Schedule
Draft of the workshops schedule:
Here.
Outline of events:
Friday:
Registration: 4-6pm
Moving Thought Mobile: 4-6pm
Opening Panel on Radicalism in the Academy: 6-7:30pm
Housing meet-up: 7:30-8pm
Performance of Marx in Soho: 8pm
If I Can’t Dance It’s Not My Revolution Dance Party!:10pm
Saturday:
Sessions/Workshops: 9am – 6pm (lunch 12-1:15pm)
People of Color Meet-Up: 12 pm
Queer and Trans Causus: 6pm
Dinner on your own: 6-8pm
Keynote speech by Ashanti Alston*: 8pm
Open Mic Talent Show! (Music, zine readings, offbeat talents, slam poetry, etc!)*: 9:30pm
Sunday:
Sessions/Workshops: 9am – 6pm (lunch 12-1:15pm)
Dinner on your own: 6-8pm
Event Descriptions:
Panel on Radicalism in the Academy
Location: HC 8, Teaching Auditorium
Adam Roca, James Birmingham, Jackie Wang, and Kotu Bajaj will discuss different topics relating to radical education, theory/practice, and knowledge/power. Adam will discuss the historical roots of radical education and the development of freeschools; James will discuss how academics have engaged with social movements and offer strategies for undermining intellectual vanguardism; Jackie will discuss women of color and the academic-industrial complex; and Kotu will investigate how radical intellectuals have negotiated the academy.
Marx in Soho
Location: HCL 8, Teaching Auditorium
A play by Howard Zinn, performed by Fenton Wilkinson
Marx is back! The premise of this witty and insightful “play on history” is that Karl Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, though, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.
Howard Zinn, best known for his book, ‘A Peoples History of the United States’, introduces us to Marx’s wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters.
Keynote Speech by Ashanti Alston
Location: HC8, Teaching Auditorium
Ashanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. He was also a member of the Black Liberation Army, and served a total of 14 years as a political prisoner.
Ashanti is a former northeast coordinator for Critical Resistance, currently co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners), a member of pro-Zapatista people-of-color U.S.-based Estación Libre, and former board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies.
Open Mic Talent Show
Location:
Bring your songs, your wacky talents, your words, and your excitement to this open mic-style talent show. If you’d like to perform, you’ll be able to sign-up at the event.
Session Descriptions
Florida Ecosystems & Creative Lockdown Techniques from EF
Session hosted by: Everglades EarthFirst!
Keywords: Florida Activism and Organization, Theory/Strategy, Sustainability/ Environmentalism, ACTION!
We will do a blended presentation/skillshare/discussion workshop. We will to present on South Florida ecosystems and our recent action at the FPL plant in the Everglades where we locked down and shut the construction of the plant down for several hours. We would also like to skillshare about creating effective lockboxes and using other creative techniques. We will bring along some devices to allow people to participate in locking down in a mock setting.
Resistance Strategies from West Papua
Session hosted by: Dr. Eben Kirksey, Visiting Professor at New College of Florida
Keywords: Social Movements, Globalization/Neo-Liberalism, Freedom
Stumbling on a series of independence demonstrations in West Papua, I watched as the movement for freedom (merdeka) made a spectacular public emergence in July 1998. As the Indonesian military tried to destroy the movement with raw force-—shooting unarmed protesters and dumping others into the sea to drown-—new political strategies emerged.
Building a popular Anarchism / Anarchism in Ireland
Session hosted by: Andrew Flood of the Irish Workers’ Solidarity Movement
Keywords: Anarchism, Labor, Social Movements
A decade ago the active anarchist movement in Ireland consisted of little more than a dozen people in two small organizations. Today hundreds of people are active and one banned libertarian demonstration in 2004 saw 5,000 people take part. Anarchists are increasingly replacing Irish republicans as the bogeyman of the mainstream media. This talk explains how this breakthrough happened and details the various struggles anarchists have been involved in. This doesn’t presume any prior knowledge of anarchism or Ireland and should be of interest to anyone interested in radical politics.
Beyond ‘68: Anarchy in the Academy
Session hosted by: James Birmingham, New College of Florida
Keywords: Radicalism in Academia, Student/Youth Movements
When thinking about liberatory campus movements it is sometimes difficult to move beyond the iconic student demonstrations of the 1960s: Paris, Berkeley, Mexico City, and so on. This workshop will strive to overcome this historical myopia. The intersection between activists/academics, and theory/practice will be explored. Around the time of his dismissal from Yale, the Wall Street Journal wondered why anarchist anthropologist David Graeber “would covet a position in one of the most privileged ‘in groups’ in the world.” In a separate article in he responded that “I figured I’d be a scholar in New Haven and an activist in New York.” Is this chasm bridgeable? Can the division of labor between academic “visionaries” (or “armchair activists”) and grassroots organizers be mended?
Theater of reality, theater of revolution
Session hosted by: Austin McCann, New College of Florida
Keywords: Theatre, Pedagogy, Arts/Revolution
ATTENTION! ATTENTION! Students! Truck drivers! Philosophers! Historical materialists! Housewives! Butchers! Ethnic separatists! Tuba players! Farmers! Queers! Children! Zookeepers! Hobos! Baristas! Cubicle slaves! Theater of reality is a transformation of self and society. Performing is a radical act, endowed with holy strength and political magnitude. Unfortunately, the status quo of theater is stagnation and elitism, coming from the wealth-endowed in the mainstream. This lecture will explore the possibilities of theater as a way out of the anxiety and cynicism of our world. Theater fights capitalism. Theater fights the technological mediation of existence. Theater fights the DSM-V. Theater fights racism and sexism. Theater fights your thesis. From Brecht to Bread & Puppet, this lecture will illustrate some of the historically rooted complexities facing artists of resistance. The workshop will feature a performance by New College’s first relevant theater company, the Save Our Seeds Brigade of Sarasota.
Engaging Students through the Boondocks
Session hosted by: Kendra N.Bryant, University of South Florida
Keywords: Education/Pedagogy, Art and Visual Culture, Radicalism in Academia
The paper that I plan to present suggests re-engaging secondary urban students in the English Classroom through Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks” comic strip/cartoon series. McGruder is an African-American comic strip writer/artist who has been scrutinized by media and politicians for his satirical comic strip about an African-American family who has moved to the suburbs. He is notorious for his use of the N-word, along with exaggerated stereotypes often associated with blacks and other minorities. I argue that critically analyzing “Boondocks” will assist students in identifying rhetoric, as well as serve as a catalyst for social change and freedom.
Cultural Effects of Artistic-Activistic Works Aimed at Promotion of Women’s and Minorities’ Rights, Belgrade, Serbia, 2000-2008
Session hosted by: Arandjel Bojanovic and Jelena Veljic, Association of Philosophy Students Philonous, School of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Keywords: Feminism/Women Issues, Art and, Visual Culture, Gender
The substance of this presentation is a case study of an artistic tool, which activists used in their battle for enhancing the lives of women in strongly patriarchal setting of Serbia. Picturesque video and photo documentation will be used in order to expose and recreate machoist and sexist context in which mentioned practices occurred. The Association of Philosophy Students Philonous realized a project Men Against Men’s Violence on Women, which pioneered the way for the promotion of Men Studies and women’s human rights in strongly patriarchal societies of Western Balkan. The starting point of this paper is an exposition of grassroots action that is in tune with mentioned project, designed as a tool against sexual harassment that had massively been taking place in Belgrade’s overcrowded public transport for more than a decade. Considering the lack of regulation in the field, activists made their own mechanism appropriating official visual imperatives, signs that regulate behavior in public domain, in order to pose a ban on unacceptable practices against women’s dignity.
Social Sculptures and Democratic Aesthetics
Session hosted by: Professors Alan W. Moore and Gregory Green, University of South Florida
Keywords: Art and Visual Culture, Anarchist Processes and Models, Radical History
This is an open session begins with presentations on the relations between recent interventionist and collective artistic practice and radical movements for social change. (Also the subducted correspondences between widely-exhibited international artists and radical practice.) Continues in discussion, clarifications, and information sharing. Alan will give a general open-form lecture, using primarily online websites, and some slides in a Powerpoint. Gregory will present his artistic work, and discuss its reception. Then we will move into a workshop phase, having open-form a discussion as possible, continuing with recourse to the web for participants to illustrate what they want to talk about.
Global Citizenship and Immigration
Session hosted by: Eric Pido, Sukjong Hong, Marco Cuevas-Hewitt
Keywords: Latin America, Asia, Social Movements , Globalization/Neo-Liberalism, Theory/Strategy
This topic of imagined global citizenship comes from the collaborative working agenda of 3 diasporic scholar-activists across different disciplines and in 3 different locales (New York, California, and Australia) to develop movement-relevant theories about the imagination and how it might counter and change the way we conceptualize migration, social movements, and globalization. Either one or two of us will be present the paper, which will likely have an accompanying multimedia component (pictures, videos).
Florida Food Not Bombs Panel Discussion
Session hosted by: Various Florida Food Not Bombs Chapters
Keywords: Food Not Bombs, Anti-Imperialism/Anti-War, Vegan/Vegetarianism, Social Movements
This session will be a presentation and discussion on the current state of Food Not Bombs’s chapters, focusing on Florida chapters. Special emphasis will be placed on ordinances, police repression, and lawsuits which pertain to the various FNB chapters.
Radical Mental Health and Ecospirituality
Session hosted by: yasmin kenny
Keywords: Health, Anarchism, Practical Skill, Radical Mental Health, Ecospirituality
This session is an interactive skillshare/workshop on radical mental health and ecospirituality, two seemingly divergent ideas which are one and the same for us whose hearts bleed black and green. Topics to be covered include:
- combatting comsumerism
- rethinking “sanity”
- connecting with nature via sexuality and sensuality
- healing with food, herbal remedies, and alternatives to big pharma
- take action: to heal the world, look within
- the icarus project
- yoga, tantra, bodywork and meditation
- the tao of mental health: be like water
- learning to accept creative processes as a form of healing
- recharging your batteries for a stronger movement
Conflict and Dispute Resolution
Session hosted by: Eric S. Trogdon, Canadian Association of Professional Speakers
Keywords: Conflicts and Dispute Resolution, Social Movements
Staying Sane and Finding Your Game-Taking the right STEPS In this unique presentation, Eric Trogdon, a certified Mediator and SWAT Hostage Negotiator, will identify surprisingly simple STEPS to control everyday conflicts, and how to work through difficult disputes.
Beyond Infoshops: Grassroots Counterinstitutions and Community Organizing
Session hosted by: Samantha Acosta and Jimmy Schmidt, Civic Media Center
Keywords: Florida Activism and Organization, Radical History
We will begin with a brief history on infoshops, how they began, why they are needed, etc. Later we will discuss the Civic Media Center, an infoshop of sorts in Gainesville, Fl. Discussing the motivation for starting the CMC, the role it plays in the activist community in Gainesville, as well as how we continue to motivate new activists in the area.
Squatting the Airwaves
Session hosted by: Ron Sakolsky
Keywords: Anarchism, Autonomous Communities, Social Movements
Starting with a discussion about my initial involvement with liberation radio in relation to Human Rights Radio in Springfield, Illinois and my current involvement with an community-based pirate radio station in Canada, I would then like to encourage other participants to talk about their own past, present or imagined future involvement with the free radio movement. The session will be a workshop that is geared to those who are involved as organizers and participants in the free radio movement or would like to become part of that movement.
Open Source Knowledge: Challenges, Methodology, and
Implementation
Session hosted by: K. Vivian Taylor, University of South Florida
Keywords: Social Movements, Radicalism in Academia, Theory/Strategy
My presentation will include initial plans for starting and sustaining a non-profit organization whose goal is to annually produce and distribute one enlightening, powerful documentary in at least 15 languages to at least 20 countries about a (annually varying) social, political, cultural, and globally relevant topic. This organization calls on all of humanity to contribute to the cause of sharing knowledge, not only intellectuals, academics, artists, political and social activists, culturally concerned parties/individuals, musicians, filmmakers, translators, writers, businesspeople, and students. Members will be asked to contribute monetarily, artistically, musically, intellectually, as well as participate in all aspects of the filmmaking process including creation, production, distribution, and beyond.
All You Need To Know to Start a Freeschool in Your Hometown
Session hosted by: T, Olympia Freeschool
Keywords: Practical Skill, Radicalism in Academia, Social Movements
Participants will have all their questions answered and will be given, resources and many basic items that will help them avoid some of the common problems that new Freeschools (revolutionary, non-hierarchal forums for learning) encounter: room schedules and calendar grids, sample space use agreements, sample newsletter templates and much more!
Hybrid identities and multicultural education: A post/colonial feminist perspective
Session hosted by: Mariana Cruz, Cornell University
Keywords: Education/Pedagogy, Anti-Racism/Critical Race, Theory, Feminism/Women Issues, De-colonial/multiculturalism
My paper engages multicultural education theory and practice into conversation with postcolonial and critical race feminisms in ways that I believe expand notions of identity (racial, gender, sexual), culture, experience, learning, community, and Diaspora. In the area of postcolonial and feminist theory, I draw from the work of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Gloria Anzaldúa. In the field of multicultural education, I look at the work by Sonia Nieto, James Banks, Cameron McCarthy, and Peter McLaren to “unsettle” meta-constructs of a “neutral” subject and instead draw from analytical categories that center gender, race, class, sexuality, and cultural identity.
Student Debt and the War Machine!
Session hosted by: Students for a Democratic Society (UCF)
Keywords: Student and Youth Movements, Anti-Imperialism/Anti-War, Education/Pedagogy
Using a panelist-driven, but open discussion several young anti-war and student rights activists will attempt to define the realities of corporate-driven education in a warfare state. While the true complexity of the issue will be explored, it is intended that this workshop frame issues in a positive manner! What can we, as smart, active and generally awesome kids, do to smash the war machine and provide liberation and education for all?
’Like Talking to a Friend in the Dark’: Race, Radio, and Resistance
Session hosted by: Sam Greenspan, New College of Florida Thesis Student and Board
Member of WSLR 96.5, Sarasota Community Radio
Though radio is the oldest time-based medium in the home, it remains the most ignored in the field of media studies. In this session, I propose several ways in which radio, the so-called “intimate medium” functions as such, and furthermore, that this intimacy creates a space through which listeners can hear marginalized voices in a way that subverts racial hegemony. By bridging “popular” radio documentary with the practices of media ethnography, I propose a theoretical framework through which the academy can pursue radio work as a means of innovative racial discourse.
Radicalizing Development: Local Engagement With A Contradiction of Terms
Session hosted by: Laine Forman, New College of Florida Thesis Student
Keywords: Social Movement, Education/Pedagogy, Feminism/Women Issues
My topic includes a discussion of a particular non-governmental organization utilizing Freire-Boalian techniques to address the intersections between HIV and violence, with a focus on women’s empowerment. I am particularly interested in discussing the effects of the NGO using Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to address localized issues, when supported and monitored by international donor development agencies. I focus on the contradictions between Boal’s intended “liberation” and Freire’s “conscientization” in contrast to the international funder’s set agenda in so-called “development.” My discussion raises questions such as: What is the responsibility of non-governmental organizations in addressing “development” and “social change” to their international donor’s and what is their responsibility to the community participants in creating workshops meant to address local issues? How are each of the agents of an NGO project (ie, international donors, NGO directors, and community participants) appropriating and negotiating the hegemonic structure inherent in monetary funding in order to address the changes they wish to meet? Despite the obstacles of these relationships, what is possible for NGO directors and Boalian/ Freirian facilitators in continuing this work (ie monetarily sustaining their organization), so that they are addressing the needs of the community?
Coalition of Immokalee Workers BK Campaign Update
Session hosted by: Cruz, Coalition of Immokalee Workers; Jordan, Interfaith Alliance
Keywords: Farmworker Rights, Florida Activism and Organization
Several compañeros from Immokalee will give us the updates on recent happenings in the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food and their current target Burger King. The CIW is a community-based worker organization whose members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida. We will explore how massive signature gathering, as employed by British abolitionists to smash the slave trade in the UK, was a quintessentially democratic act (as opposed to exclusively wealthy white men controlling the state connected to plantations & the slave system). We´d discuss how that history ties in with the current CIW petition campaign urging BK to work to confront the human rights crisis thriving in the fields where it buys its tomatoes.
Conscience of the Wolf: Power, Resistance and the Democracy to Come
Session hosted by: Will Brown, New College of Florida
Keywords: Anarchism, Theory/Strategy, Globalization/Neo-Liberalism
My presentation aims to bring the late period political thought of French philosopher Jacques Derrida to bear on current programs of anarchic resistance. I begin with a look at Derrida’s problematization of democracy, paying special attention to the intimate relationship he observes between sovereign (state) power and abuses of juridical authority. I then connect this discussion to a consideration of how Derrida’s politico-theological notion of “democracy à venir” might prove a useful conceptual tool for challenging status quo assumptions about the nature of political change and our agency in relationship to it. From here, the paper zeroes in on this problem of effecting political transformation through a critical analysis of Simon Critchley’s recent book on ethics and anarchism: Infinitely Demanding. I conclude with an attempt at placing Critchley’s views on the activist’s relationship to state power within Derrida’s global-historical framework. I intend to follow up the presentation by inviting questions and counterpoint from the audience.
APOC Track
Queer Sexuality and Mixed-Race Identity
Session hosted by: Jackie Wang, New College of Florida
Keywords: Queer/Sexuality, Race, Identity, Hybridity
This workshop will examine how queer theory, and mixed-race identity theory can all be used to understand the experiences of multiracial queers, who often feel alienated by totalizing racial identities, sexual orientations, and gender categories. The beginning of my workshop will be devoted to unpacking the ideas of queer theory, and racial hybridity. How do mixed-race people understand identity? How is race and sexuality connected? We will discuss how gender and sexuality is not only enforced through violence, but also through discourses that engage in the production of norms. We will also discuss race, and how mixed-raced people are situated outside of the racial discourse. Discussions on race often describe mixed-race people weak and watered-down because they don’t belong to a single racial category. How is this idea internalized in mixed-race people? How is it damaging?
Anarchism Within the Fertile Soil of Black Nationalism
Session hosted by: Ashanti Alston
Keywords: Anarchism, Black Nationalism
How does one reconcile anarchism with black nationalism, or black nationalism with anarchism? Not only does the intersection between anarchism and black nationalism challenge old concepts of nationalism, but challenges anarchism as well on accepted understandings of race, nation, class, identity, multiracial organization, solidarity and of course the white elephant called violence.
FILM: Apocalyptic: Notes on Anarchism, Race and Sexuality
Session hosted by: Cindy Li, Jackie Wang and Kotu Bajaj (the directors!)
Keywords: Film, APOC
Apocalyptic is a documentary about the anti-authoritarian, anarchist, and autonomist people of color movement. The film investigates how anarchism’s critique of hierarchy, authority, power, and domination can be used to understand multiple systems of oppression. In addition, it also explores strategies for undermining relationships of domination that are based on white supremacy, homophobia, racism, and so forth. The film consists of interviews with apocistas from the east coast and presents a variety of perspectives informed by queer struggles, black liberation struggles and the Black Panther movement, indigenous and anti-colonial struggles, farmworker struggles, feminist struggles, the Puerto Rican Liberation movement, immigrant struggles, mixed-race struggles, transgender struggles, and more. The film explores questions such as:
Is anarchism a useful philosophy to incorporate into people of color organizing?
How does the interplay of race, gender, and sexuality affect political organizing?
Is the anarchist movement a white, middle class, male movement?
What are the benefits and limitations of organizing around the term people of color?
POC Meet-Up: Open Discussion for People Color
Keywords: open discussion, people of color
This session will be an open-discussion for people of color only. Here’s where we’ll introduce ourselves, bring up topics for discussion, etc.
Open discussion on People of Color and Environmentalism
Keywords: sustainability/environmentalism, people of color
Drawing on the discussions that took place during the recently APOC meet-up at the EarthFirst Winter Rendezvous, we will discuss the connections between environmental issues and people of color issues, as well as examine the pitfalls of the mainstream environmental movement. People of color-only, please.
