Jesse Sharkey, Beverly J. Silver, and a panel of teacher activists discuss the power of teachers unions and the fight for racial justice, equitable funding and democracy.
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For the past 10 years teacher unionists across the country have built the most powerful strikes in a generation. From red states to blue states, Chicago to Arizona, teachers are rising up to challenge vouchers, privatization and racially disparate school funding schemes.
Why have teachers been able to turn the tables on the austerity program and charter industry in such a short period of time? What about teacher unions are strategic within the national and global economy that allows them to exercise such tremendous power and success across geography and circumstance?
Join president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Jesse Sharkey in conversation with Beverly J. Silver, one of the most foremost scholars on the strategic power of teachers' unions. Silver has studied the last 150 years of union power and ascertained some common threads that made miners, steel workers, auto-works, and now teachers so capable of shifting the narrative and balance of power in capitalist countries throughout the world. ----------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Jesse Sharkey was appointed president of the 24,000-member Chicago Teachers Union on September 5, 2018, replacing retiring President Karen Lewis. A member of the CTU since 1998, Jesse has been a champion of workers’ rights throughout his career, believing that the Union’s true power comes from the strength of its rank-and-file and their willingness to fight for the betterment of Chicago’s public school students, families and communities.
Beverly J. Silver is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has written widely on the contradictions and limits of historical capitalism, major waves of labor and social conflict, the social foundations of world hegemonies, global inequality, and prospects for a post-capitalist world. She is author of two books, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870, and Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System (with Giovanni Arrighi et al). Among her most recent articles are “Plunges into Utter Destruction and the Limits of Historical Capitalism” (2019) and “Crises of World Hegemony and the Speeding Up of Social History” (2021).
Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes
Arlene Inouye, Union Power Los Angeles
Annie Tan, Movement of Rank and File Educators
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This event is sponsored by the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/e8w8pUpRnQI
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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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
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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
