Insurgency
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThis 10-week session has four sessions remaining which feature a close reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We will look to connect cultures and their human rights struggles. We will also explore those who influenced Gramsci, particularly Marx, but also Machiavelli and Croce. This seminar is accessible to people at all levels of familiarity with Gramsci’s work, including those just beginning their studies of Gramsci. Join at any time.
Parade of the Old New with artist/author Zoe Beloff
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA discussion by Zoe Beloff about her new 40-panel accordion book that reproduces, Parade of the Old New, an epic panorama on cardboard panels, a 40 meter long allegory of the American body politic. The title is taken from a 1938 poem by Bertolt Brecht that inspired the theme of this work; now more than ever, we are not finished with the past and the past is not finished with us. The project was launched with Trump's inauguration and continued until he was defeated at the ballot box. It begins with the president's triumphal entry into Washington DC.Parade of the Old New is distributed by Booklyn, Inc. (booklyn.org). Booklyn also represents Beloff's work within the library and academic market.
The Invention of the White Race
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsTheodore W. Allen spent 30 years researching the primary sources and writing The Invention of the White Race (2 volumes), which provides a historical materialist analysis of racial oppression and the white identity which emerged as a principal form of social control over rebellious laboring class of European and Africans in the pattern setting colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late 17th early 18th century.
We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsChronicles the story of the ZAD (zone to defend), a resistant land occupation emerging out of a decades-long struggle which stopped a new airport project. Fremeaux and Jordan blend rich eyewitness accounts with theory, inspired by a diverse array of approaches, from neo-animism to revolutionary biology, insurrectionary writings and radical art history.
Siegebreakers: A discussion of Justin Podur’s novel set in Gaza
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsUnder the crushing weight of the siege of Gaza, Laila and Nasser are members of the Palestinian resistance fighting desperately to free their people. Together, they learn of a plan to unite the disparate Palestinian factions and break Israel’s siege. Unknown to them, Ari, a brilliant Israeli spy, has decided that his conscience can no longer allow him to participate in the starvation of Gaza. A double agent whose every move is under mounting suspicion, Ari reaches out to the American contractors who trained him with a secret plan. As they all struggle to break the siege, they face the wrath of the Israeli military machine.
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSkocpol asserts that social revolutions are rapid and basic transformations of a society's state and class structures. She distinguishes this from mere rebellions, which involve a revolt of subordinate classes but may not create structural change, and from political revolutions that may change state structures but not social structures. What is unique about social revolutions, she argues, is that basic changes in social structure and political structure occur in a mutually reinforcing fashion and these changes occur through intense sociopolitical conflict. A convergence of peasant rebellion on one hand and international pressures causing state breakdown on the other hand cause revolutionary social movements.
The Solutions are Already Here with author Peter Gelderloos
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYAcross the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realize their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.
Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalized to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.
El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYIt’s 1990, and US labor is being outsourced to Mexico. Rumors of a violent confrontation at the Mexican Ford Assembly plant on January 8 reach the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in the US: nine employees had been shot by a group of drunken thugs and gangsters, in an act of political repression which changed the course of Mexican and US workers’ rights forever. Rob McKenzie was working at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly plant in Minnesota when he heard of the attack. He didn’t believe the official story, and began a years-long investigation to uncover the truth. His findings took him further than he expected – all the way to the doors of the CIA.
Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYVideo available: https://youtu.be/FlJYh3VDWNU
William I. Robinson's new book Global Civil War provides a big-picture account of how the coronavirus pandemic and new digital technologies have drastically transformed capitalism and the entire global economy and society. Analyzing the concentration of power and control in the hands of corporate conglomerates, tech giants, megabanks, and the military-industrial complex, the book documents the extent of unprecedented global inequalities as the mass of humanity faces violent dispossession and uncertain survival. The book issues a dire warning against the emergence of a dystopic digitalized dictatorship but also finds great hope and inspiration in the burgeoning social movements of the poor and the dispossessed as humanity descends into global civil war.
The Novels of Nanni Balestrini with the MEP Literature Group
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe MEP Literature Group resumes this fall/winter to read several works by the Italian author Nanni Balestrini, including We Want Everything and The Unseen.
Peru: Crisis and Uprising
Video available on YouTubeA deepgoing political crisis is shaking Peru, with massive protests by working people in the countryside and cities, fierce repression by the armed forces and police, and desperate efforts to restore order by a widely hated right-wing Congress. Peruvian left activist and sociologist Nicolás Lynch reports on and analyzes these dramatic events direct from Lima. Video available at https://youtu.be/Go_iAP7gTII
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJuxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Arise! The Mexican Revolution’s Global Impact
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Mexican Revolution catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Christina Heatherton's book Arise! reveals how activists around the world found inspiration and solidarity in revolutionary Mexico.
The Fallout of War: Chronologies of Conflict
Video available on YouTubeIn the first of two linked sessions, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture presents their collective research on a keyword of contemporary cultural studies - war - and investigates its many valences as lived reality and as metaphor. Taking account of war as constitutive of the present, the working group explores war's myriad meanings.
Chile’s 9/11: Fifty Years of Literary Resistance
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsReading group in progress, ending 2/8/24. September 2023 marked fifty years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's socialist government on September 11, 1973. To honor the struggles and sufferings of the Chilean people, the MEP's Literature Group is reading Chilean writers active before, during, and since the Pinochet dictatorship.