Join us for a conversation on the seedy underside to Tech’s past, present, and future. This event took place on May 30, 2023.
If the industry’s most credulous boosters are to be taken at their word, the contemporary tech industry is an economic freight train driven by big-brained disrupters who are charting a path toward a future of mutual prosperity, boundless leisure, and unfettered innovation. But in recent years some of the luster has come off of Tech’s carefully crafted reputation—thanks to stories of self-combusting cars, high-profile fraud convictions, and other headline grabbing fiascos. Just how much bluff and bluster, not to mention skeletons, lay buried beneath Silicon Valley’s idyllic hills? And what does a future without cheap credit and greatly diminished credibility mean for the tech industry?
For this event, Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World will be conversation with Timnit Gebru, found and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR).
Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team. She received her PhD from Stanford University, and did a postdoc at Microsoft Research, New York City in the FATE (Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics in AI) group, where she studied algorithmic bias and the ethical implications underlying projects aiming to gain insights from data. Timnit also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian highschool students, free of charge.
Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials, and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. He was born in Santa Cruz, CA and graduated from the University of Maryland.
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More Episodes
Aug 18, 2021
What's Happening in Cuba?
Join a panel of analysts to discuss the recent protests in Cuba and how they relate to solidarity, anti-imperialism, and socialism.
Recent protests in Cuba have generated debate on the international Left. What were the protests about and how should progressives make sense of them? What do the protests mean for debates about anti-imperialism, socialism, solidarity and internationalism? Join us for this important discussion with three Cuban leftist intellectuals and activists.
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Speakers:
Alina Bárbara López Hernández is a Cuban intellectual and writer based in Matanzas, Cuba. She is a longtime contributor to the influential Cuban publication La Joven Cuba and is the author of several books, including Segundas lecturas: intelectualidad, política y cultura en la república burguesa, El (des)conocido Juan Marinello: estudio de su pensamiento político, and En tiempos de blogosfera.
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros is a Cuban-born scholar and writer. She is associate professor of Latin American cultural studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Centered on Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx experiences, her current academic, fiction and nonfiction works examine self-identification processes and the production of counter-hegemonic knowledge in the global African diaspora. She is the author of Utopia, Dystopia and Ethical Weightlessness: Cosmological Reconfigurations in post-Soviet Cuban Fiction (in Spanish) and is currently writing “On Being Blacks: Self-Identification Processes and Counter-Hegemonic Knowledge in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production.”
Samuel Farber was born and raised in Marianao, Cuba. He was active in the Cuban high school student movement against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, and has been involved in socialist politics for more than fifty years. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the author of several books on Cuba, including Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959 and The Politics of Che Guevara: Theory and Practice (both published by Haymarket) and The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered. He is a frequent contributor to New Politics magazine and is a member of Internationalism from Below.
Moderator:
Natalia Tylim is active in the NYC-DSA labor branch. She’s a restaurant worker and a founding member of DSA’s Restaurant Organizing Project.
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This event is co-sponsored by Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/VkngZbCywqY
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Aug 26, 2021
What's Happening in Iran?
Join a panel of analysts to discuss the current protests and class struggle in Iran and the political dynamics of the region.
Please join Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics Magazine for this forum on the current protests rocking the Islamic Republic, class and labor politics in Iran, gender and ethnic minorities in the country, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary dynamics in the Middle East, the myth of the “Axis of Resistance” — and how progressives and internationalists should make sense of these critical developments.
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Speakers:
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator, and activist. She produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and writes about the Middle East and the politics of solidarity for a variety of publications, including New Politics magazine. Her essay “The Iranian Uprising of 2019-2020” appeared in the recent book A Region in Revolt: Mapping the Recent Uprisings in North Africa and West Asia, edited by Jade Saab and published by Daraja Press.
Latest article:
“Iran: A New Wave of Mass Protests and Strikes” (New Politics): https://newpol.org/iran-a-new-wave-of-mass-protests-and-strikes/
Kaveh Ehsani is associate professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His books include Social History of Oil in Iran (in Persian) and Working for Oil: Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry. He has worked as a regional planner at the World Bank and the UNDP. As a development planner in Iran he worked on water resources planning, drought, urban governance, and post-war reconstruction in Khuzestan Province. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and is a contributing editor of the journals Goftogu (based in Tehran), Middle East Report, and Iranian Studies.
Latest article:
“The Moral Economy of the Iranian Protests” (Jacobin): https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/01/iranian-protests-revolution-rouhani-ahmadinejad
Danny Postel is Assistant Director of the Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a member of Internationalism from Below. He is co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future, The Syria Dilemma, and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East. Formerly Senior Editor of openDemocracy magazine, he has written for Boston Review, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Democratic Left, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times, Middle East Report (MERIP), The Nation, New Politics, and The Progressive, among other publications.
Latest article:
"The Other Regional Counter-Revolution: Iran’s Role in the Shifting Political Landscape of the Middle East" (New Politics): https://newpol.org/the-other-regional-counter-revolution-irans-role-in-the-shifting-political-landscape-of-the-middle-east/
Moderator
Sam Salour is a member of the Tempest Collective and a sociology PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.
Latest article:
“Striking echoes in Iran: A report from the oil and gas strikes”: https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/08/striking-echoes-in-iran/
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This event is co-sponsored by Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/97kbenZHuSU
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Sep 2, 2021
White Skin, Black Fuel: Fossil Fascism and Colonialism's Inky Legacy
Join us for an urgent discussion on the rise of the far right and what it means for the battle against climate change.
Fossil-fueled technologies were born in the soot-covered pits of British colonialism and have held onto their racist legacy to this day. As the burning of carbon makes climate related catastrophe a near weekly occurrence, Fossil capital has of late turned to willing accomplices among the growing far-right to displace blame and defend the status quo. In a world of rising sea levels, scorching temperatures, and crippling droughts, the right-wing in country after country has risen to pin the blame on migrants, Muslims, and other scapegoats as they offer their own solutions to a warming world: close the borders and save the nation from climate break down.
In the first study of the far right’s role in the climate crisis, White Skin, Black Fuel presents an eye-opening sweep of this novel political constellation, drawing out its deep historical roots, and arguing that to confront this crisis requires combating the racist forces of reaction who would enable it.
Order a Copy of White Skin, Black Fuel: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3812-white-skin-black-fuel
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Speakers:
Dounia Boukaouit is an Independent researcher, Human Ecology graduate, and ICES Conference Coordinator and Research Assistant at Uppsala University.
Ståle Holgersen is a human geographer at Uppsala University, Sweden. Research interests include political economy and ecology, urban planning and housing, and crises. His forthcoming book Kapitalismens kriser (Daidalos 2021) explores relations between ecological and economic crises.
Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology, and the author of The Progress of this Storm and of Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (moderator) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His forthcoming book Reconsidering Reparations (November 2021, Oxford University Press) explores links between reparations and climate justice.
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This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pspu3GuoFbY
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Sep 3, 2021
Reaction and Revolution: Responses to Domenico Losurdo’s 'Nietzsche'
Join us for a discussion marking the paperback release of Domenico Losurdo’s monumental study of Friedrich Nietzsche.
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Recently translated into English by Gregor Benton, Losurdo’s book is epic in scope, covering a wide range of philosophical and historical issues that not only situate Nietzsche in his 19th century context, but addresses some of the most burning theoretical and political issues of our times. Losurdo’s Nietzsche represents one of the greatest examples of Marxist scholarship and criticism, and we will discuss the book’s significance for not only how we see Nietzsche, but how we understand socialist theory today. Losurdo’s Nietzsche shows us that the problems of the 19th century are not over yet.
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Speakers:
Harrison Fluss received his PhD in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He is a professor at Manhattan College, NYC and wrote the introduction to the English edition of Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel.
Benjamin Noys is Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester. He is the author of The Persistence of the Negative, Malign Velocities, and the forthcoming The Matter of Language.
Tijana Okić holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. She is a longstanding activist of the “Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt” (CADTM), and is the editor of “The Lost Revolution: Yugoslav Women’s Antifascist Front between Myth and Forgetting.” Her research includes issues of German Idealism, contemporary French philosophy, feminist philosophy, Marxism, the history of race and ethnicity, and the problems of memory in Yugoslav history.
Daniel Tutt has degrees from American University and the European Graduate School. He is the author of the forthcoming book Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: The Crisis of Initiationwith the Palgrave Lacan Series. His research is concerned with the intersection of contemporary politics, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. You can read his review of Losurdo’s Aristocratic Rebel entitled “Nietzsche in His Time: The Struggle Against Socratism and Socialism” on the Historical Materialism website.
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Order a copy of Nietzsche, The Aristocratic Rebel:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1565-nietzsche-the-aristocratic-rebel
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2sTqD62y2Do
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Sep 6, 2021
Hillbilly Nationalists The Young Patriots & the Rainbow Coalition
Join Young Patriots co-founder Hy Thurman and Amy Sonnie and James Tracy for a book launch discussion of 'Hillbilly Nationalists'.
In 1969, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) emerged out of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood to organize poor white people against capitalism and white supremacy. They worked alongside the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Puerto Rican Young Lords in the Original Rainbow Coalitions. The YPO embodied the politics that sought to build multiracial working-class unity while respecting the self-determination and autonomy of their comrades of color.
Join YPO co-founder Hy Thurman, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, co-authors of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing, Expanded Anniversary Edition, (Melville House Publishing) in conversation with Rampant Magazine.
Get the new, expanded Anniversary Edition of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing from Melville House Publishing here: https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/hillbilly-nationalists-urban-race-rebels-and-black-power
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Speakers:
Amy Sonnie is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).
Hy Thurman is a co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization and author of Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes From the Struggle at the Edge of the Rainbow (Regent Press).
James Tracy is co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Interracial; Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (Melville House Publishing).
Moderator:
Eric Kerl is a Kentuckian living, working, organizing, and writing in Chicago. He is the author of White Bred: Hillbillies, White Trash, and Rednecks against White Supremacy (forthcoming from Haymarket Books) and is on the editorial collective of Rampant Magazine.
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This event is co-sponsored by Rampant Magazine, Melville House Publishing, Howard Zinn Book Fair, and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/JBL-hyLqjhk
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Sep 10, 2021
Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete w/ Geo Maher, Robin DG Kelley, & Alex Vitale
If police are the problem, what’s the solution?
Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. Geo Maher's new book, A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete.
Geo will be joined by Robin D.G. Kelley and Alex Vitale to pick up on these urgent themes and to examine the alternatives to Police and policing.
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Order a Copy of A World Without Police: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3783-a-world-without-police
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Speakers:
Geo Maher has previously taught at Vassar College, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He is the author of five books, including We Created Chavez, Decolonizing Dialectics, Building the Commune, Spirals of Revolt, and A World Without Police.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA and the author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.
Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Shj1A0_r5MQ
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