Join acclaimed writers and activists Astra Taylor and Rebecca Solnit as they tackle some of the most pressing social problems of our day.
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped shift the national conversation on topics including technology, inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens.
Curious and searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical transformation of our economy and society is required.
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Astra Taylor is a documentary filmmaker, writer, political organizer and author of Remake the World. She is the director, most recently, of "What Is Democracy?" and the author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone and the American Book Award winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. She is co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and contributed the foreword to the group’s new book, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition.
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her recent memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, released in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.
Order a copy of Remake the World: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1635-remake-the-world
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/j1L2RrpPh3w and https://youtu.be/tlKjmR7iQiw
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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More Episodes
Jun 14, 2021
Uprooting Violence w/ Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, Aja Monet, & more (Beyond the Bars 2021)
Join us for a discussion on uprooting violence with Danielle Sered, Sonya Shah, Jose Saldana and Anthonine Pierre, remarks from Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and a performance from Aja Monet.
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/3aBzqIIM6LQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 15, 2021
Toward Abolitionist Horizons w/ Dean Spade, Gina Dent & more (Beyond the Bars 2021)
Join us for a discussion with Gina Dent, Dean Spade, Dawn Harrington and Ivan Calaff on abolitionist horizons in 2021.
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/m90ZGZ6fVG4
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 16, 2021
Visions and Strategies for Community Safety w/ Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Andrea Ritchie & more
Join us for a discussion with Ash-Lee Henderson, Jonel Beauvais, Che Johnson-Long, Andrea Ritchie and Lex Steppling on visions and strategies for community safety, part of the Beyond the Bars 2021 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/voMGUF8OUt8
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 17, 2021
Crisis at the Border: Contestation, Sovereignty, and Statelessness w/Harsha Walia & Suchitra Vijayan
Suchitra Vijayan and Harsha Walia discuss contested border regions and the crises of statelessness experienced by the people who live there.
Scholar Hardeep Dhillon will moderate this discussion between acclaimed writers Suchitra Vijayan and Harsha Walia about contestations over borders, sovereignty, and nationalism and national identity.
This discussion will reference both writers’ most recent books: Suchitra Vijayan’s Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India and Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.
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Speakers:
Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is an award-winning photographer, the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York.
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and, most recently, Border and Rule. Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee.
Hardeep Dhillon attended U.C. Berkeley before completing her doctorate in History with a secondary in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGS) at Harvard University. Her dissertation examined the global development of U.S. immigration and border controls through the lens of Asian exclusion at the turn of the twentieth century. Hardeep’s larger research interests include histories of law, mobility, empire, racial capitalism, and settler colonialism. In Fall 2021, Hardeep will join the American Bar Foundation (ABF) as the incoming postdoctoral fellow in the ABF/National Science Foundation Fellowship Program in Law and Inequality.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/IfJ8-2IDOiE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 18, 2021
The Legacy of the Paris Commune 1871-2021 w/ Gilbert Achcar & Carolyn Eichner
Join a Gilbert Achcar, Carolyn Eichner, Phil Gasper, and Helen Scott to discuss the enduring legacy of the great Paris Commune and its lessons for today.
In March 1871, in the aftermath of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, ordinary Parisians rose up and took control of their city for themselves. The Paris Commune only lasted for a little over two months, but during that time the Communards enacted a remarkable number of far-reaching democratic measures. The Commune was eventually drowned in blood by the old regime, but it had an enormous impact on the international socialist and working-class movement. Marx wrote The Civil War in France praising the Commune’s achievements, which remained inspirational for generations of later socialists. On its 150th anniversary, join us for a discussion of the Commune’s accomplishments and weaknesses, and the lessons it holds for the radical left today.
Get a copy of Revolutions here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1476-revolutions
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Speakers:
Gilbert Achcar teaches at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of many books and a contributor to many publications. He wrote the chapter on the Paris Commune in Revolutions (Haymarket, 2020).
Carolyn J. Eichner is a feminist historian at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and author of the forthcoming The Paris Commune: A Brief History (Rutgers, 2021) and Feminism’s Empire (Cornell, 2022). Her book Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune (Indiana, 2004) has been translated as Franchir les barricades: les femmes dans la Commune de Paris (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020).
Phil Gasper is co-editor of New Politics and a member of the Tempest Collective. He is the editor of an annotated edition of The Communist Manifesto (Haymarket, 2005) and of Imperialism and War: Classic Writings by V.I. Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin (Haymarket, 2017).
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Sponsored by: Tempest Collective, Haymarket Books, New Politics, and the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice (UW-Madison).
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/jd3wYEZPLEA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jun 21, 2021
Black Women’s Radical Resistance in Britain
Join Dr. Beverley Bryan and Jade Bentil for an intergenerational conversation about Black women's radical resistance in Britain.
Black women’s radical resistance and resilience in Britain has and continues to fuel, sustain, and transform social movements in the European context and outside of it. As leaders, organizers, survivors, and resistors, Black women’s activism in Britain and in the African Diaspora is critical to past, present, and even future understandings of the Black radical tradition. With this, how do we honor, celebrate, and learn from Black British Women Radicals who paved the way for us to be here?
The event, “Black Women’s Radical Resistance in Britain” will feature an intergenerational conversation between two radical Black women activists and academics.
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Speakers:
Dr. Beverley Bryan, founder member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and a member of the British Black Panther Movement
Jade Bentil, a Black feminist historian and author of the forthcoming book, REBEL CITIZEN, which draws upon oral history interviews to explore the intimate recollections of African and African-Caribbean women who migrated to Britain following the Second World War. The conversation will interrogate historical and contemporary political memories and struggles of Black women’s resistance, radicalism, belonging, and the futurity of their movement building in Britain and beyond.
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The event is a collaboration between Black Women Radicals and Haymarket Books and is a part of Black Women Radicals “Afrofeminisms in Europe” series, which is a political meditation, interrogation, and celebration of European Afrofeminisms and Black feminisms.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/nVjR-HB5dUI
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
