New pamphlet from past tense... a reprint of classic texts from the USA

SPATIAL DECONCENTRATION

Gentrification as Social Control in the USA

Urban decay and subsequent 'regeneration' have been deliberately used in the USA to disperse poor, mainly black communities, both to disrupt communal solidarity and subvert organised movements for social change,
and maximise private profit.

With the levels of gentrification and development many communities are currently facing in London, it is timely to reprint these classic accounts of how military and political powers, and business interests, devised 'Spatial Deconcentration' to maintain social control.

Price £2.00
Plus £2 for Postage & Packing

'Spatial Deconcentration' can be ordered online from
http://past-tense.org.uk/past-tense-pamphlets.html

Or by post from
Past Tense, c/o 56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton Street, London SE17 3AE
(cheques payable to 'Past Tense publications'

It will also soon be available from London radical bookshops and distributors...
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You may also like...
 this old Solidarity pamphlet [with thanks to libcom]...
Urban devastation: the planning of incarceration 

"A pamphlet penned by George Williamson under a pseudonym, analysing urban development in the background of capitalist society and class struggle. Published by Solidarity (Oxford) c1976, much of it is still relevant.

"This pamphlet describes and analyses “the breakdown of the fabric of present-day cities in the light of the development of capitalism from the 19th century till now”, and “looks at the economic influences, the crisis of authority, breakdown of social order and the conflict of class forces as they affect the structure of the urban community” (p.2).

"In line with this perspective, the pamphlet recognises the need “to look at how the form, function and living patterns of urban areas are changing, and at how they could change within the framework of libertarian ideas” (p.4) One of its themes is the examination of the role of architects, planners, and engineers in the planning process under the bureaucratised capitalism and social-democratic engineering of the present society, and the potential role such professionals might play in the development of egalitarian and liveable cities in which “the urban fabric must become the creation of the whole population” (p.22).

"Although written in the mid-1970s, and drawing its examples from the development of urban areas in Britain up to that time, the analysis reflects general trends of urban development elsewhere, trends continuing into the present day.

"Writing under the name of James Finlayson, the author of this pamphlet was George Williamson (1939-2007), political activist, architect by profession, and Solidarity member for many years.

"Finlayson’s general “framework of libertarian ideas” reflects the influence of Cornelius Castoriadis, many of whose writings were translated from the French by prominent Solidarity member, Chris Pallis (aka Maurice Brinton), and published as Solidarity pamphlets under the name of Paul Cardan."

Lessons of the Lawrence textile strike of 1912

[From IRSP via an email from Wakefield Socialist History Group] 

January 12th marks the anniversary of the historic textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.

The Battle of Lawrence, 1912:

Textile workers’ victory contains lessons for today

BY CHRIS MAHIN

“We want bread – and roses!”

“Bayonets cannot weave cloth!”

“Better to starve fighting than to starve working!”

More than a century ago, thousands of men, women, and children shouted those slogans – in many different languages – in the bitter cold of a Massachusetts winter.

On January 12, 1912, thousands of workers walked out of the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts and began a strike which lasted until March 24, 1912. At its height, the strike involved 23,000 workers.

Located in the Merrimack River Valley, about 30 miles north of Boston, Lawrence was a city of 86,000 people in 1912, and a great textile center. It outranked all other cities in the production of woolen and worsted goods. The woolen and cotton mills of the city employed over 40,000 workers – about one-half of Lawrence’s population over the age of 14.

Most of the Lawrence textile workers were unskilled. Within a one-mile radius of the mill district, there lived 25 different nationalities, speaking 50 languages. By 1912, Italians, Poles, Russians, Syrians, and Lithuanians had replaced native-born Americans and western Europeans as the predominant groups in the mills. The largest single ethnic group in the city was Italian.

At the time of the strike, 44.6 percent of the textile workers in Lawrence were women. More than 10 percent of the mill workers were under the age of 18.

Despite a heavy tariff protecting the woolen industry, the wages and living standards of textile workers had declined steadily since 1905. The introduction of a two-loom system in the woolen industry and a corresponding speed-up in the cotton industry led to lay-offs, unemployment, and wage reductions. A federal government report showed that for a week in late November 1911, some 22,000 textile employees, including foremen, supervisors, and office workers, averaged about $8.76 for a full week’s work. This wage was totally inadequate, despite the fact that the average work week was 56 hours, and 21.6 percent of the workers worked more hours than that.

To make things worse, the cost of living was higher in Lawrence than in the rest of New England. The city was also one of the most congested in the United States, with many workers crowded into foul tenements.

The daily diet of most of the mill workers consisted of bread, molasses, and beans. Serving meat with a meal was very rare, often reserved for holidays. The inevitable result of all this was an unhealthy work force. Dr. Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence physician, wrote: “A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work. … [T]hirty-six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are 25.”

The immediate cause of the strike was a cut in pay for all workers which took place after a new state law went into effect on January 1, 1912. The law reduced the number of hours that women and children could work from 56 to 54. The mill owners simply sped up the machines to guarantee they would get the same amount of production as before, and then cut the workers’ hours and wages.

On Thursday, January 11, 1912, some 1,750 weavers left their looms in the Everett Cotton Mill when they learned that they had received less money. They were joined by 100 spinners from the Arlington Mills. When the Italian workers of the Washington Mill left their jobs on the morning of Friday, January 12, the Battle of Lawrence was in full swing. By Saturday night, January 13, some 20,000 textile workers had left their machines. By Monday night, January 15, Lawrence had been transformed into an armed camp, with the police and militia guarding the mills through the night.

The Lawrence strike began as a spontaneous outburst, but the strikers quickly realized that they needed to organize themselves. At a mass meeting held on the afternoon of the strike’s first day, they voted to send a telegram to Joe Ettor, a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, asking him to come to Lawrence to aid the strike. Ettor arrived in Lawrence the very next day, accompanied by his friend Arturo Giovannitti, the editor of “Il Proletario” and secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation.

Although only 27 years old, Joseph J. (“Smiling Joe”) Ettor was an experienced, militant leader of the IWW. He had worked with Western miners and migrant workers, and with the immigrant workers of the Eastern steel mills and shoe factories. Ettor could speak English, Italian, and Polish fluently, and could understand Hungarian and Yiddish.

Under Ettor’s leadership, the strikers set up a highly structured but democratic form of organization in which every nationality of worker involved in the strike was represented. This structure played a decisive role in guaranteeing the strike’s outcome. A general strike committee was organized and a network of soup kitchens and food distribution stations were set up. The strikers voted to demand a 15 percent increase in wages, a 54-hour week, double time for overtime, and the abolition of the premium and bonus systems.

Despite the fact that the city and state authorities imposed a virtual state of martial law on Lawrence, the strikers remained undaunted. They pioneered innovative tactics, such as moving picket lines (in which thousands of workers marched through the mill district in an endless chain with signs or armbands reading “Don’t be a scab!”); mass marches on sidewalks; and sending thousands of people to browse in stores without buying anything. They organized numerous parades to keep their own spirits up and keep their cause in the public eye.

The agents of the mill owners struck back. When the police and militia tried to halt a parade of about 1,000 strikers on January 29, a bystander, Annie LoPezzo, was shot dead. Despite the fact that neither Ettor nor Giovannitti had been present at the demonstration, they were both arrested the next day. They were charged with being accessories before the fact to the murder because they had supposedly incited the “riot” which led to the shooting. That same day, an 18-year-old Syrian striker, John Ramy, was killed by a bayonet thrust into his back as he attempted to flee from advancing soldiers.

In early February, the strikers began sending their children out of the city to live temporarily with strike supporters. The city authorities vowed to stop this practice, and on February 24, a group of mothers and their children were clubbed and beaten at the train station by cops. This act horrified the country, and swung the general public over to the side of the strikers.

Concerned that the growing outrage over the conditions in Lawrence might lead to public support for lowering the woolen tariff, the mill owners began to look for a way to end the strike. First the largest employer, the American Woolen Company, came to an agreement. Then the others followed. The workers won most of their demands. By March 24, the strike was officially declared over and the general strike committee disbanded. It was a tremendous victory – but not the end of the battle.

On September 30, 1912, the murder trial of Ettor and Giovannitti began. It lasted 58 days. The defendants were kept in metal cages in the courtroom while the trial was in session. The prosecution accused Ettor and Giovannitti of inciting the strikers to violence and murder. Witnesses proved that the two were speaking to a meeting of workers several miles from the place where Annie LoPezzo was shot. Across the United States and the world, concerned people expressed outrage at the prosecution’s attempt to punish two leaders for their ideas.

Before the end of the trial, Ettor and Giovannitti asked for permission to address the court. Ettor challenged the jurors, declaring that if they were going to sentence Giovannitti and himself to death, the verdict should find them guilty of their real offense – their beliefs.

He said:

“What are my social views? I may be wrong but I contend that all the wealth in this country is the product of labor and that it belongs to labor. My views are the same as Giovannitti’s. We will give all that there is in us that the workers may organize and in due time emancipate themselves, that the mills and workshops may become their property and for their benefit. If we are set at liberty these shall be our views. If you believe that we should not go out, and that view will place the responsibility full upon us, I ask you one favor, that Ettor and Giovannitti because of their ideas became murderers, and that in your verdict you will say plainly, we shall die for it. … I neither offer apology nor ask for a favor. I ask for justice.”

Giovannitti made an impassioned speech to the jury, the first time he had ever spoken publicly in English. His eloquence drew tears from the most jaded reporters present.

On November 25, the jury found the defendants not guilty. Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom.

There is something especially poignant about the Battle of Lawrence – and something especially important about learning its lessons. The Lawrence textile strike took place at a time when the mill owners lacked maneuvering room because they had to maintain public support for a high tariff on woolens. That was certainly a factor in the workers’ victory. So was the fact that the textile workers comprised such a large percentage of the population of Lawrence. But those factors do not change the reality that the victory at Lawrence was won by the bravery and intelligence of the workers themselves.

The victory at Lawrence disproved the vicious lie being circulated at the time by the leaders of the American Federation of Labor that immigrant workers could not be organized. It showed that immigrant workers and women workers would not only support strikes – if given the chance, they would gladly lead them, and lead them well. The strikers in Lawrence won their demands because they never let themselves be divided on ethnic or gender lines, because they were militant (and creative) in their tactics, and because they found a way to appeal to the conscience of the general public.

One other feature of the Battle of Lawrence made it especially significant. It’s summed up in the famous slogan of the strike – “We want bread – and roses!” The textile workers who braved the Massachusetts winter in 1912 wanted more than a wage increase. They were inspired by a vision of a new society, one where the workers themselves ruled. In this society, every human being would have “bread” – a decent standard of living. They would also have “roses” – the chance to learn, to have access to art, music, and culture; a society which would allow the flowering of everyone’s talents, the full development of every human being.

On this anniversary of the Lawrence textile strike, we should take courage from the bravery of the strikers, learn from their clever tactics, and dare to think as far ahead as they did. The Lawrence strikers believed deeply in the idea expressed so well in one of the verses in the labor song “Solidarity Forever.” That verse confidently proclaims, “We can build a new world from the ashes of the old.” Despite all the misery we see in the present, a new world is possible. The cynics of today are as wrong to deny the possibility of qualitative change as the AFL leaders in 1912 were to deny the possibility of organizing immigrant workers. If all of us act with as much foresight and courage as did those who fought so well in Lawrence in 1912, the vision of those strikers can become reality, and we can win a world with both bread and roses for everyone.

PRESS RELEASE "The First Trumpland Political Thriller"

GHOST DANCE....by Ian R Mitchell..........THE FIRST TRUMPLAND POLITICAL THRILLER.......

                                          PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2017

It is January 2017. Donald Trump has just assumed the US presidency and become the world's most powerful man. The world is in shock – and fear, as it watches the jubilation this event causes over large parts of the United States.

Two friends set out on a road trip through the American West, just subsequent to the inauguration of Trump. One is Thomas, a Scottish freelance journalist familiar with the area, who is looking for copy for newspaper articles from the trip. The other is Louis, an American, a recently-divorced academic who has lived in Europe for over 20 years, and, stunned by the election result, wants to “find America” - and seek amorous adventures.

The journey starts in El Paso where “No-one goes on vacation” and takes them on an Odyssey through the wilds of West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Montana. They encounter the death agonies of rural and small town America in abandoned mining towns and witness agricultural decay, in an area unknown – and often despised - by many Americans. This is the heart of Trumpland, the boondocks fly-over states of ill-educated ill-informed and very angry people who are both witnessing and experiencing at first hand the Decline of the American Empire. The two friends' encounters with Trump's constituency are mitigated by meetings with the isolated and contrasting communities of ageing hippie drop outs, Native Americans, Hispanics and Mormons who also inhabit these little-known regions.

Life as ever in the USA imitates art, and an unwelcome incident on the Mexican border causes the friends to totally change their travel plans; then the road trip becomes a road flight that blows their odyssey totally off course and takes them to destinations unforeseen,  and a journey that will change both their lives in unexpected directions. Set in the template of the “far out west” road novel Ghost Dance is a serious work of political fiction, a state of the nation narrative, which is based on the author's thorough grounding of the history, scenery, culture and social structures of the US West. The novel illustrates in chilling fashion both the anger and hate which brought Trump to power, and the frightening portents this triumph carries for America and the rest of world, though the experience of two men grappling with forces at the limits of their comprehension, and beyond the limits of their control.

IAN R MITCHELL IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED TRAVEL BOOK, ENCOUNTERS IN THE AMERICAN MOUNTAIN WEST AND OF THE COLD WAR POLITICAL THRILLER WINTER IN BERLIN.

GHOST DANCE IS PUBLISHED BY THE STOBCROSS PRESS AND IS AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK OR AS A PRINT ON DEMAND DOWNLOAD FROM AMAZON.

REVIEW COPIES CAN BE REQUESTED FROM STOBCROSS PRESS; contact

stobcross.press1993@gmail.com

Related post on this blog: Notes from the Frontier of an Empire in Decline

Notes from the Frontier of an Empire in Decline

[Guest Blog]

1. DEEP IN FAR WEST TEXAS: WHERE THE WALL WILL NOT BE BUILT.

Build a Wall! Build a Wall! Build a Wall!

Empires may decay at their centres but they fray at their frontiers. If the American Empire has a frontier, it is its 1500 mile southern border with Mexico, especially the stretch of the frontier which runs along the Rio Grande river between Texas and Mexico. And just as the Romans looked uneasily over their frontier walls at the approaching barbarians, and the Chinese did likewise over their Great Wall, so today many Americans would like to see a wall built against encroaching Hispanicisation. Such was offered to them by Donald Trump during his recent and victorious electoral campaign, and this promise resonated with the crowds baying in unison their approval. And not just those crowds.

“This is why we need a wall to secure our borders,” wrote Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Minister in an internet post shortly before Trump’s inauguration on January 20th,explaining, ”There are violent criminals and members of drug cartels coming in and we must put a stop to it.” This statement by such a high ranking Texas government official was after the report that two men had been shot on a remote ranch in Presidio County, in Far West Texas, by Mexican interlopers who had tried to steal the victims’ RV vehicle, a report Miller then retailed. The Presidio County Sheriff Office put out a statement that this was false news, and that the two men had been hurt in a “friendly fire” hunting accident with no other involvement. Despite this Miller has refused to withdraw his post-truth alternative-facts interpretation of the shooting and doubtless most Texans now believe the false version of the event, and take it as confirmation of their paranoid fears. (Not all these fears are groundless, however. The same week $2 million dollars worth of crystal meth was seized in a car at the legal crossing port of Presidio, concealed in the tyres and bumpers of a vehicle driver in from Mexico by a drug gang.)

"What Illegals have to cross..."

Far West Texas was the Last American Frontier on the march to American Manifest Destiny.”Ain’t No Law West of the Pecos” (the eastern river boundary of Far West Texas) used to be said long after the rest of the West was won. Victorio and his Apache bands raided here till the 1880s despite the $200 offered for every Indian scalp, man, woman, or child, and even until 1921 the area of Big Bend at the Mexican border was occupied by US troops, fighting both Mexican revolutionaries like Pancho Villa who invaded the USA, or engaging in hot pursuit into Mexico itself after Mexican bandits who themselves raided over US the border. The bandits were seldom offered the chance of a trail when caught. It is an area which was Confederate in the Civil War, having enslaved Mexicans and native Americans rather than negroes, and has been-like the rest of Texas, overwhelmingly Republican since one of Texas’ less honoured sons, Lyndon B Johnson, devoted himself to advancing Civil Rights in the 1960s. It is no accident that in was in Texas, that the Bushes, George and Dubya, founded their ranch and found their spiritual home. You are much more likely to see a Texas flag than a stars and stripes on people’s homes hereabouts, and even the occasional Confederate one flutters as well. Freedom or Death, Don’t Mess with Texas, has been the traditional mindset. Road signs are peppered with bullet holes, and shops of all description carry signs welcoming customers who are carrying arms in defence of their civil liberties.

But Far West Texas is changing. This area was stolen from Mexico in a series of aggressive wars from the 1820s to the 1840s - cue Davy Crockett, Alamo and All That, but it is being slowly wrested back by Hispanic immigration. El Paso contains the bulk of the population of the area, about 700,000 of Far West Texas’ - the area between the Rio Grande and the River Pecos - total of approximately 800,000. Thirty years ago El Paso was 50% Hispanic 50% white; now it is 80% Hispanic. And as traditional industries of ranching and mining contract, the white population of the rest of sparsely inhabited Far West Texas is also changing, and consists increasingly of liberal minded incomers seeking an area where the excellent climate gives opportunities for outdoor enthusiasts, and the landscape gives inspiration for artistic workers of all sorts. Former mining towns like Terlingua which once produced mercury are now flourishing artistic and musical centres, gaining an almost entirely new population in the last 30 years or so. The most redneck area of Texas, where films like Giant were set, is becoming one of the more liberal and tolerant in some locations.

I recently spent a week in Terlingua soaking up the musical scene, centred largely on the Starlight Theatre, which used to be the cinema of the mining town in days gone by and is now a great restaurant with music almost every night. Some of the musicians are people who have settled here, some are transients who flock here in winter for the climate and a chance to sing for their suppers. It was good to hear a wizened old timer singing in the Starlight, performing a take-off of Merle Haggard’s redneck anthem Oakie from Miskogie, re-rendering the original illiberal words as

We all smoke dope down in terlingua/Some of use even tried LSD

We dont hate gays down in Terlingua, and we don’t hang negroes from the trees.

I talked with him afterwards on the porch outside the theatre where people engage in jamming sessions under the stars, and hope to get their foot in the door and he told me, “Ain’t 10 people in this whole town voted for that *********Trump.”

(Illustrations supplied by the author of this article.)

Even in this relative backwoods, which remains the most sparsely populated and probably most remote part of the mainland USA ( it is 600 miles to Dallas!) marches in defence of the threats to women’s rights and immigrant rights have been called in towns such as Marfa and Alpine by those who feel threatened by the implications of a Trump Presidency, adverts have appeared in local newspapers such as the Big Bend Sentinel, paid for by local activist groups , stating “We the People are Greater than Fear, We are Greater than Hate” and in certain areas the local authorities have refused to implement anti-immigrant measures and created immigrant-friendly zones. The central legislature in Texas, strongly Republican, is threatening to move against these “sanctuary zones” threatening legal and financial penalties. The Proposed Senate Texas Bill No.4 put forward in the current Texas Legislative Session by Senator Charles Perry specifically targets these “sanctuary areas”. Other proposed legislation would restrict access by dependents of unregistered immigrants to education. The Republican lawmakers know their targets.

El Paso County has officially resolved to decline to enforce federal immigration laws, and has been supported by a coalition - Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance (RITA) - which wants to legalise all undocumented immigrants and this in turn had found support from El Paso Democrat Senator Jose Rodriguez, who has called for  “the rejection of the politics of racism, division and hatred, in favour of the principles of human dignity and rights.” The struggle between the forces which brought Trump to power and those appalled by that victory, are engaged, not just in Washington but also here in the area that is probably the Back of Even Beyond in mainland USA.

The outcome of this struggle over the next four years is uncertain. But one thing is certain, There Will Be No Wall. You just have to come out to Far West Texas and look at the pathetic trickle that is the Rio Grande once it has been raped upstream for agricultural irrigation in semidesert areas, for golf course and lawn watering, for industrial and power-generation use, and realise that at most parts of its 1,000 mile-plus meander through the Texas-Mexico borderland, you could walk across the river at many places with feet dry. And the immigrants do, then taking to the huge uninhabited areas as passage to what they hope is a better life. Despite the mega millions spent on Border patrols these are tokenist at best; car checks on roads that no sane cayote (illegal drug or people smuggler) would use. To police even the Texas portion of the border efficiently would require probably the entire resources of the US Army, and the costs of constructing any even partially effective wall would be beyond the spending capacity of a country already more indebted than any previously in history to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Technically and economically the idea of a wall is revealed as an absurdity as you stand on the banks of the Rio Grande. And even if the USA could build such a construction, the Great Wall did not save China, nor did walls like Hadrian’s save Rome. A nation that was the world’s banker until the end of the 1980s is now dependent for its economic survival of loans from China. The American century is over, the American Empire is in decline and the great metaphor for this decline is the situation on its Rio Grande frontier with the Hispanic world.

I.M.

If you’re going to San Francisco...

(or thereabouts) – Or even if you’re not, book titles worth noting...

Some interesting events coming up stateside:  details from WWW.PMPRESS.ORG

The 19th Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair

DATE AND LOCATION:   Saturday, March 22nd at The Crucible @ 1260 7th St., Oakland, CA 94607, two blocks from the West Oakland BART station

PM AUTHORS AT THE BOOKFAIR:            

10:30 AM: The Commons, Enclosures, and Global Uprisings with Peter Linebaugh author of Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance, Silvia Federici author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, and George Caffentzis author of In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism and contributor to The Debt Resisters' Operations Manual

11:30 AM: Until the Rulers Obey: Global Grassroots Resistance to the Extractivist State with Clifton Ross & Marcy Rein coeditors of Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements and Jose Artigas

 2:30 PM: Social Transformation through Cooperatives: Reclaiming our rights to democracy in work and to commons ownership/access to space and property with Jai Jai Noire, Tim Huet, and John Curl author of For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America

4:30 PM: Against the Global Land Grab with scott crow author of Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective, Andrej Grubacic author of Don't Mourn, Balkanize!: Essays After Yugoslavia and coauthor of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History, Alexander Reid Ross, and Helen Yost

                For the full schedule and more information, please go HERE.

 

CIIS and PM Press Present:

Anthropology and Social Change Second Annual Conference:

The Commons, Enclosures and Mutual Aid

Friday, March 21st at The California Institute for Integral Studies main building @ 1453 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103, four blocks South from the Civic Center BART station.      

EVENTS:               2pm-3:30pm: Capitalism and the Enclosure of the Commons

•             Silvia Federici author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle on gender and the social production of the working class

•             Peter Linebaugh author of Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance on commons, enclosures, and Magna Carta

•             Norman Nawrocki author of Cazzarola!: Anarchy, Romani, Love, Italy (A Novel) on migration, resistance, statelessness: the case of the Roma

•             Eddie Yuen coauthor of Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth on extinction and enclosure

4pm-5:30pm: Commonism and Mutual Aid

•             George Caffentzis contributor to The Debt Resisters' Operations Manual on Strike Debt! 

•             Karl Beitel author of Local Protest, Global Movements: Capital, Community, and State in San Francisco on San Francisco and the urban commons

•             John Clark coeditor of Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected Writings of Elisée Reclus on Humanity as Nature Becoming Self-Conscious: A Politics of Solidarity with the Earth

•             Ignacio Chapelacoeditor of Mycology in Sustainable Development: Expanding Concepts, Vanishing Borders on liberation biology and mutual aid

6:30pm-9:15pm: Final Discussion on the Commons, Enclosures, and Mutual Aid.

                For the full schedule and more information, please go HERE

 

Bay Area Events During the Anarchist Bookfair Week

Wednesday, March 19th  

Peter Linebaugh author of Stop, Thief! at Shaping San Francisco at 7pm

Norman Nawrocki, Tomas Moniz and others for Lyrics & Dirges at Pegasus Books in Berkeley at 7pm 

Radical Fiction with Kenneth Wishnia, Jim Nisbet, Nick Mamatas, & Sin Soracco at Borderlands Books in SF at 7pm

Thursday, March 20th

Peter Linebaugh at the Marxist School of Sacramento at 7pm

Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, coeditors  of Until the Rulers Obey at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in SF at 7pm

A Conversation with Strike Debt Bay Area, Silvia Federici, and George Caffentzis about The Debt Resisters' Operations Manual at The Green Arcade in SF at 7pm

Radical Fiction with Summer Brenner, Owen Hill, Norman Nawrocki, Kenneth Wishnia, Jim Nisbet, Nick Mamatas, Sin Soracco at the Bay Area Public School in Oakland at 7pm   

Saturday, March 22nd

John P. Clark, coeditor of Anarchy, Geography, Modernity in conversation with Andrej Grubacic, author of Don't Mourn, Balkanize! at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in SF at 7pm

Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero and George Caffentzis author of In Letters of Blood and Fire for a discussion on Reproduction, Labor, and Capital at the Bay Area Public School in Oakland at 7pm

Sunday, March 23rd

The Debt Resisters' Operations Manual book launch party with George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, Strike Debt New York and Strike Debt Bay Area in Oakland at 3:30pm.

John P. Clark, coeditor of Anarchy, Geography, Modernity and scott crow, author of Black Flags and Windmills discussing "Writing Politics" at the Bay Area Public School in Oakland at 7pm

Peter Linebaugh, and Iain Boal, coeditor of West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California to discuss commons and resistance in California and beyond at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in SF at 7pm

Carework: From Crisis to Common. A talk and discussion with Silvia Federici at Station 40 in SF at 7pm.

Norman Nawrocki author of CAZZAROLA! Anarchy, Romani, Love, Italy and Terry Bisson author of Fire on the Mountain at The Green Arcade in SF at 7pm

Monday, March 24th

Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein at the Bay Area Public School in Oakland at 7pm

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in SF at 7pm

Norman Nawrocki will read and perform his new novel, CAZZAROLA! at Redwood Gardens in Berkeley at 7pm

Wednesday, March 26th

scott crow uses Black Flags and Windmills as a foundation for a visual and engaging presentation at Redwood Gardens in Berkeley at 7pm

Norman Nawrocki will read and perform his new novel CAZZAROLA! at Shaping San Francisco at 5:30pm

Thursday, March 27th

Norman Nawrocki will read and perform his new novel at the Marxist School of Sacramento at 7pm

                For details and directions, please go HERE.  

Author Events Everywhere Else

AUTHORS IN MARCH:    Mat Callahan editor and composer of the Songs of Freedom: The James Connolly Songs of Freedom book and CD

Selma James author of Sex, Race, and Class-The Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011

Chris Crass author of Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy

Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch coauthors of In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternative

Stewart Dean Ebersole author and photographer of Barred for Life: How Black Flag's Iconic Logo became Punk Rock's Secret Handshake

J. Smith coeditor of The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History: Volume 2: Dancing with Imperialism and Volume 1: Projectiles For the People

Terry Bisson author of Fire on the Mountain, TVA Baby, and The Left Left Behind

Robert King author of From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King

Marge Piercy author of The Cost of Lunch, Etc., Braided Lives, Vida, and Dance the Eagle to Sleep

Tomas Moniz author of Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood

Gary Phillips author of The Jook, The Underbelly, and editor of Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail!: Stories of Crime, Love and Rebellion

                For all event details, please go HERE.