Radical media, politics and culture.

Announcements

March 22, 2007 - 4:41pm -- autonomedia
Announcements
Independent Media

Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey through Islamic America

Michael Muhammad Knight

Michael Muhammad Knight will be in NYC to read from Blue-Eyed Devil on Saturday, March 24 at Bluestockings Bookstore at 7 pm. Please come meet Mike and check out the book.

Blue-Eyed Devil traces a century of American Islam, as well as a 20,000-mile spiritual journey across the U.S., through the perspective of a white convert. Keeping in mind the five permitted purposes of spiritual travel — seeing a holy site, deriving instruction, seeking knowledge, visiting a venerable person, and visiting the tomb of a saint — Michael Muhammad Knight criss-crossed the country in search of a parallel Islamic history, and struggled to understand his own place in that history.


From the remnants of Quranic oral traditions in the Georgia Sea Islands to the coded language of the Five Percenters, from the shrouded origins of the Nation of Islam to the Egypto-Futurist mythology of Malachi York, and from woman-led prayers in West Virginia to Muslim prison populations in northern New York, Blue-Eyed Devil takes a unique perspective on Islam’s intersection with race, gender, and Americanization.


What they're saying about Blue-Eyed Devil

"Michael Muhammad Knight has written today’s On the Road, a powerful picaresque tale about the sorrows of being a seeker in the days of endless simulation. I am certain that in addition to some of the most musically-pleasing prose of recent years, Knight has identified the work of his generation, which is Spirit. His wrestling with Islam is pertinent and suspenseful, a mystery rendered in brilliant detail and gorgeous depth. This book should contribute immensely to retiring the public’s knee-jerk reaction to Islam. Blue-Eyed Devil is a masterpiece." — Andrei Codrescu, author of New Orleans, Mon Amour

"Mike Knight's work is some of the most exciting writing happening in the Muslim literary landscape. He is important not just in the 'small pond' of Muslim American literature (where he is very important), but ought to be valued in the larger scene of American writing." — Mohja Kahf, author of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

"When the American Muslim community is finding an identity amid diverse roots in indigenous and immigrant Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight gives us a funny, searing account of his own journey to a place in what we might call the 'mestizo' American terrain. Like Sherman Alexie, Knight writes about his own cultural identity with raw honesty, heartbreaking tenderness, and piercing humor." — Laury Silvers, Professor of Religion, Skidmore College

"A cultural mutant on a Greyhound pilgrimage to find the science that spawned him, Mike Knight's Blue-Eyed Devil helps nudge us all towards our siratul musta-fucking-qeem. Up the taqx!" — Basim Usmani, singer, The Kominas

March 22, 2007 - 4:28pm -- autonomedia
Announcements
Events

"Between Primitive Accumulation and the New Enclosures"

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, March 30–31, 2007

Friday, March 30

A.D. White House, Guerlac Room

3:00-5:00

"Primitive Accumulation" as "Accumulation by Dispossession": An Introduction

Saturday, March 31

Multipurpose Room, Africana Studies and Research Center
10:00–12:00

"Neoliberalism, Neocolonialism, and the New Enclosures: The Case of Africa"

2:00-5:00

"War is the health of the state": Afflicted Powers, September 11, and the Need for Anarchist Analysis

"Modernity is many things. Secularization is one of them, and speed-up, and the cult of technics, and disenchantment of the world, and false orientation to the future. But right at the heart of capitalist modernity, we would argue, has been a process of endless enclosure. The great work of the past half-millennium was the cutting-off of the world's natural and human resources from common use. Land, water, the fruits of the forest, the spaces of custom and communal negotiation, the mineral substrate, the life of rivers and oceans, the very airwaves—capitalism has depended, and still depends, on more and more of these shared properties being shared no longer, whatever the violence or absurdity involved in converting the stuff of humanity into this or that item for sale. Enclosure seems to us the best word for the process's overall logic." — Retort, Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War

"These New Enclosures . . . name the large-scale reorganization of the accumulation process which has been underway since the mid-1970s. The main objective of this process has been to uproot workers from the terrain on which their organizational power has been built, so that, like the African slaves transplanted to the Americas, they are forced to work and fight in a strange environment where the forms of resistance possible at home are no longer available. . . Thus, once again, as at the dawn of capitalism, the physiognomy of the world proletariat is that of the pauper, the vagabond, the criminal, the panhandler, the street peddler, the refugee sweatshop worker, the mercenary, the rioter." — Midnight Notes Collective, The New Enclosures

The conference will gather four outstanding thinkers within the field of analysis that both relies on and extends Marx's disquisition in Capital (Volume 1) on what he calls "primitive accumulation." This process of the assertion of the right of private property over land that was previously held in common, that is, of enclosure, has in recent years been understood to continue to extend its reach globally and in ways that Marx could not have anticipated. The participants in the conference, mainstays of the Midnight Notes Collective and the Retort group, are among the most significant contributors to a theory and historiography of the New Enclosures, and to interventions aimed at recovering the commons. Iain Boal, George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, and Peter Linebaugh will join us. A reader gathering material pertinent to the conference will be available (contact Barry Maxwell).


Sponsors: Society for the Humanities; Institute for German Cultural Studies; Future of Minority Studies Research Project; MITWS (Minority, Indigenous, and Third World Studies Research Group); Africana Studies and Research Center; Ethics and Public Life Program; Anthropology; Asian American Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; English.

March 22, 2007 - 3:42pm -- autonomedia
Announcements
Events

Lex (who tried to log in but can't seem to!) writes:

"Unhoused"
Organized by In the Field

Opening Reception:
Tuesday March 27, 6-8pm

Lecture by Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg of In the Field:
Thursday March 29, 7pm

common room 2
465 Grand Street
New York, NY 10002
tel.: 212.358.8605
www.common-room.net


Directions:
Take F train to East Broadway stop. Exit at rear of platform if coming
downtown or front of platform if coming from Brooklyn. Walk East on
East Broadway just past Pitt Street. Use Rear Entrance on East Broadway.
Map Link:
http://www.onnyturf.com/subway/?address=465+grand+ street,+NYC,+NY

Global housing crises are not abstract. They are visible and viscerally experienced on the ground where people sleep, gather, eat and raise their families. While conditions in distinct and distant cultures may differ, they are increasingly interrelated; so are the processes that generate these conditions. People are actively (and passively) unhoused by markets, governments, wars, ethnic violence, gentrification, natural and manmade disasters, and other factors. Where markets and governments fail to provide housing, people are left to provide housing for themselves. The creative efforts of individuals, groups, and others invested in improving the condition of daily life and shelter at the margins of affordability are the subject of this exhibition. The material presented here is drawn from research on creative responses to global housing crises we are doing in preparation for a book called UNHOUSED.

March 21, 2007 - 2:12pm -- autonomedia
Announcements
Events

Guaranteed Income Conference

Cambridge, UK, April 28, 2007

You are invited to attend a one-day conference on the subject of

"GUARANTEED INCOME:
Theories and practices of workplace remuneration and
resistance in the age of cognitive capitalism"


If you wish to attend the conference, or wish to present a paper, please
write to ed.emery [@] thefreeuniversity.net

The conference is organised under the aegis of Cambridge's "Left Tea Party".

It will be held in the Palmerston Room of St John's College Cambridge, from
10.00am to 5.00pm on Saturday 28 April 2007.

A programme of speakers is being prepared and will be circulated shortly.


The general thesis arises out of the "Immaterial Labour" labour conference
held at King's in April 2006.


The concept of the wage as we knew it under Fordism and Keynesianism has
been surpassed. Guaranteed income is viewed as the framework for the payment
of society's labour in the era of immaterial labour and cognitive
capitalism. A new conceptual formulation of the wage needs to be arrived at,
as the founding basis of a revolutionary concept of movement. This, in order
to match the revolution taking place in capital's productive capacities. The
conference will look at the theory of Guaranteed Income as developed by
various authors. We shall also look at the history of social movements built
around demands for Guaranteed Income. And we shall look at practical
propositions for campaigning in the here and now.


The conference will draw on the work being done in Italy and France by
authors such as Toni Negri, Carlo Vercellone, Antonella Corsani, Andrea
Fumagalli, Stefano Lucarelli and Yann Moulier-Boutang.


Translated texts will be presented at the conference.


Registration is free, but MUST BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE.


Places are limited, so you are recommended to write sooner rather than
later.


With best regards,

Ed Emery

Universitas adversitatis

March 15, 2007 - 7:02pm -- autonomedia
Announcements
Work

"The Worker's Economy:
Self-Management and the Distribution of Wealth"
International Self-Management Conference

Buenos Aires, July 19-21, 2007

The University of Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, the Center for Global Justice and the Argentina Autonomista Project are excited to invite you to:

FIRST INTERNATIONAL GATHERING
TO DEBATE AND DISCUSS
SELF-MANAGEMENT
(AUTOGESTIÓN)

Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires

Dates: July 19–21, 2007

Location:

University of Buenos Aires

217 - 25 de Mayo Avenue

Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS FOR: COMPLETED OR ONGOING PROJECT
PRESENTATIONS, PAPERS, ROUNDTABLE THEMES, DEBATE AND DISCUSSION THEMES

Please send a 250-word (max) abstract by May 15, 2007, or any other
correspondence to:
Correspondence in Spanish: fabierta@filo.uba.ar

Correspondence in English: UBA.selfmanagement@gmail.com

The current
debates surrounding self-management: A brief overview



Workers' struggles have reemerged with force in the last decade in
numerous forms — union-based struggles, self-managed workspaces, rural
movements, unemployed workers' movements.... These are responses to the
hegemony of neoliberal globalization imposing itself throughout the
world with absolutist pretensions after the debacle of so-called "real
socialism."



At the same time, the old methods and strategies of
struggle — class-based parties and traditional unions, amongst
others — have by now shown themselves to be, at minimum, insufficient.


Old debates and ideological frameworks are now in crisis. The dominant
discourses used to describe the functioning of the capitalist world
system can no longer explain quickly enough (never mind predict) the
changes in this system that have been occurring over the past few
decades, while popular struggles have had to create new paths without
having a clear horizon in sight from which to map out a final destiny.
And the plethora of means ever available for capitalism to respond to
threats against it, as well as the sheer force and relentlessness of
its repressive power, amply overcomes the popular sectors' capacity for
change...with tragic consequences.



While the taking of State power has been the driving objective of
political forces for more than a century now, more recently there have
appeared compelling movements that, on occasion, have questioned such
objectives for revolutionary action. At minimum, these movements
distance their strategies and tactics from the aims of taking State
power, recognizing the difficulties of such a task. But, as evidenced
in various Latin American contexts, some popular movements with solid
historical roots have ended up allying themselves with national
governments swept into power via electoral triumph. And so, when they
least expected it, these movements found themselves at times
controlling key sectors of the State's administrative apparatus which,
in turn, needed to be profoundly transformed in order to be oriented
towards grassroots-based policies.

March 15, 2007 - 11:00am -- autonomedia
Announcements
Events

First Annual New York Anarchist Book Fair

NY Anarchist Bookfair

NEW YORK — Over 50 independent publishers, booksellers, infoshops and
collectives, record labels, media creators, and labor and other activist
groups will be exhibiting at the 1st Annual, 1st Ever NYC Anarchist Book
Fair, to be held Sat., April 14, in Manhattan. The Book Fair will also
include a tour of New York University's renowned Tamiment Library, plus
an anarchist art exhibition, a film and video festival, and 12 panels
and presentations beginning that day and concluding the next day, Sun.,
April 15. All events are free of charge.


The Book Fair will be held at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington
Square South, 11am–7pm. The exhibitors and other participants in the
Book Fair will give visitors a chance to sample the amazing depth and
diversity of anarchist life, activism, theory, and culture in New York
City and across North America and Europe.


Exhibitors based in New York that are currently scheduled to appear
include MayDay Books & Infoshop, Paper Tiger Television, Autonomedia,
Soft Skull Press, Bluestockings Books, Can't Afford 'em Records, and the
New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists. Out-of-town exhibitors will
include AK Press, Black Rose Books (Montreal), Southpaw Books, Class
War (London), Black Sheep Books, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, The
Wooden Shoe, Chelsea Green Publishing, the Anarchist Federation in the
North of England (Nottingham), Infoshop.org, and the Institute for
Anarchist Studies.


Panels and presentations at the Book Fair will include an introductory
panel on "Anarchism and Its Aspirations," plus sessions on "Anarchism
and Supporting Parents and Children," "Anarcha-Feminism: A Panel
Discussion," "Antiauthoritarian Approaches to Resolving Conflict and
Harm," "The Future of Alternative Media," "Destroying Black History: The
Present and Past Attack on the Black Panthers," and "Visions of Anarchy
in the 21st Century."


Food and free childcare will also be available. For a full schedule of
events and complete information on Book Fair exhibitors, visit
here.

Contacts: Eric Laursen, (917) 806-6452

Jenna Freedman, (917) 378-9840

March 9, 2007 - 11:52am -- stevphen
Announcements
Independent Media

Edu-Factory Manifesto

As was the factory, so now is the university. Where once the factory
was a paradigmatic site of struggle between workers and capitalists,
so now the university is a key space of conflict, where the ownership
of knowledge, the reproduction of the labour force, and the creation
of social and cultural stratifications are all at stake. This is to
say the university is not just another institution subject to
sovereign and governmental controls, but a crucial site in which
wider social struggles are won and lost.

To be sure, these changes occur as capitalism gives new importance to
the production of knowledge, and in the advanced capitalist world,
moves such production of knowledge to the centre of the economy. With
this movement, the university also loses its monopoly in this same
sphere of knowledge production. Perhaps it once made sense to speak
of town and gown. But now the borders between the university and
society blur.

This merging of university and society takes diverse forms. It can be
shaped by the pressure to market degrees. Or it can be forced by
measures that link the provision of funding to ‘technological
transfer’ or collaboration with ‘partners’ from government and/or
commercial enterprises. Similarly, the growing precariousness of
academic work means that many labour both in and out of the
university, not to mention the labour conditions for non-academic
workers. And the opening of many universities to previously excluded
cohorts of students, whether on the basis of social class or national
jurisdiction, means that their internal composition has also changed.

February 17, 2007 - 9:43am -- autonomedia
Announcements
In the Streets

"New Movement in the Making?"

Penelope Rosemont

Saturday, February 17, 2007 the founding convention of the Movement for a Democratic Society will take place. Students for a Democratic Society was reestablished this last summer. The following statement is by Penelope Rosemont, Co-pres/mds.inc:


In 1969 we didn’t realize what an important thing we had in SDS. SDS was a national organization of young people, FOR young people, and run BY young people.


It had its national office in Chicago on West Madison Street in two substantial suites of rooms. Ten to fifteen, sometimes more young people worked year round to keep the office going. Nearby we had two SDS Staff Houses, where the staff and numerous travelers stayed. SDS was unique in that it was NOT run by an adult organization as a youth group, but was a self-governing organization. It is thanks in a large part to Al Haber that SDS was independent.


SDS had its own newspapers––New Left Notes, the Movement and many other local papers all over the country. It had its own theoretical and cultural journal, Radical America, edited by Paul Buhle. It had community organizing programs like the one Michael James developed in Chicago’s Uptown.

SDS had great student strikes at universities—Columbia, Berkeley, San Francisco State, Harvard, etc. Under National Secretary Michael Klonsky the National Office organized demonstrations around the 1968 Democratic Convention and the whole world watched.

February 17, 2007 - 9:38am -- autonomedia
Announcements
Theory

CLR James, Direct Democracy and Political Economy

Mona, Jamaica, June 27–30, 2007

Call for Papers

"CLR James, Direct Democracy and Political Economy"

CLR James Society

Caribbean Philosophical Association

University of the West Indies

Mona (Jamaica)

27-30 June 2007

__________________________________________________



The CLR James Society, a caucus of the Caribbean
Philosophical Association, announces a call for papers and
panels on the theme "CLR James, Direct Democracy and
Political Economy" for its fourth meeting at UWI, Mona,
Jamaica, June 27-30 2007.



Animated by the 60th anniversary of CLR James' "The Invading
Socialist Society" (1947), and a desire to shift from a
predominant preoccupation with his life and work from the
perspective of literary and cultural studies, we seek new
formulations. From his studies of Ancient Athens, Hegel,
Marx, Rousseau, and Michelet; his theory of "state
capitalism" and critiques of vanguards; the one party state
and the welfare state, and trade union bureaucracy; James'
advocacy of workers self-management, and his re-evaluation
of the peasantry and party politics; we seek to place these
legacies in conversation with African, African Diaspora, and
Third World political economies.

Deadline for Papers and Panels is April 30th 2007.

Contact:

Paget Henry

Email: Paget_He ...@brown.edu

Matthew Quest

Email: Matthew_Qu ...@brown.edu

February 17, 2007 - 9:29am -- autonomedia
Announcements
Independent Media

4th Annual NYC Grassroots Media Conference
Saturday Feb 24, 2007

The NYC Grassroots Media Conference Organizing Committee is happy to announce
that the full conference program including workshop descriptions is now
available on our website.

Read descriptions of all of the workshops at the conference:
nycgrassrootsmedia

Register today:
conference

NYC Grassroots Media Conference

"Media and Movements Beyond Borders"

Saturday February 24th, 2007

New School University

65 Fifth Avenue (at 13th Street)

Some of the over 40+ workshops include: (see below)

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