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Podcast

Revolutionary Defeat and the Future of Struggle in Syria —and Beyond

Join us for the live stream of a conversation with Syrian writer & former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh moderated by Wendy Pearlman & Danny Postel. Broadcasting from Haymarket House. This event took place on October 17, 2023. Join us for the livestream of a conversation with Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the leading intellectual voice of the Syrian uprising and one of the key thinkers in the Arab world today, during his first visit ever to the U.S. Among al-Haj Saleh’s nine books is The Impossible Revolution (Haymarket Books, 2017), which makes sense of both the nature of authoritarian domination in Syria and the historic popular struggle to topple it. Moderated by Wendy Pearlman, author of We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria and Danny Postel, co-editor of The Syria Dilemma and The People Reloaded, this dialogue will explore the origins and trajectory of the Syrian uprising, the internal and external forces that thwarted it, what comes next in the quest of emancipatory change, what lessons the Syrian experience might have for other struggles, and what lessons other struggles might have for Syria. This public event is co-sponsored by Northwestern University’s Middle East and North African Studies Program, New Lines Magazine, and Haymarket Books. Speakers: Yassin al-Haj Saleh is the leading intellectual voice of the Syrian uprising and one of the key thinkers in the Arab world today. Born in the city of Raqqa in 1961, he was arrested in 1980 in Aleppo for his membership in a left-wing political organization and spent 16 years in prison. His wife, Samira al-Khalil, was abducted by an armed Islamist group in 2013. He is the author of nine books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy (2017) and The Atrocious and its Representation (English edition forthcoming). One of the founders of the bilingual Arabic-English platform Aljumhuriya.net, he writes for a variety of international publications and is a Contributing Writer for New Lines Magazine. He is now based in Berlin. Wendy Pearlman is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Crown Professorship of Middle East Studies and is currently director of the Middle East and North Africa Studies program. She is the author of Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (2003); Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (2011); We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017); Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (with Boaz Atzili, 2018); and Muzoon: A Syrian Refugee Speaks Out (with Muzoon Almellehan, 2023). Her sixth book, The Home I Worked To Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, is forthcoming from Liveright Books in 2024. Danny Postel is Politics Editor of New Lines Magazine, an award-winning global affairs publication which the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard says has “built a home for long-form international reporting.” He is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran (2006) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (2010), The Syria Dilemma (2013), and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (2017). His current book-in-progress, “Critical Solidarity,” explores the legacies of the late international relations theorist, Middle East scholar and internationalist Fred Halliday. This event is co-sponsored by Northwestern University’s Middle East and North African Studies Program, New Lines Magazine, and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/qfmjwRD_ho4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

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Feb 25, 2021

Capitalism Is The Disease Mike Davis on the Coronavirus Crisis (3-31-20)

An online teach-in with renowned activist-scholar Mike Davis, author of numerous books, including The Monster at Our Door, In Praise of Barbarians, and the forthcoming Set the Night on Fire. Fifteen years ago, in his prescient book, The Monster At Our Door, Mike Davis warned that a viral catastrophe was being cooked up in the toxic vat built by the combined dangers of global capitalist production, ecological devastation, and the intentional, politically motivated neglect of public services the world over. As coronavirus continues to spread, largely unabated, we are witnessing both profound acts of solidarity among working people, and the grotesque depths to which the ruling class is willing to sink for the sake of maintaining their profits. And these are only the early days of what will likely become a medical Katrina. The pandemic has shown that capitalist globalization is biologically unsustainable in the absence of a truly international public health infrastructure, and we can say for sure that such an infrastructure will never exist until peoples’ movements break the power of Big Pharma and for-profit health care. Doing so will demand an independent socialist design for human survival well beyond even a Second New Deal. In this virtual teach-in, Mike Davis will offer his appraisal of the crisis so far, discuss the urgent need for international solidarity to end this (and future) pandemics, and take questions from our digital audience. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/xOp9G5hoQnM
Mar 1, 2021

After Bernie—Amidst Pandemic with Naomi Klein and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor(4-9-20)

Join Naomi Klein, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Astra Taylor, and Hari Kondabolu for a discussion of what comes next after Bernie. The current crisis is laying bare the extreme injustices and inequalities of our economic and social system. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/6Gi5qGHRJ9c Buy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks We are in a battle of visions for how we’re going to respond to this crisis. We will either be catapulted backward to an even more brutal winner-takes-all system — or this will be a wake-up call. Ideas that were dismissed as too radical just a week ago are starting to seem like the only reasonable path to get out of this crisis and prevent future ones. We need to use every tool that we have that allows us to hear each other’s voices, to read each other’s words, to see each other’s faces, even if it’s just on screens, to stay organized and stay connected. We have to create spaces where we’re able to deliberate and strategize about what it means to protect our neighbors, our rights, and our planet. We have to have the confidence to say this is the moment when we change everything. Sponsored by Haymarket Books, The Leap, Debt Collective, and Democratic Socialists of America Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/6Gi5qGHRJ9c Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 1, 2021

Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (4-14-20)

Join us for the launch of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, a landmark literary collection of essays, poems, and prose that are a testament to the profound political power of defying shame. Haymarket Books convenes a panel of contributors from this powerful volume for a conversation on the personal-political fight for abortion rights. With reading and discussions by: Annie Finch, poet and editor of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion Soniah Kamal, author of Unmarriageable Desiree Cooper, writer and producer of the short film "The Choice" Alexis Quinlan, poet and educator Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/V-tfKGuxbj0 Buy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 1, 2021

Covid-19, Decarceration, and Abolition with Ruth Wilson Gilmore & Naomi Murakawa (4-16-20)

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Mar 1, 2021

Too Much Midnight with Krista Franklin, Mahogany L. Browne & more (4-19-20)

Haymarket Books, Bowery Poetry, and The BreakBeat Poets present: Krista Franklin’s Too Much Midnight Krista Franklin will be joined by special guests Aricka Foreman, and avery r. young, for an event to launch her new book Too Much Midnight hosted by Mahogany L. Browne While this event is free for all to attend, we hope you’ll consider making a donation to support the work of these artists. All donations received will be shared between the performers. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1460-too-much-midnight ____________ Krista Franklin’s Too Much Midnight draws on Pan African histories, Black Surrealism, Afrofuturism, pop culture, art history, and the historical and present-day micro-to-macro violence inflicted upon Black people and other people of color, working to forge imaginative spaces for radical possibilities and visions of liberation. Featuring 30 poems, 30 artworks, an author statement and an interview, Too Much Midnight chronicles the intersections between art and life, art and writing, the historical and the speculative, cultural and personal identity, the magical and the mundane. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/t2KanIZv0O0 Buy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 1, 2021

Remaking Schools in the Time of Coronavirus (4-22-20)

Three leading voices in the struggle for education justice (Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au, and Noliwe Rooks) discuss the remaking of public schools in the time of crisis. What has this crisis taught us about the role of public schools in society? What have we learned about what really matters in education during this time? When we re-open schools, what kind of education will we have, will we demand? The Covid-19 crisis has upended public education around the country. Join three radical education activists in conversation about what this crisis means for public education now and how moving forward we can continue to fight for the schools our students deserve. Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator and a leading voice on issues of educational equity and social justice unionism. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and is the co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives, and editor of More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. Noliwe Rooks is the W.E.B Du Bois Professor of Literature at Cornell University and the author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education which won an award for non-fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell. He is a long-time Rethinking Schools editor, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives and author of A Marxist Education: Learning to Change the World. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/rDnP663yEbM Buy books from Haymarket: haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks