are we carrying forward the visions we share?
ABC No Rio
12pm – 1pm: Black Flags and Windmills: Anarchy and Creating Power from Below
This presentation based loosely on Scott Crow’s (workshop presenter) recent book as a foundation for a visual, fast moving and engaging presentation of stories to show what ordinary people can do to change their own worlds and create power from below without governments. The presentation seeks through a collection of stories to show how the philosophy of anarchism has shaped and changed modern political movements. Additionally the presentation is equal parts personal story, radical history and organizing philosophies asks questions about how we engage in social change, the real and perceived challenges presented by the state and dares us to rethink our grassroots movements in how we engage for the future.
1pm – 2pm: Don’t Leave your Friends Behind: Supporting Families in Our Movements
This will be a discussion between both parents and non-parents on the need for support and how childless allies can support families’ continued participation in social justice movements. Let’s build a truly all-ages, all-inclusive revolution!
Cultural Center Main Floor Space Back Room
3pm – 4pm: WW3 Illustrated
World War 3 Illustrated is a radical political comic book which started in 1979 and is still going strong. 2 generations of World War 3 cartoonists will present their work with music.
5pm – 6pm: Open Utopia
A discussion of Thomas More’s Utopia and how we might understand it as an “imaginal machine” to open up our understanding of thinking about and building utopias.
Cultural Center Room #202 (2nd Floor)
2pm – 3pm: What can Anarchists learn from Marx’s Economic Theory and Vice Versa
Anarchism is essential for a vision of a post-capitalist economy, but Marx’s economic critique is highly useful for understanding how capitalism is working today, the current crisis, and how to fight it. Discussion will be encouraged.
Cultural Center Room #203 (2nd Floor)
12pm – 1pm: The Anarchist Involvement with Occupy DC: Tactics, Theory, Practice & Conflict
Anarchists have been involved in almost every major political movement in history and in this presentation will explore anarchist participation at the occupations in its first stages in general. Discussion will include the Occupation in Washington DC where presenters will break down the the expectations, tactics, the unique experience and challenges faced by local long term radical/anarchists organizers that pre-dated the occupation. Also presenters will explore how built communities are having to face, at times, a variety of ideologies that often contradict anarchist principles or practices that were adopted by the consensus process and others. This will also look into why most local anarchists retreated from the occupation way before it ended, and what happen to the very that remained.
1pm – 2pm: Custer Died for Your Sins: How to be an Indigenous Ally
Indigenous societies have long served as working examples and inspiration to anarchists. This workshop seeks to aid people in learning how to respectfully engage, support, and learn about these traditions without co-opting them. Additionally, while many anarchists recognize the importance of Indigenous issues, our immediate struggles often lie at the peripheries of people’s awareness and actions. We hope, through this workshop, to make indigenous struggles a base for all anarchist practices on Turtle Island. Additionally, we seek to aid in solidarity by making creative connections between anarchists and Indigenous folks.
2pm – 3pm: Everytime I Check my Messages, Somebody Thinks I’m Dead
Presenter Daniel will read passages from his self-published memoir on Occupy Wall Street, called “Every Time I Check My Messages, Somebody Thinks I’m Dead.” Among the many colorful anecdotes in it, his text also discusses the debate between forms of socialism with central planning and anarchist ones. This is open to all people of color!
3pm – 5pm: Special Workshop Forum on Safe Space/Mediation and Conflict Resolution
This workshop will focus on self-management, mediation, and group consensus building, as well as ways to build safe spaces within an anti-authoritarian paradigm, without resorting to traditional state remedies such as surveillance, gender/race-marking, third-party therapeutic mediation. Groups invited to this special workshop are: The New York Peace Institute, Support NY, The Icarus Project, and Transforming Conflict Lab. We are inviting all Book Fair participants and visitors to this important workshop forum to voice their thoughts and address an issue that has been affecting anarchists across NYC, what is safer space and who and how one should practice this in a pragmatic method benefiting all. This workshop forum is meant to be a healthy and safe environment, discussion and dialogue. The Book Fair’s Safe Space Policy is to be upheld in this space to the highest level otherwise you will be asked to leave immediately.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Bluestockings Books
12pm – 1pm: Decisive Ecological Warfare
This presentation is about connecting the urgency of climate change with the resistance strategy called ‘Decisive Ecological Warfare.’ It will include a brief discussion on three possible scenarios for the future depending on the level of resistance mounted against industrialism, the differences between aboveground and underground work, and the phases of what decisive ecological warfare would look like in a world where no protracted warfare involving the masses is likely. It will also include a talk on open-source warfare as practiced by MEND in Nigeria and as outlined in the strategy of the book Deep Green Resistance. This is a presentation about local, autonomous strategies for resistance.
1pm – 2pm: Anarchism and Left-Wing Radicalism in Post-Soviet Belarus
This workshop’s presentation will speak about some non-commercial projects (as well as so-called libertarian one) that managed to exist (and some even to survive) in Belarus, on one hand, without help from the western neoliberal elites, on the other, without help from the current authoritarian ‘left’ goverment in Belarus. Jury will discuss and show videos about such projects as squatting in Minsk, Belarus; radical library ‘Rebel Studies Library’ (www.rebels-library.org); non-commercial space ‘La Mora’; recent repressions against anarchist activists and something else…
ABC No Rio
12pm – 1pm: Pirate Party: Why the Hell would Anarchists Run for Office?
The Pirate Party is what happens when activists get so angry at the State, they will even lower themselves to seeking public office to make a difference. Since its birth 7 years ago in European hacker communities, the Pirate Party has been the fastest growing political movement in the world. It began as a one-issue party aiming to abolish copyright law, and grew to a more holistic philosophy about a do-it-yourself, cooperative society — which starts to sound pretty anarchist when you think about it. Presenter Zacqary Adam Green will discuss the history of the movement, its future, and how one can get involved.
1pm – 2pm: International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS) and Anarchism
This will be a presentation about Anarchism and the International Organization for a Participatory Society. Building on the incite and vision of the global anarchist movement IOPS is a international non-sectarian revolutionary organization that is anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-authoritarian. With more then 3000 interim members in 90 countries, communicating in 10 languages IOPS has articulated visionary aims to bring people together who wish to organize around a shared vision for the future based on self-management, equity, diversity and solidarity. Members include, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Vandana Shiva, David Graber and more. It advocates long term vision sufficiently to inspire and better organize current activity, without implementing detailed blueprints that transcend movement needs and knowledge.
3pm – 4pm: Founding a Radical History Museum
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization located in the East Village of Manhattan. Our mission is to preserve history and promote scholarship of grassroots activism by researching and archiving local efforts to create community spaces in urban areas. As an ecological museum, it also promotes environmentally sound, community-based, urban ecologies though the support of communal and public ‘reclaimed’ urban spaces. There will be a slideshow presentation highlighting the creation of these sustainable, vibrant spaces as well as discussing the founding of the museum, which is based in the storefront of the legendary C-Squat.
4pm – 5pm: Be the Weapon
This skillshare workshop will help People of Color, Trans Gender,and Antifa folks defend themselfs while learning how to deal with larger male attackers, and learn how to use different body parts other then your fist. Come learn out of the box thinking defense skills. Also learn how to fight in close quarters, defend and attack at the same time.
Cultural Center Main Floor Space Back Room
12pm – 1pm: Occupy and Anarchy
The workshop will detail the anarchist roots of the occupy movement and aid in the launch of a new OWS Direct Action Network.
2pm – 3pm: Inequality and the Economic Crisis
Presenter Professor Andrew Kilman (Pace University) will discuss about the causes and non-causes of rising income inequality in the U.S., whether rising inequality was an underlying cause of the Great Recession, and how the recession and continued economic sluggishness have affected inequality. These are issues that have been of much interest throughout the left, as well as the whole society.
4pm – 5pm: Against the Nation: Anti-National Politics in Germany
Following the German reunification process in the 1990s, a new anti-national movement appeared in Germany that rejected all forms of nationalism, including the desirability of national communities and the existence of the nation-state itself. In Against the Nation, Robert Ogman covers the background of this movement – the rising Neo-Nazism, racist mob violence, restriction in immigration policies and growing state power – and its urge to organize society around other principles than nationality and borders. Robert Ogman was involved in a wide variety of Left social movements in the United States before pursuing studies in political theory. His interest in anti-national perspectives led him to Berlin where he resides today.
5pm – 6pm: Anarchist People of Color (APOC) Caucus
Despite ostensibly common goals of ending systems of domination and exploitation and creating communities based on mutual aid and respect in their stead, anarchist people of color have long struggled with racism and ignorance in the broader (white) anarchist community. this caucus is intended to provide a space for anarchists and anti-authoritarians of color to connect, discuss common struggles, and discuss the utility of organizing autonomously as “people of color.”
Cultural Center Room #202 (2nd Floor)
11am – 12pm: Why Anarchists Should Care About the IMF, World Bank, and G20?
The IMF and the World Bank spread the worst kind of neoliberal capitalism. They disrupt traditional communities and economies, and leave a trail of devastation in their wake. The G20 facilitate this process, among other ills. Come participate in a facilitated discussion on these global institutions by researchers and activists. Drawing from the unique histories of the peoples of Ecuador, Greece, India, Malawi, and other countries, we’ll discuss some of the most harmful impacts of the Washington Consensus. And we’ll discuss the response to these institutions by anarchists and others. The Washington DC anarchists hosting the workshop are also organizing for the DC summit of the IMF and World Bank, as the G20 Finance Ministers and the heads of the G20 central banks also meet, April 18-21.
12pm – 1pm: Do We Need Masters? (Or Do They Need Us?)
Koshek will give a 35 minute presentation that will show that America has a hidden caste system where three major types of people exist: 1. the Masters, 2. those who serve the Masters, and 3. a tiny population that refuses to play the game.
This will be followed by a discussion. We will ask: What determines one’s position in the hidden caste system? Who is making up all the rules of the game? Why didn’t we notice this before? Do the Master’s deserve their position and are we just being envious? Who is entitled and why? If authority is based on belief and the peoples’ support, what would happen if the support is suddenly taken away? What are the different ways we can remove this support that the Masters depend upon? What if we change the rules of the game? Does acting differently in our world change our world?
1pm – 2pm: The Climate Will Not Be Dumpsterd
This discussion will synthesize the latest scientific findings on the state of Earth’s climate systems and examine the contributions social anarchism can provide as regards the development of radical, collective interventions aimed at disrupting the death-drive of capital, in defense of life.
2pm – 3pm: ‘Let’s Build it Together’: Protest Camps and Autonomous Politics
This workshop begins with a historical overview from 1932 to the present looking at how protest camps have been organized. Participants will engage in a hands-on task exploring and creating the organizational infrastructures and associated practices needed to sustain a protest camp. The session will conclude by returning to questions of autonomy as they emerge in our efforts to plan and imagine non-capitalist spaces and post/non-capitalist ways of relating to each other.
4pm – 5pm: A Forum on the Police
New York Year Zero would like to invite all to an open forum on our New York Police Department. We hope to hear some different analyses, reportbacks, and ideas, as we continue to strategize towards developing a stronger force against the police.