A Spectre conversation with Charles Post, Peter Ikeler, and Calvin John Smiley on systemic racism and the policing of US capitalism. ---------------------------------------------------- Over the last few decades, the US state has thrown millions of people, disproportionately Black and Latino, behind bars in one of the greatest waves of mass incarceration in history. Join this webinar led by Spectre’s Charles Post, Peter Ikeler, and Calvin John Smiley who will examine the role of systemic racism in the policing of US capitalism. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Charles Post is an editor of Spectre and a member of the NYC Labor Branch of DSA. Peter Ikeler is a Brooklyn-based activist and scholar. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY Old Westbury. Calvin John Smiley is a New York-based scholar and activist. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hunter College—CUNY. ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Spectre Journal and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2B2G9zkZR6k Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Are you ready to celebrate Janel Pineda’s Lineage of Rain? With special guests: Kay Ulanday Barrett, féi hernandez, Vanessa Angélica Villareal AND Jihyun Yun?! Hosted by José Olivarez?! Y’all: get ready for the real. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Janel Pineda is a Los-Angeles born Salvadoran poet and educator. She has performed her poetry internationally in both English and Spanish, and been published in LitHub, PANK, The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. among others. As a Marshall Scholar, she holds an MA in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. Janel’s debut poetry chapbook, Lineage of Rain, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books. Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, and cultural strategist. Barrett’s latest book More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award in Literature by the American Library Association. They have featured at The Lincoln Center, The U.N., Symphony Space, The Poetry Project, Princeton University, NYU, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, and Brooklyn Museum. They’ve received fellowship invitations from MacDowell, Lambda Literary, Drunken Boat, VONA, The Home School, VCCA, Monson Arts, and Macondo. They are a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee and 2x Best of the Net nominee. They have written two poetry books, When The Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016) and More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). They currently reside in NYC/NJ and remix their mama’s recipes with the company of their jowly dog. féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, México) is an Inglewood-raised immigrant trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer. Currently, they are the President of the Advisory Board for Gender Justice Los Angeles. They have been published in Poetry, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier, NPR’s Code Switch, BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT, PANK Magazine amongst others. féi is the author of Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications, 2020). Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and the author of the award-winning collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series, 2017), a 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Paris Review, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Rumpus, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Buzzfeed Reader, and Poetry Magazine, where her poem “f = [(root) (future)]” was honored with the 2019 Friends of Literature Prize. Find her on Twitter @Vanessid. Jihyun Yun is a Korean American poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. Winner of the 2019 Prairie Schooner Prize in poetry, her debut collection Some Area Always Hungry [an urgently beautiful collection] was published by University of Nebraska Press in September 2020. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Adroit, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Tz02p_U9-g4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Two dynamic BreakBeat poets go poem for poem on the themes that inspire them from Cortney Lamar Charleston’s Doppelgangbanger. ---------------------------------------------------- This event is the first in a series of three events curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston in collaboration with The BreakBeat Poets and Haymarket Books, to celebrate the release of his new collection, Doppelgangbanger. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Camonghne Felix, M.A. is a poet, a writer, speaker, & political strategist. She received an M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, & has received Fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo & Poets House. Formerly the Director of Surrogates & Strategic Communications at Elizabeth Warren for President, Camonghne is the VP of Strategic Communications at Blue State. Her first full-length collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books), was long-listed for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. The author of the chapbook Yolk, she was recently listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl From the Future You Should Know." Felix's forthcoming collection of poems, Dyscalculia, and collection of essays, Let the Poets Govern, are forthcoming from One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker’s debut book of nonfiction is forthcoming from One World. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has been hailed by The New York Times as “a dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence to American poetry.” Parker received her Bachelors in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Columbia University and her MFA in Poetry from NYU. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow, and creator and host of the live talk show Reparations, Live! at the Ace Hotel. She co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico. With Angel Nafis, she is The Other Black Girl Collective. Parker lives in Los Angeles with her dog Shirley. She is a Sagittarius. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/LyIQRqJPixY Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Timnit Gebru, and other important scholars and activists for a discussion of how we resist the corporate power of the tech monopolies. ———————————————— Big Tech touches nearly every part of our lives. From vacuuming massive amounts of information about our movements and collecting images of our faces, to dictating where gigwork drivers should go and pushing warehouse workers to fulfill orders, big tech is pervasive in its reach and pernicious in its effect. But workers, organizers, and scholars are pushing back. We are forming unions and organizing collectives with their colleagues. We are sounding the alarm on the ways these technologies exacerbate structural racism and abate the rise of global fascism. And we are starting to win. In December of 2020 Google fired Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of their Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team, after she refused to accept their attempted censorship of her co-authored article questioning the ethics and environmental impact of largescale AI language models. The termination sparked a new wave of organizing among Tech workers who quickly mobilized to defend Gebru against the corporate giant’s efforts to silence criticism of a key part of their business model. This organizing—following on the heels of the walk-outs against defense contracts and preceding this month’s announcement that Google workers have formed a union—offers important lessons about workers’ power within one of capitalism’s most profitable and important sectors. Join Timnit Gebru, and other important scholars, activists, and organizers for a discussion of how we resist the corporate power of the tech monopolies who have increasing levels of control over our day to day lives. ———————————————— Speakers: Dr. Timnit Gebru is a co-founder of Black in AI. She was Staff Research Scientist and Co-Lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google before being terminated for demanding an justification for Google’s censorship of her co-authored on article questioning the environmental and ethical implications of large-scale AI language models. Dr. Alex Hanna is a sociologist and Senior Research Scientist on the Ethical AI team at Google. Her work centers on origins of the training data which form the informational infrastructure of AI and the way these datasets exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. Charlton Mcilwain (@cmcilwain) is Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement & Development at New York University, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, and founder of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studie Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Information Studies where she serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She also holds appointments in African American Studies and Gender Studies. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Adrienne Williams is a former charter school junior high teacher and Amazon delivery driver, turned labor organizer. Her ultimate goal is to force the powerful to abide by the same laws as the working class, in hopes that equity will lead to freely organizing and advocating for self which will create a happier society. Meredeith Whittaker is a research professor at New York University, co-founder and faculty director of the AI Now Institute at NYU, and founder of Google’s Open Research group. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/vDtOxrV9Bqc Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Celebrate the publication of We Do This 'Til We Free Us with a discussion about prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition, seeking justice beyond the criminal punishment system, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, featuring contributors and organizers from the book. What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In We Do This 'Til We Free Us, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. ———————————————— Speakers: Shira Hassan, Kelly Hayes, Rachel Herzing, Mariame Kaba, Erica Meiners and Tamara K. Nopper. ————————————————————— Order your copy of We Do This 'Til We Free Us here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1664-we-do-this-til-we-free-us Praise for We Do This 'Til We Free Us: “I want to say this is a ‘generation-defining’ book, but that feels wrong because I know it will be shaping political imaginations for a century or more. It's generations-defining. This is a classic in the vein of Sister Outsider, a book that will spark countless radical imaginations.” — Eve L. Ewing “Mariame Kaba’s clarity, firm-but-gentle guidance, embracing spirit, deep creativity, and love of laughter, demonstrate how abolition is, in deed, presence. Thank goodness for this urgent book.” —Ruth Wilson Gilmore "One of the most fascinating developments during this age of Black Lives Matter is how ‘abolition' has been integrated into mainstream debates on how to change the United States. Yet there is still so much not known or understood about the history, politics and practice of abolition-informed politics. Longtime organizer and educator, Mariame Kaba, is one of the most important voices in the emergent abolitionist movement." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor "At once an urgent call to action, a step-by-step guide to the practice of transformative justice, a collection of inspirational interviews and a few lighthearted reflections, this book will significantly advance radical justice work. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is just what we need and it has arrived right on time." — Beth Richie ————————————————————— This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and The Marguerite Casey Foundation. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/xWL9a1f9uW0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Key worker organizers from the videogames industry draw lessons from their struggle, all while collectively playing through Fall Guys. ———————————————— Since the beginning of 2018 there has been a wave of worker organizing in the videogames industry. While there is a longer history of resistance and struggle among game workers, the last two years have been the most visible and connected examples so far, with active campaigns stretched across several contingents. This interactive discussion will bring together key participants from the US and UK and ask them to reflect on the experience of organizing through worker networks, assess the efforts of their new trade union formations, and generalize the lessons of these important workplace struggles—all while collectively playing through Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. The chaos, vibrancy, and frenetic antics of this multiplayer battle royale should provide an excellent backdrop for the conversation, and may even offer unexpected insights into the work that goes into the videogames industry. If nothing else it will make for a more entertaining than usual panel discussion. The event will close with plenty of time for questions for the speakers about the organizing and/or gameplay advise from the online audience. ———————————————— Dr Jamie Woodcock is a senior lecturer at the Open University and a researcher based in London. He is the author of The Gig Economy (Polity, 2019), Marx at the Arcade (Haymarket, 2019), and Working The Phones (Pluto, 2017). His research is inspired by the workers' inquiry and focuses on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organizing, and videogames. He is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism. Emma Kinema is an organizer with the Communication Workers of America (CWA). Austin Kelmore is the former chair of Game Workers Unite UK, a game programmer, tech lead, DEI advocate, and tea drinker. ————————————————————— Order a copy of Marx at the Arcade: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1319-marx-at-the-arcade The Gig Economy: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781509536368 Working the Phones: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780745399065 Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/46ArCqpxS20 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Critical Resistance and the AbolitionNOW coalition for the third in their series of virtual teach-in's. ———————————————— A panel of experts will connect the dots between imprisonment and jail expansion in the movement to defund policing and how all of these pieces tie into the larger movement towards abolition. ————————————————————— Speakers: Marlene Ramos - Critical Resistance Member William Palmer - Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, All of Us or None Kelly Savage - Survived and Punished Jonathan Butler - BYP100, National No New Jails Network. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2-DZpxYPdUA Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

A virtual teach-in featuring movements leaders who came together to launch the short film, Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair. Watch the film here: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/01/naomi-klein-message-from-future-covid/ ---------------------------------------------------- What if 2020 was an historic turning point, where the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and global uprisings against racism drove us to build back a better society in which no one is sacrificed, and everyone is essential? This virtual teach-in used the animated short film Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair to help envision this kind of a transition, and will features representatives from incredible organizations engaged in the kind of work that could make it a reality. Join Haymarket Books, The Leap, writer & producer Avi Lewis, and others for a conversation on the role of radical utopianism in a time of crisis Speakers: David Boys is PSI Deputy General Secretary and coordinates PSI’s work on privatisation, climate and emergency workers and water, waste and energy utilities. David joined the PSI team in 1999. Public Services International is a Global Union Federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries. It brings their voices to the UN, ILO, WHO and other regional and global organisations. It defends trade union and workers' rights and fight for universal access to quality public services. Cathy Kennedy is President of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), and Vice President of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest U.S. union and professional association of registered nurses. NNU is a founding affiliate of Global Nurses United. Annie Leonard is the Executive Director of Greenpeace US, the US office of the global Greenpeace network which is includes more than 50 countries. Greenpeace uses research, creative communication, people power and non violent direct action to create a green and peaceful future for all. Prior to Greenpeace, Annie created the Story of Stuff internet film and book. Avi Lewis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. In 2017, he co-founded and is now Strategic Director of The Leap – an organization launched to upend our collective response to the crises of climate, inequality and racism. He produced, and co-wrote with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Emmy nominated short film, Message from the Future and is producer and co-writer with Opal Tometi of the new short film, Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair Leila Salazar-López has served as the Executive Director of Amazon Watch since 2015. She is a mother, proud Chicana-Latina woman, and passionate defender of Mother Earth, the Amazon, Indigenous rights and climate justice. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/UjIcTHioAVU Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

The BreakBeat Poets Live! is a virtual, multi-generational showcase of some of the illest writers on the planet rock. Each chapter features writers and performers who are part of the Haymarket Books family. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work. Penelope Alegria is the 2019 Chicago Youth Poet Laureate and a two-time member of Young Chicago Authors’ artistic apprenticeship, Louder Than a Bomb Squad. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in La Nueva Semana, El Beisman, Muse/A Journal, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, as well as BBC Radio 4 and WBEZ Radio Archives. She is a Brain Mill Press Editor’s Pick, and she was awarded the 2018 Literary Award by Julian Randall and both the 2019 and 2020 Poetry Award by the Niles West English Department. She has performed spoken word at the Obama Foundation Summit, Pitchfork Music Festival, and other venues in the Chicagoland area. She started at Harvard College in the fall of 2020. Nilah Foster is considered a part of the queer black youth that comes from the far south side of Chicago and represents it all with her pen. She was a Louder Than A Bomb Indy finalist of 2019 and Indy winner of 2020 which also allowed her to be a part of the bombsquad 2019 and 2020 cohort. But nothing serves a better medium of learning about her than from her writing where she interrogates her own truths and where she and the audience learn together. E’Mon Lauren is from the South Side of Chicago. She is a Scorpio enthusiast and a firm believer in Dorthy Dandridge reincarnation. E’mon uses poetry and playwriting to explore a philosophy of hood womanism. She was named Chicago’s first Youth Poet Laureate. A former Kuumba Lynx Performance Ensemble slam team member and Louder Than a Bomb champion, E’mon has performed in many venues including The Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival and The Chicago Hip Hop Theatre Fest. She was a 2016 finalist for The Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. E’mon has been published in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, The Down Dirty Word, and elsewhere. She has been featured in Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and on WGN Radio. She is a member of Young Chicago Authors Teaching Artist Corps. José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His book, Citizen Illegal, won of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize and was named a top book of 2018 by NPR. ​He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, and the Bronx Council on the Arts. Olivarez was awarded the Author and Artist in Justice award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. He is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Jamila Woods is an activist, award-winning poet, and singer/songwriter whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison, as well as Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar. As a solo artist, she specializes in an accessible yet non-commercial form of R&B that is rooted in soul and wholly modern, which can be heard on her albums HEAVN (2016) and LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019). She is also the co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Kevin Coval is a poet and author of A People’s History of Chicago and over ten other collections, anthologies, and chapbooks. ​He is the founder and editor of the BreakBeat Poets series for Haymarket Books, artistic director for Young Chicago Authors, and the founder of Louder than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/NPvZi_3U_ZE Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Paul Coates, Eddie Conway and Susie Day as they talk about life, politics, and the revolution. ---------------------------------------------------- In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn't know Eddie well – the little he knew, he didn't much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie's charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie – and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie's release. Paul's founding of the Black Classic Press in 1978 was originally a way to get books to Eddie in prison. When, in 2014, Eddie finally walked out onto the streets of Baltimore, Paul Coates was there to greet him. Today, these two men remain rock-solid comrades and friends – each, the other's chosen brother. When Eddie and Paul met in the Baltimore Panther Party, they were in their early twenties. They are now into their seventies. This book is a record of their lives and their relationship, told in their own voices. Paul and Eddie talk about their individual stories, their work, their politics, and their immeasurable bond. ------------------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Eddie Conway is an Executive Producer of The Real News Network. He is the host of the TRNN show Rattling the Bars. He is Chairman of the Board of Ida B’s Restaurant, and the author of two books: Marshall Law: The Life & Times of a Baltimore Black Panther and The Greatest Threat: The Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO. A former member of the Black Panther Party, Eddie Conway is an internationally known political prisoner for over 43 years, a long time prisoners’ rights organizer in Maryland, the co-founder of the Friend of a Friend mentoring program, and the President of Tubman House Inc. of Baltimore. He is a national and international speaker and has several degrees. Paul Coates is the founder and director of Black Classic Press, and BCP Digital Printing. the Press specializes in republishing obscure and significant works by and about people of African descent. BCP Digital Printing is the only African American owned book printer in the US. Susie Day began listening to people in prison at the DC Jail, where she interviewed four women charged with the 1985 bombing of the U.S. Capitol. She lives in Manhattan with her partner (and Capitol-bomber), Laura Whitehorn. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Brother You Choose: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1466-the-brother-you-choose Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/K971Yh__lHE Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks