Join us for a conversation about recovering from climate disaster and building community within the context of colonialism in Puerto Rico.
Celebrate the launch of Mi María: Surviving the Storm, a new book from Voice of Witness and Haymarket Books, with a roundtable conversation about the aftermath of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico.
Mi María: Surviving the Storm brings together 17 first-person stories that explore how government neglect and colonialism impact recovery, how communities come together in the wake of disaster, and how precarity and inequity are exacerbated on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Weaving together long-form oral histories and shorter testimonios, the book offers a multivocal history of the storm and its long aftermath as people waited for relief and aid that rarely arrived and communities collectively organized to support one another in recovery.
This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able please make a solidarity donation in support of our important educational and publishing work. Donations from this event will support our work with Voice of Witness.
You can also support by purchasing the book, Mi María: Surviving the Storm, online here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1746-mi-maria-surviving-the-storm
Speakers:
Dr. Ricia Chansky is a professor in the English department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the co-editor of Mi María: Surviving the Storm. She is the co-editor of the scholarly journal, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and the editor of the Routledge Auto/Biography Studies book series. Ricia is also a Research Affiliate at the York University Centre for Research in Latin America and the Caribbean and a Global Fellow at the Brown University Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. For her work directing the large-scale public humanities project, “Mi María: Puerto Rico after the Hurricane,” Ricia won the MLA Innovation in the Humanities Award and the Oral History Association’s Post-Secondary Teaching Award, and was selected as a partner in the Humanities Action Lab. She has been recognized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance as a Global Human Rights Leader in the Climate Crisis.
Zaira Arvelo Alicea is a narrator in Mi María: Surviving the Storm and the Curriculum Specialist for the project. Zaira is a writer, editor, and educator with a focus on English language learners (ELLs) and equity in the continental US and Puerto Rico. She was born in Lares, Puerto Rico, a mountainous town in the archipelago with a tradition of anticolonial insurgency. Zaira and her husband survived Hurricane María by floating on an air mattress for sixteen hours, trapped in their home. Her story highlights several failures in the federal disaster-response system, which led them to remain homeless for well over a year after the hurricane. She currently lives on Puerto Rico’s largest island where she spearheads a small business.
Lorel Cubano Santiago is a narrator in Mi María: Surviving the Storm and a community organizer with a background in tourism. She is the founder of the Old San Juan Heritage Foundation and the community arts center Colectivo PerlArte. After Hurricane María, Lorel mobilized mutual aid efforts with her community to feed hundreds of people despite not receiving any aid from the supply ships that docked just minutes away from their neighborhood of La Perla in San Juan.
Brenda Flores Santiago is a researcher, translator, and oral historian. Brenda was a student interviewer for the Mi María project at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. She is currently a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Translation and Interpreting program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/4J-e1ITH3ZQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Jun 2, 2021
Free, Free, Palestine! Biden, Israel and the Fight for Palestinian Liberation
Join Tithi Bhattacharya, Sumaya Awad, Khury Petersen-Smith, and Nerdeen Kiswani for a discussion of Israel, US Empire, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Despite Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, the Biden administration continues to support it to the hilt, whatever qualms it has with Netanyahu’s far right regime. This webinar will explain the reasons for Washington’s alliance with Israel, what it means for the for Palestinian liberation struggle, and the tasks of the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
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Speakers:
Tithi Bhattacharya, Editor, Spectre Journal
Sumaya Awad, Co-Editor, Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
Nerdeen Kiswani, President, Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY School of Law
Khury Petersen-Smith, Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
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This event is sponsored by Spectre Journal and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/yK1o1WV5EuQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 3, 2021
PIC Abolition, the War on Terror, and the Deportation Machine
Join Amna Akbar, Aziz Rana, Darakshan Raja, and Silky Shah for a discussion of how the War on Terror fuels our deportation machine and how to dismantle both.
Immigrant and racial justice organizers are calling for the abolition of the war on terror and the deportation machine. This panel will discuss how recent campaigns change the terrain of debates within policy spheres and create new openings for organizing. The panel will analyze developments within contemporary abolitionist organizing and put it in conversation with the internationalism of 20th century left social movements.
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Speakers:
Silky Shah is the Executive Director of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power to abolish immigration detention in the United States. She has worked as an organizer on issues related to immigration detention, the prison industrial complex, and racial and migrant justice for nearly 20 years.
Darakshan Raja is the co-director of the Justice For Muslims Collective, a community-based organization that works to dismantle structural Islamophobia through community organizing and empowerment, raising political consciousness and narrative shifting, and building strategic alliances across movements.
Aziz Rana is a professor of law at Cornell University, and his research focuses on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped American legal and political identity. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/o2IER14CyMA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 4, 2021
Lawyering for Liberation w/ Derecka Purnell and Amna Akbar
Join Law for Black Lives, Amna Akbar and Derecka Purnell for a discussion about what it means for lawyers to build the power of the law.
Law for Black Lives is a national community of radical lawyers and legal workers committed to transforming the law and building the power of organizing to defend, protect and advance Black Liberation across the globe.
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Speakers:
Amna Akbar is a professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She writes about policing and social movements, with a focus on grassroots demands for social change.
Derecka Purnell is is a human rights lawyer, writer, and organizer. Since graduating from Harvard Law School, she has worked to end police and prison violence nationwide by providing legal assistance, research, and trainings to community based organizations through an abolitionist framework. Derecka is currently a columnist at The Guardian and Deputy Director of Spirit of Justice Center. She is the author for the forthcoming book Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom.
Marbre Stahly-Butts, Executive Director of Law for Black Lives works closely with organizers and communities across the country to advance and actualize radical policy. Marbre is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for National Bail Out Collective, the group behind Black Mama's Day Bail Out. She currently serves on the Leadership Team of the Movement For Black Lives Policy Table and helped develop the Vision for Black Lives Policy Platform. Since graduating from Yale Law School in 2013, Marbre has supported local and national organizations from across the country in their policy development and advocacy. She joined the Center for Popular Democracy as a Soros Justice Fellow in Fall 2013. Her Soros Justice work focused on organizing and working with families affected by aggressive policing and criminal justice policies in New York City in order to develop meaningful bottom up policy reforms. While in law school, Marbre focused on the intersection of criminal justice and civil rights and gained legal experience with the Bronx Defenders, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Prison Policy Initiative. Before law school Marbre received her Masters in African Studies from Oxford University and worked in Zimbabwe organizing communities impacted by violence and then in South Africa teaching at Nelson Mandela’s alma mater. Marbre graduated from Columbia University, with a BA in African-American History and Human Rights.
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This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Law for Black Lives.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Jxvem9THmsc
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 7, 2021
The Power of Community-Generated Research in our Work for Justice
Join Haymarket Books, and a coalition of partners for a discussion of the power of community-led research, education, & knowledge creation.
This is a panel discussion with speakers and groups whose deep commitment to work grounded in community, in liberatory processes, and in challenging injustice at its core, are deeply inspiring and so relevant for this moment. Speakers will share their wisdom, experience, and analysis as we think together about the ways that our work for justice is strengthened and deepened by truly embodying a commitment to community-rooted and community-generated processes --and what that looks like in practice.
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About the groups:
Makan is a Palestinian-led educational organization based in the UK. Through its knowledge and capacity-building programs, Makan strengthens voices calling for Palestinian rights across the grassroots and advocacy sphere.
https://www.makan.org.uk/
Justice For Muslims Collective is a grassroots organization that works to dismantle structural and institutionalized forms of Islamophobia in the greater Washington region through political consciousness and narrative shifting, community organizing and healing justice, and building alliances.
https://www.justiceformuslims.org/
Confronting white supremacy, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, & colonial heritages, the Democratizing Knowledge Project focuses on producing transformative knowledges & collectivities that result in inclusive publics in higher education. Feminist Freedom Warriors (FFW) is a first of its kind digital video archive that uses oral history to document the lives & work of feminist scholar-activists of the later 20th century to today.
https://democratizingknowledge.syr.edu/
http://feministfreedomwarriors.org/
PARCEO is a resource and education center, rooted in principles of Participatory Action Research, that partners with community groups & institutions seeking to deepen their work for justice.
https://parceo.org/
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Speakers:
Tamara Ben-Halim, co-founder and co-director, Makan
Darakshan Raja, co-director, Justice for Muslims Collective
Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Linda Carty, co-founders Democratizing Knowledge & Feminist Freedom Warriors
Nina Mehta, co-director, PARCEO (Moderator)
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Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/gdOOsPz5048
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 11, 2021
Celebrating Black Women's Leadership w/ Angela Davis, Barbara Ransby, & more
Join Barbara Ransby, Angela Davis, Andrea James, LaTosha Brown, and M Adams for “Celebrating Black Women’s Leadership, Then & Now” part of the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference.
Beyond the Bars - Towards Freedom: Violence, Safety and Abolition in 2021 This year marks the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference, coming one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in which multiple crises have unfolded, and the growth of social movements struggling for a more just and safe world have increased significantly. Given this, we hope to create deep and thoughtful conversations about the many forms of violence that our society has experienced; to surface and examine the ways in which movements are pushing for community and public safety in ways that do not reenforce the carceral state; and to explore why abolition has become so prevalent in the conversations, strategies and demands in the work of transforming approaches to justice and safety. In addition, we will take time to honor and celebrate the leadership of women impacted by incarceration, and the leadership of Black women, and all that we have and can learn from their work. And we will spend time building and amplifying the work of grassroots organizing.
Conference Sponsors The Ford Foundation, Trinity Church Wall Street, the New York Women's Foundation, Columbia School of Social Work Student Services, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, the Eric H. Holder Jr. Inititiave for Civil and Political Rights, the Division of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pX4C0fucXjk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 12, 2021
Celebrating Black Women's Leadership, Then & Now (Part II)
Join Roberta Meyers Douglas, Fallon McClure, Fenika Miller, and Tiffany Roberts for Part 2 of “Celebrating Black Women’s Leadership, Then and Now” part of the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference.
Beyond the Bars - Towards Freedom: Violence, Safety and Abolition in 2021 This year marks the 11th annual Beyond the Bars Conference, coming one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in which multiple crises have unfolded, and the growth of social movements struggling for a more just and safe world have increased significantly. Given this, we hope to create deep and thoughtful conversations about the many forms of violence that our society has experienced; to surface and examine the ways in which movements are pushing for community and public safety in ways that do not reenforce the carceral state; and to explore why abolition has become so prevalent in the conversations, strategies and demands in the work of transforming approaches to justice and safety. In addition, we will take time to honor and celebrate the leadership of women impacted by incarceration, and the leadership of Black women, and all that we have and can learn from their work. And we will spend time building and amplifying the work of grassroots organizing.
Conference Sponsors The Ford Foundation, Trinity Church Wall Street, the New York Women's Foundation, Columbia School of Social Work Student Services, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, the Eric H. Holder Jr. Inititiave for Civil and Political Rights, the Division of Social Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/pX4C0fucXjk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
