The Precarity Task Force
Precarious Labor, Precarious Lives Reading Group
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYSince the 1990s, scholars and activists have written about the impact of practices like “flexible accumulation” on workers and communities. We experience this in a very empirical and existential way, as so many of us can no longer count upon having (or keeping) a stable, secure job with benefits, or maintaining a roof over our heads. “Contingent labor” is not an abstraction but a harsh reality.
The Affordable Housing Crisis
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe population in the metropolis is regrouped into ghettos (suburbs, foreigners, factories, students), and the new cities are to some extent reminiscent of colonial cities.’ Yet in these histories we find sedimentations of possibilities that I will take up in this essay.
China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAs the world hurtles towards environmental oblivion, China is leading the charge. The nation's CO2 emissions are more than twice those of the US with a GDP just two-thirds as large. China leads the world in renewable energy yet it is building new coal-fired power plants faster than renewables. Richard contends that nothing short of drastic shutdowns and the scaling back of polluting industries, especially in China and the US, will suffice to slash greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent climate catastrophe.
Marina Sitrin on Pandemic Solidarity with Colectiva Sembrar
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsPandemic Solidarity collects first-hand experiences of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. In times of crisis institutions of power are laid bare and people turn to one another. Underneath the media’s narrative of selfish individualism and runs on supermarkets, we find an opposing story of community and self-sacrifice.
Socialist Register 2021: Ursula Huws on Reaping the Whirlwind
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGreg Albo and Steve Maher will introduce Socialist Register 2021—Beyond Digital Capitalism followed by Ursula Huws presenting on her essay, “Reaping the Whirlwind: Digitization, Restructuring, and Moblization in the Covid Crisis”
The Time of Our Lives with Bryan Palmer
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAt the current historical conjuncture, time has become the challenge for socialists to address, not only because it defines what does and does not constitute the working day, but because it is increasingly obvious that time and its organization defines life itself. Will time continue to be compressed into capital’s needs, or will it be reimagined as liberation, struggled through and over in ways that enhance the project of human emancipation?
Interpretation Machines: Contradictions of “Artificial Intelligence” in 21st Century Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhat are capitalist concerns getting into in the embrace of so-called artificial intelligence? What is capital getting the world into? In approaching these questions, it may be useful to set aside the term "artificial intelligence" in favour of "interpretation machines."
Socialists on Social Media Platforms and Imagine Platform Socialism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhile digital platforms are enabling socialists to communicate in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital world of mass media, they are supplements to – not substitutes for – building democratic and sustainable socialist organizations and militant working-class movements.
Reinventing the Welfare State: Book + talk special
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWith positivity and rigor, Ursula Huws will outline a ‘digital welfare state’ for the 21st century, which would involve a repurposing of online platform technologies under public control to modernise and expand public services, and improve accessibility.
Start Early, Stay Late: Planning for Care in Old Age
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsCovid-19 has exposed too many weaknesses in the neoliberal capitalist system to count, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable. For 10 years our international, interdisciplinary research team has been documenting the profound weaknesses in nursing home care within Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the US. The lines between for-profit and not have become increasingly blurred by various neoliberal strategies. One of these involves non-profit and state-owned homes contracting out services to for-profit firms as – in denial of the literature on the determinants of health – services such as food, housekeeping, and laundry have been defined out of care and dismissed as ancillary. This contracting out has not only undermined teamwork, but has also resulted in poor food, inadequate cleaning, and limited laundry – all of which threaten health.
Urban Displacements and Contemporary Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSusanne Soederberg argues that historical and geographical configurations of monetized governance, including landlords, employers and inter-scalar state practices, have served to reproduce urban displacements and obfuscate their gendered, class and racialized underpinnings. The outcome is the everyday facilitation and normalization of urban poverty and social marginalization on one side, and capital accumulation on the other.
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.
Rubbish Belongs to the Poor
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYRubbish. Waste. Trash. Whatever term you choose to describe the things we throw away, the connotations are the same; of something dirty, useless and incontrovertibly 'bad'. But does such a dismissive rendering mask a more nuanced reality? In RUBBISH BELONGS TO THE POOR Patrick O'Hare journeys to the heart of Uruguay’s waste disposal system in order to reconceptualize rubbish as a 21st century commons, at risk of enclosure.
Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYDrawing on history and case studies of unions developing the effective use of power, Jane Holgate’s book lays out strategies for moving beyond the pessimism that prevails in much of today’s union movement. By placing power analysis back at the heart of workers’ struggle, the chapters of Arise demonstrate that transformational change is not only possible, but within reach.