Day 2, Session 4—Southern Insurgency: Mass Movements Throughout the Global South

A presentation and discussion with Manny Ness and Lisa Maya Knauer
Manny Ness provides an expert perspective of three key countries where workers are fighting the spread of unchecked industrial capitalism: China, India, and South Africa. He considers the broader historical forces in play, such as the effects of imperialism, the decline of the international union movement, class struggle, and the growing reserve of available labor. Lisa Maya Knauer will look at other responses to neoliberal capitalism focusing on the Americas: resistance to anti-extractivist projects, refugee/migrant flows to the U.S., and organizing efforts by Central American workers in the U.S.

Lisa Maya Knauer is a founding member of the MEP and its predecessor, the Brecht Forum. She has taught a variety of classes on feminism and Marxism, and gender and capitalism. She is currently working with indigenous resistance movements in Guatemala, and with immigrant women workers in the U.S. In her day job, she is the chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. (you don’t need to include the academic affiliation if you don’t want)

Immanuel Ness is a political economist and professor of Political Science at City University of New York. He edits Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society and is the author of numerous works including Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism. He has worked and organized in the food, maintenance, and publishing industries.