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Renewing the Anarchist
Tradition
Archive: Summer Conference 2002 ...
page 1
Thursday, August 15th
- 3:30-7:30 p.m.: Conference
registration
- 7:30 p.m.: Welcome to Renewing
the Anarchist Tradition
John Petrovato, Cindy Milstein, and Todd May
- 8:30 p.m.: Radical videos
in the Sunroom
- Unhung Heroes (15 minutes)
- Retooling Dissent: Creative
Resistance Projects at the World Economic Forum, NYC 02-02-02
(22 minutes)
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- 9:00 p.m.: Video and talk
on the rebellion and neighborhood assemblies in present-day Argentina
(Graciela), and then music by David Rovics
Friday, August 16th
- 8:30-9:15 a.m.: Breakfast
& Late Registration
- 9:30 - 10:45 a.m.: Morning
Presentations
Reclaiming
the State: An Anarchist Interpretation of the U.S. Civil Rights
Movement
Jay Driskell
The African American freedom struggle
has leveraged the power of the federal government to abolish
both slavery and Jim Crow. How do we make anarchist sense of
the tactics of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and
other civil rights leaders? Why have America's black freedom
fighters chosen state-centered tactics for reform? And what have
been the limitations of such an approach? Specifically, is there
a different (nonstatist) way to understand the black struggle
for the vote? This presentation will explore how black abolitionists
could have ended slavery or Jim Crow without federal intervention
or appealing to federal power. |
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The Politics
of Oil and War
Paul Fleckenstein
The so-called war on terrorism
and the Gulf Wars are fundamentally about oil. While accepting
this premise, however, progressives, anarchists, socialists,
pacifists, and other Left critics of U.S. foreign policy tend
to have widely varying or vague ideas on what factors determine
or control this relationship between oil and U.S. military power
in the Middle East and Central Asia. Beginning with a sketch
of global oil reserves and the essential role of fossil fuels
in capitalist production and expansion, this workshop will sort
through different views of U.S. energy policy. The core of the
presentation will be on the classical theories of imperialism
and the basis they provide for understanding competing arguments
about what motivates the U.S. quest to control global oil reserves--and
about how we can oppose this quest. |
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Twenty-first
Century Anarchism: A Sketch
Cindy Milstein
Anarchism, in advocating a free
and diverse society, has proved to be one of the most open of
political theories. In its most positive light, anarchism is
perhaps the only tradition that has consistently rooted out domination
in its many forms, while also advocating utopian alternatives.
Yet in its very openness, anarchism often defies any semblance
of a definition, thereby linking widely disparate views that
conflict with and/or even contradict each other. It also leaves
anarchism more vulnerable than most political perspectives to
being used and abused. This is perhaps never more true than today,
especially as anarchism gains in popularity as well as notoriety.
This presentation will begin to sketch out contemporary schools
of thought and practice that go by the name of anarchism, and
how those are both conditioned by and in resistance to current
social relations. It will also explore how twenty-first century
anarchism moves beyond the confines of its nineteenth-century
origins and what it might or might not continue to offer in the
struggle for a better world. |
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- 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Morning
Presentations, Second Round
Marxism,
Anarchism, and Empire
Geert Dhondt, Suresh
Naidu, and Mike King
While marxists and anarchists
have often been the bitterest of foes, the theoretical positions
each have are quite complementary. This presentation will go
through some key marxian concepts (focusing on the economics),
and conclude by summarizing and discussing Empire, by
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, as an example of what a theoretical
alliance between marxists and anarchists could look like. |
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The Pharmacotic
War on Terrorism: Cure or Poison for the U.S. Body Politic?
Candace Khaokham
The ancient Greek words pharmakos
and pharmakon referred, respectively, to sacred rituals of human
sacrifice, and to substances that could both cause and cure diseases.
It is thus illuminating to describe the dangerous power of war
as pharmacotic. Politically, the "war on terrorism"
has been extraordinarily beneficial for the Bush administration,
but under contemporary conditions, the events following 9-11
could easily spin out of control into a globally polarizing and
potentially apocalyptic clash between the U.S. government and
a complex mosaic of designated external and internal "enemies"--a
pharmacotic global war fought with postmodern weapons and tactics,
including terrorist attacks on civilians, the use of cutting-edge
information as well as control systems and other advanced state-
and corporate-controlled technologies. As the "war on terrorism"
continues to unfold, both within the United States and abroad,
creative forms of political mobilization and international solidarity
actions will be necessary to challenge this potentially disastrous
course of events. |
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Direct Democracy
versus Self-Management: Are Anarchists Too Democratic?
Blake McGreevy and
Andrea Schmidt
Whereas contemporary North American
anarchists often focus on "direct democracy" when asked
to describe the goals and practice of anarchist organizing, classical
anarchists were much more likely to describe their aspirations
and radical practice in terms of "worker's control"
or "self-management." More than a semantic difference,
this represents a substantive difference in the way anarchists
have come to think about democracy. Blake and Andrea will use
past and contemporary examples of anarchist organizing to draw
out the tensions between direct democracy and worker's control
in order to begin articulating an effective model of contemporary
anarchist organizing that does not rely on a simplistic fetishization
of direct democracy that is fundamentally liberal in character. |
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- 12:45 a.m. - 1:45 p.m.: lunch
lunch lunch
- 2:15-3:30 p.m.: Afternoon
Presentations
Multiple
Selves in Multiple Struggles: A Latin American Anarchist Perspective
Alejandro de Acosta
Continuing conversations begun
at last year's RAT conference, Alejandro wants to contribute
some reflections and provocations on thinking beyond the principle
of contradiction and acting with multiple selves in multiple
struggles. This presentation will summarize some texts by Silvia
Rivera Cusicanqui, a Bolivian subaltern writer influenced by
anarchism and indigenous Quechua and Aymara cosmologies. Cusicanqui,
who has documented Bolivian anarchist and indigenous struggles
through oral history as well as historical analysis, emphasizes
conceptions of time deriving from indigenous cosmologies and
the radical indigenist political perspective known as katarismo.
Aside from presenting the consequences of these little-known
analyses for anarchists in the age of Zapatismo, Alejandro would
like to return to contradiction and multiple selves. The resistance
to the logic of noncontradiction becomes part of a pluralistic
theory that insists on the autonomy of indigenous cosmologies.
The political practice of multiple selves in multiple struggles
emerges out of a need to contest acculturation at every level,
and the refusal to center the possible anarchist-indigenist alliance
on the seizure of state power or the control of any given institution.
We thus need a conception of a multiple self, a "long and
wide self," where the self's multiplicity is not a block
to action but its very motivation. |
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Transarchy
Rules! or, How to be a Fabulous Transgender Ally
Molly McClure
Nine out of ten anarchists agree
that addressing transphobia is an important and relevant part
of antiauthoritarian struggle. But when it comes to putting theory
into practice, do we know that means? Come discuss concrete ways
we can be better allies to transgender and genderqueer folks
in our communities and beyond. This will be an informal, facilitated
discussion. |
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Education
as Dual Power
Patrick Jones
One of the many ways that anarchists
conceive of producing revolutionary change is dual power, or
the direct replacement of societal institutions with alternatives
consistent with anarchistic revolutionary vision. But dual power
should be approached strategically if it is to be effective.
Presently, certain institutions are absolutely crucial to the
functioning of state/capitalist power. This presentation will
focus on the institution of education, specifically compulsory
grade-school-level education. There have been, and currently
are, outstanding examples of truly liberatory education, from
the Ferrer School movement in prerevolutionary Spain, to the
Modern School movement in the United States, to various other
free schools such as the Albany Free School and others. We should
learn from these and consider their importance, both in and of
themselves, and as part of a movement for a free society. |
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Media Literacy
for Radicals: Language and Design for Uprising
Shiri Pasternak
Last year, the student government
at a university in Montreal got kicked out of office for producing
a complimentary handbook called "Uprising." The radical
anarchist politics of the handbook alienated the school population
and turned many people off with its "angry" messages.
This year, John and Shiri produced the handbook called "sUPrISING,"
which contains the same anticorporate, anticapitalist messages
as "Uprising," but in a completely different tone and
with an entirely different aesthetic. Their presentation will
be about the politics of communication, which will cover the
history of design and politics; forms of literature that emerged
to reflect or hide subversive politics; anarchy in the commercial
world; and the politics of inclusion (in anthology)--how do we
respect diversity without imposing ideology? |
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- 3:45-5:00 p.m.: Afternoon
Presentations, Second Round
Perspectives
on Activism in Latin America
Jory Thomas
Jory volunteered at the last minute
to fill in for a canceled presentation with this facilitated
discussion. Details to come. |
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Rethinking
the Value and Effects of the Educational System and Its Methods
in the United States
Kate Hirschoff
This presentation aims to address
problems with current standard educational dynamics and offer
solutions. The current educational climate is one of condescension
and disempowerment. With the exception of Montessori schools,
children in this country are educated on a compulsory basis,
and the focus of their education doesn't have much to do with
what they want to learn but rather with what the teacher or educational
system wants to teach them. This dynamic instills a mentality
in children that the authority figures always know what's best
for them; it encourages a follower instead of a leader mentality
even into high school and college. Kate will propose a system
of educational coops, through which participants can share their
skills and resources. In this educational context, the learning
process would be self-motivated, and a great deal of the power
dynamics that are a problem in the current system would not exist. |
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Anarchism
and Nationalism
Darini Nicholas and
Shanti Salas
In light of the new world emerging
since the events of September 11, and the heightened urgency
to understand nationalism, this presentation will attempt to
create a framework to further anarchist discussions of nationalism. |
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- 6:00-7:00 p.m.: dinner
- 8:00-10:00 p.m.: Evening Presentations
Anarchism
and the Black Revolution
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
This talk will deal with issues
such as the lack of diversity in the anarchist movement, unity
between people of color and anarchist movements, the need for
more direct action protests against governments and capitalism,
a permanent antiwar movement, and so on. |
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Free Trade,
Ecological Struggle, and the War on Terrorism in Latin America
Bill Weinberg
This talk will explore corporate
agendas and struggles for oil and resources behind the wars on
terrorism and drugs in Latin America, the Middle East, and Central
Asia. It will also review indigenous and grassroots resistance
struggles against both corporate/imperialist designs as well
as fundamentalism/terrorism. |
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- 10:00 p.m. -late: Bonfire
& discussion at frogpond, general revelry...
Program schedule for Saturday
& Sunday
or, back to the top
of this page
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