2017 Workshops – 2023 NYC Anarchist Book Fair

2017 Workshop Schedule

11:00am-12:15pm

Conflict Resolution/Accountability/Healing Panel (Assembly Hall)
“The Idea with this workshop is several people from different perspectives, intellectual and social spheres, addressing the issue and maybe fielding some questions around the conflict/resolution/accountability/healing problematic. Panelists will be asked to describe their work and relationship to the field, name particularly troubling or inspiring trends they see in it, offer theoretical and practical models for “solutions” or otherwise new potential approaches to conflict/resolution/accountability/healing, and collate resources for the interested or concerned.”
(Kalan Sherrard, anarchist artist/activist)

Intro to Threat Modeling (Garden Room)
Cryptosquad Workshop in collaboration with MACC AntiDoxx, who will launch their website for protecting the online security or yourself and your comrades in a fun and easy way. CryptoSquad NYC will give an introduction to threat modeling, including such concepts as situational analysis, actor/info mapping, threat assessment, security indicators, and responding to threats. Great workshop for activists, organizers, and individuals interested in operational security.
(MACC AntiDoxx (MAD) aims to defend our comrades from alt-right doxxing and state issued subpoenas. We develop strategies and training to safeguard our comrades’ personal information and communications online. Building a radical form of participatory politics requires defense of information, and MAD is here to help)

Nonviolence Ain’t What It Used To Be (Meeting Space)
Shon Meckfessel from Seattle gives a presentation on his book, Nonviolence Ain’t What It Used To Be.
US social movements face many challenges. One of their most troublesome involves the question of nonviolence. Civil disobedience and symbolic protest have characterized many struggles in the US since the Civil Rights era, but conditions have changed. Corporate media has consolidated, the police have militarized, dissent has been largely co-opted and institutionalized, but the strategic tools radicals employ haven’t necessarily kept pace. Our narratives, borrowed from movements of the past, are falling short.
Nonviolence Ain’t What It Used to Be maps emerging, more militant approaches that are developing to fill the gap, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter. It offers new angles on a seemingly intractable debate, introducing ideas that carve out a larger middle-ground between camps in order to chart an effective path forward.
Shon Meckfessel activist / writer / He has appeared as a social movement scholar and advocate in the New York Times and on Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, BBC, Radio, and Fox News. Shon is a member of the English Faculty at Highline College.

Neugenics: exposing artificial selection & becoming ungovernable (red/black Space)
“We know the entire system is a loaded selection roulette serving the interests of the wealthy”
“Dr. Alexandre, MD/Master Public Health, takes on the ongoing elitist project of population selection by means of “Capital Selection”, i.e. using financial power as master criteria to pick and choose which groups are supposed to thrive and reproduce, versus the rest of us – condemned to wither and die off. Governance has been reduced to herd management, a process Dr. Carvalho calls “Neugenics”.
With our current backdrop of climate collapse and mass migrations, one has only to do the math: •Revolution is Survival• Using hard evidence and Darwinian analysis, one is able to expose this farce and point ways forward.”
(Alexandre Carvalho is an anarchist / activist / OWS organizer / doctor- physician and poet)

12:30pm-1:30pm

Indigenous Sovereignty and Resistance from the perspective of an Indigenous Anarchist (Assembly Hall)
The resistance of indigenous communities/tribes around the world has shown how we participate in tactics and direct actions whose purpose are about self government and liberation from colonial settlements. Abby Rojas will be speaking about issues affecting Nigeria, Standing Rock, The Zapatista in Chiapas, and the Mapuche in Chile. Also about Pacific Islanders indigenous sovereignty and the resistance movements that have rose in Australia within the aboriginals of this land. This is only to name a few.
(Abby Rojas, is an organizer and together with Hoods4Justice and Shut It Down both Anarchist/Radical people of color led organizations and collectives fighting Police brutality, for Trans and Queer rights, and against Environmental Racism. They worked with the Red Warrior Camp in Standing Rock who was a militant camp on the frontline and will be bringing a Water Protector as a co-speaker, also worked close with Mothers against Meth Alliance that is originally a Pine Ridge Resistance group against Meth and it’s affect on Native American communities. They do a lot of work surrounding black/indigenous and brown resistance.)

The Rojava Revolution and the International Struggle (Garden Room)
The revolution in Rojava is the most successful anarchist-inspired political movement of our time. As such, it has created a new paradigm for social change. It has developed unparalleled models for self-governance through local councils, pragmatic feminism, and generalized self-defense. For anarchists in an increasingly material battle against white supremacist society there is much we can learn from the political success in Rojava.
As facts on the ground are changing day to day in Northern Syria, we will give an update about the current geopolitical conditions in the region, and what it means for the revolution. We will also look at the revolutionary bodies and models in practice in Rojava.Finally, as many comrades flock to the region in defense of the revolution, and to expand its influence, we will look at the best ways to support them and the ongoing struggle towards liberatory social organization.
(Rojava Solidarity)

Maoism and the Chinese Revolution (Meeting Space)
This book offers the novice reader a sweeping overview of five decades of revolutionary history, and traces the development of Mao Zedong’s politics amid the growing contradictions of the Chinese revolutionary project. All the while, it maintains a perspective sympathetic to the everyday workers and peasants who, in some moments, stood poised to make the revolution anew. This talk supports anti-authoritarian politics by providing an anti-authoritarian reading of one of the key revolutions of the 20th century, which can inform how people take action today. Its critical take on Maoism is particularly important since Mao and the Chinese revolution were a significant reference point for the last significant wave of social movement in the U.S.–in in the 1960s/70s–and continues to hold weight especially in POC movements.
(Elliott Liu is an organizer with the Bronx Social Center and Take Back the Bronx)

The Base Fight Training (red/black Space)
This skillshare is a 2 hour self-defense class, with the first hour covering such things as scene assessment, awareness and striking techniques, and the second hour covering ground defense. Learn how to defend yourself and others with this intro class. Workshop is 12:30-2:45pm.
(Members of The Base’s Fight Training program)

1:45pm-2:45pm

Sacco and Vanzetti: The Letters (Assembly Hall)
Live performance/ reading of script written by Mark Shankar (Gravity Free Press) based on letters written by Sacco and Vanzetti, compiled by Felix Frankfurter, who was part of the legal team to defend them at the US Supreme court. Ninety years ago, two Italian anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1977, Massachusetts issued a resolution: “… any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.” Sacco, a shoemaker, and Vanzetti, a fish seller, had not received a fair trial. During seven years of solitary confinement, as they awaited execution, Sacco and Vanzetti wrote letters to family, friends and supporters. Their example challenges us to examine our own time in the light of the crippling influence of fear, political hysteria and xenophobia.
(A dramatic reading of selections of their letters, edited by Marc Shanker and Edwina Williams, will be performed by actors Michael Griffin and Patrick Mellen.)

How to do Jail and Court Support for Arrested Comrades (Garden Room)
We’re anarchists. We’re not going to stop getting arrested at demos any time soon. We are also expecting a higher level of repression in the coming years, as we fight the rise of fascism, neo-nazism, and the alt-right. We haven’t always been well-prepared for arrests. This workshop will help you understand what happens immediately when someone is arrested and how you can be helpful in the first 24 hours or so afterwards. Learn how to figure out what precinct they are taken to and when they will get out, or whether they will need help at the courthouse the next day. Find out how you can get information about arrested friends and comrades, and how to anticipate what they will need from you.
(MACC Legal is a committee of the NYC Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, which is organized under the guiding principles of horizontalism, direct democracy and direct action)

#Living on the ZAD (zone a défendre/ zone to defend) – (Meeting Space)
Experimental ways to live and to fight / Radicals from around the world, local farmers and villagers, citizen groups, trade unionists and naturalists, refugees and runaways, squatters and climate justice activists and many others, are organising to protect the 4000 acres of land against the airport and its world. Government officials called this place “a territory lost to the republic”. Its occupants named it: la zad. In the winter of 2012, thousands of riot police attempted to evict the zone, but they faced a determined and diverse resistance, which culminated in a 40,000 people demonstration in order to rebuild some of what had been destroyed by the French State. Less than a week later, the police was forced to stop what they had called “Operation Cesar”. Since then, the zad has been a laboratory of new ways of living, rooted in collaborations between all those who make up the diversity of this movement. Despite the challenges it is facing – notably because of its inherent diversity of visions – the anti-airport movement agreed on a shared framework to radically rethink how to organise and work the freed land. This framework is based on the creation of commons, the notion of usage rather than property and the demand that those who fought for the land are those who determine its use.
(One former and one current inhabitant of the zad. “We want to discuss possibilities to stop capitalist projects and to build autonomous zones in the long-term and on a large scale.”)

3:00pm-4:00pm

Handle with Fierce Care: MACC Anarchx Feministx / Silvia Federici / Chiara Bottici (Assembly Hall)
This workshop will not only add to the inclusivity of the Anarchist Book Fair by making space for Femme, Trans, WOC, Latinx, and NGC folx, but would also exhibit a critical facet of the anarchist community. The MACC Anarchx-Feministx will host a workshop that explores how we handle ourselves and our communities with “fierce care”; that is, how do we demand and uphold opposition to the state while also fighting for our own bodies and voices? The Anarchx Feministx will lead folks in ways that allows everyone to have a say in this pro-femme space. We will conclude by asking ourselves how conversations on anti-state ideas and actions puts our work into practice.
(MACC Anarchx Feminstx sharing their mutual agreements to the group and how they fit under an anti-state ideology and practice. We will then have an informal panel with Silvia Federici (writer/feminist, activist) and Chiara Bottici (writer/feminist,activist) on the application of theory versus practice, however the direction of the conversation is up to the group that attends this workshop.
This workshop will be from 3:00pm-5:30pm.

NYC Branch of IWW: Lessons from Ongoing Campaigns (Garden Room)
The NYC branch of the IWW currently has three ongoing campaigns: SFU(organizing Midtown waitstaff), IU460 (organizing food service workers in Queens) and IWOC (organizing prisoners throughout the state). All three involve different kinds of workers, employ different organizing techniques and have seen different levels of success. This diversity has taught us a number of lessons, which we think could aid other organizing efforts throughout New York City.
Anarchist history (history of the IWW), prisoner support (IWOC), active solidarity (all campaigns), immigrant justice (IU460) and strategies for pushing forward a radical agenda in mainstream politics (SFU).
(IWW – Industrial Workers of the World – The IWW is a member-run union for all workers, a union dedicated to organizing on the job, in our industries and in our communities.)

Non-violence Divides Us All (Meeting Space)
A workshop that speaks about how no nonviolence theory often is racist, sexist, and exclusionary when it comes to movement and social spaces. Resistance has always been part of anarchist philosophy, and not having dialogue about it is keeping alternative resistance beyond nonviolence be constant in play. We will be using reference points on the zine we are intruding during the book fair call the nonviolence divide us all.
(Hoods4Justice is an anarchist poc trans and queer space focuses on decolonizing, mobilizing, to abolish and rebuild. / Michael Basillas and Christian Valencia from Hoods4Justice will be the presenters)

The Collaborative Gender Spectrum Workshop and Parade (red/black Space)
Workshop is about gender, assigned sex, and gender presentation. This is followed by an activity where participants create a collaborative gender spectrum by writing down things they either gender themselves OR see as being gendered by society and attaching them to a string with masculinity on one end and femininity on the other. As a group, we read across the spectrum and then the participants spend time thinking about where they feel they fall – today – on the spectrum. We decorate ourselves in a way we feel we aligns with our gender identity using props, makeup and costumes and have a parade. We recap at the end and briefly explore the experience of visibility as a take-home. This workshop inspires younger humans to explore the bounds of their socio-political experiences using creativity while instilling transparency, autonomy and understanding about gender presentation and gender identity, and the experience of visibility through fluid, horizontal community building.
(Raine Raine is an artist trans person and transhumanist. For two years have coordinated the not for profit space QuoLab, Savannah’s only explicitly queer DIY space for art, music, performance and social activism. Currently coordinating The World’s Third Smallest Music Festival in Savannah.)

4:15-5:30pm
Handle with Fierce Care: MACC Anarchx Feministx/ Silvia Federici / Chiara Bottici (Assembly Hall) [CONTINUED]
This workshop would not only add to the inclusivity of the Anarchist Book Fair by making space for Femme, Trans, WOC, Latinx, and NGC folx, but would also exhibit a critical facet of the anarchist community. The MACC Anarchx-Feministx will host a workshop that explores how we handle ourselves and our communities with “fierce care”; that is, how do we demand and uphold opposition to the state while also fighting for our own bodies and voices? The Anarchx Feministx will lead folks in ways that allows everyone to have a say in this pro-femme space. We will conclude by asking ourselves how conversations on anti-state ideas and actions puts our work into practice.
(MACC Anarchx Feminstx sharing their mutual agreements to the group and how they fit under an anti-state ideology and practice. We will then have an informal panel with Silvia Federici (writer/feminist, activist) and Chiara Bottici (writer/feminist,activist) on the application of theory versus practice, however the direction of the conversation is up to the group that attends this workshop.
This workshop will be from 3:00pm-5:30pm.

El significado del anarquismo actual (Una breve revisión de los últimos años y la visión del futuro del anarquismo)
“The meaning of current anarchism. A brief review of the last years and the vision of the future of anarchism” (Garden Room)
The intention of this workshop is to expand and collaborate with the idea offered by anarchism to humanity.
(Roles is an activist and collaborator of fanzine reaktor, (free reaction) / Musician in two different bands (Discordia (blackmetal) and rebuschaos (punkhc))

World War III Illustrated (Meeting Space)
Slideshow presentations by a number of cartoonists working with the magazine World War 3 Illustrated featuring Seth Tobocman, Sandy Jimenez and others.

Earth First! RoadShow (red/black Space)
Interactive Workshops/Games
Ground Games: stay safer and be exciting in the street!
As large mass protest becomes a regular activity across the country, how do we stay exciting and not become predictable? This skillshare explores ideas on what small groups can do, how to strategically push forward and what different kinds of events can allow as far as spontaneity, creativity and empowerment.

5:45pm-7:00pm

Burning Down the American Plantation: Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (Assembly Hall)
The foundation of the political conflict today does not begin with Trump, but is situated in the context of the US Civil War – a war that was never actually resolved. Slavery has never ended in the United States. Instead it was reinstituted after the war, expanded through mass incarceration, and normalized through the deputization of civil society against black people.
We will look at how we can orient our struggle towards the abolitionist movement, and the black freedom struggle. Following the lineage of the black struggle, from Nat Turner to the Black Liberation Army, we can learn from the most revolutionary traditions of our society. We will talk about our projects and how we are trying to build 21st century underground railroad coupled with a militant strategy. Could the formation of these new political projects catapult us out of the cycle of protests and help us create revolutionary organization? For insights we’ll analyze the Rojava Revolution.
(The Base is an anarchist political center in Bushwick, Brooklyn, committed to the dissemination of revolutionary left and anarchist ideas and organizing. )

Autonomous Art: Underground radical live art survival tactics (Garden Room)
Explore issues such as: /artwork outside of established social and cultural frameworks/ Creating and maintaining an art “scene”, community existing outside the commercial capitalist art market/ Not relying on corporate or governmental support/ Organizing DIY events and running DIY spaces/ Finding ways to finance and support artists and their practice/ Exploring intersectional collaboration between varied live performance based disciplines, performance art, visual art, experimental music, theater, poetry and public resistance action/ Reaching out to similar communities in the US and worldwide/ Traveling and performing/ Destroying and re-creating art and culture, and employing a broad reach, transcending niche pockets of like-minded echo chambers/ Performance art as an activist tactic: “How to engage in public art protest action, without compromising artistry or clarity.”/ This workshop will explore the challenges of making performance in public that is both artful and has a definite message.
(Wild Torus collaborates with other artists who share their vision in creating a site-specific, liminal time-space.They are devoted to the avant-garde and genre-defying aspects of expanded performance / AnarkoArtLab is a collective of new-media artists that practices collective creation (They create a CONCEPT and it becomes a LIVE, collaborative, multi-media art experience immersive and participatory). The AnarkoArtlab (exchanging and experimenting ideas about art, equality, collectivity and anarchy in action) is the founder of the Anarchist art festival in NYC.

The ABCs of Squatting (Meeting Space)
Housing advocates will share skills and insight into squatting. The one and a half hour session will be presented by Frank Morales and Bill Timesup and will include a slide presentation and Q&A on tools, building systems and the nuts and bolts of squatting. “The ABCs of Squatting” ties in to the of themes of the anarchist book fair by addressing people’s need for community related low cost housing through DIY ideology.
(Frank Morales is a Lower East Side native and political activist whose work with squatters dates back to the 1970’s when he served as an Episcopal priest in the Bronx. / Bill Timesup, founder of the environmental action group Time’s Up! and co-founder of Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in the Lower East Side, which serves as a living archive of urban activism.)

7:00pm

THE SOCIAL INSURRECTION IN GREECE and ANARCHISM ACTIVIST PRACTICES NY (Assembly Hall)
Anarchist resistance: A Greek-American Dialog. A new kind of fascism is rising in countries around the world, from the the US to Europe to the Philippines, facilitated by the crimes of neoliberal capitalism. How are anarchists meeting the challenge of the alt-right and the equally dangerous center-right in the US and in Greece? Can we turn a period of repression and xenophobia into a turning point toward social and economic revolution?
(Tasos Sagris from Void Network- writer and organizer from Athens-Greece Eric Laursen is a longtime anarchist writer, organizer, and activist living in the Eastern US and a founder member of the NYC Anarchist BookFair collective.)

2017 Workshops and Skillshares Scheduling Chart

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