Emory Douglas, Mary Hooks, Yoel Haile, and Diane Fujino discuss the enduring impact, and multiple meanings, of the Black Panther Party in the context of the movement for Black lives, allowing today’s organizers and readers to situate themselves in the long lineage of the Black Radical Tradition.
Today’s Movement for Black Lives is building a radically transformative struggle that demands structural change and places Black liberation at its center. Fifty years ago, the Black Power movement asserted similarly bold demands and audacious actions. Then and today, we bear witness to and seek to intervene in such critical moments when radical ideas seem to suddenly take hold and unprecedented opportunities emerge for far-reaching change.
The Black Panther Party (BPP)’s struggles against police violence and efforts to create a liberatory society are particularly relevant to today’s struggles. Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party, edited by Diane C. Fujino and Matef Harmachis, offers the first extended examination of the BPP role in shaping the practices and ideas that have animated grassroots activism in the decades since its decline.
The broadcast will include "Mother Earth Mantra” and “Police Chase” from Contested Homes: Migrant Liberation Movement Suite 2020, a free jazz opera that combines jazz, hip-hop, spoken word, dance and visual art. Performed by Afro Yaqui Music Collective in conjunction with members of University of Wisconsin, Madison's "Artivism" class, composed by Maggie Cousin and Black Power Afterlives contributor Ben Barson, lyrics and vocals by former Black Panther Party member Mama C (Charlotte O’Neal) and by Nejma Nefertiti. Video by Adam Cooper-Téran.
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Speakers:
Emory Douglas is the former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party and was a Black Panther Party member from 1967 until the early 1980s. His artworks are the most renowned and iconic visual symbols of the Black Panther Party. His book, Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, traces his art and biography in the BPP. His artwork continues to influence radical movements across the globe, including in Chiapas, Cuba, Palestine, Australia, and beyond.
Mary Hooks is the co-director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG). SONG is a political home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South. SONG builds, sustains, and connects a southern regional base of LGBTQ people in order to transform the region through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities. SONG builds this movement through leadership development, coalition and alliance building, intersectional analysis, and organizing.
Yoel Haile is a Criminal Justice Associate with the ACLU of Northern California. Yoel grew up in Asmara, Eritrea, and moved to California in 2006. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara as an undergraduate, where he helped initiate and negotiate Black student demands to the campus chancellor that resulted in more than $3.7 million in immediate and committed funding for the recruitment and retention of Black students, staff and faculty.
Diane Fujino (moderator) is co-editor, with Matef Harmachis, of Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party. She studies, writes, and teaches about Asian American and Black liberation movements and is in the core leadership of the Ethnic Studies Now! Santa Barbara Coalition.
Order a copy of Black Power Afterlives here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1472-black-power-afterlives
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/TCD1kMUgVss
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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More Episodes
May 17, 2022
Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and M4BL w/ Donna Murch & Barbara Ransby
Join Donna Murch and Barbara Ransby for a conversation about state violence, racial capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives.
This is a book launch event for Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives by Donna Murch, available at Haymarketbooks.org.
Drawing its title from one of America's foremost revolutionaries, this collection of thought-provoking essays by award-winning Panther scholar Donna Murch explores how social protest is challenging our current system of state violence and mass incarceration.
“Donna Murch is one of the sharpest, most incisive, and elegant writers on racism, radicalism, and struggle today. In this collection of essays assessing the current contours of the contemporary movement against racism in the United States, Murch combines a historian’s rigor with a cultural critic’s insights and the passionate expression of someone deeply engaged with the politics, debates, and key questions confronting activists and organizers today. This is a smart and sophisticated book that should be read and studied by everyone in search of answers to the profound crises that continue to confront this country.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
Get Assata Taught Me at Haymarket Books: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1650-assata-taught-me
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Speakers:
Donna Murch is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and is the president of the New Brunswick chapter of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT. She is the author of Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives, and Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.
Barbara Ransby is a widely acclaimed historian of the Black Freedom Movement, award-winning author, and longtime activist. She is the John D. MacArthur Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Black Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also directs the Social Justice Initiative, which promotes connections between academics and community organizers working on social justice. A founding member of Scholars for Social Justice, she works closely with activists in the Movement for Black Lives and The Rising Majority. She is an elected fellow in the Society of American Historians, as well as a recipient of the Angela Y. Davis Prize for public scholarship from the American Studies Association. Ransby is the author of multiple books, including the award-winning Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21st Century and Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/iInE0_B3Rqk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 21, 2022
Intimate Partner Violence and Abolitionist Safety Planning
Join us for a lively exploration of the concept of "abolitionist safety planning" and supporting survivors from feminists and abolitionists.
In situations of domestic violence, survival can become criminalized in unexpected and chilling ways. However, because isolation is a central strategy of abuse, many survivors lack the community and resources needed to find support for both the violence as well as the risks of criminalization. What can concrete support for intimate partner violence survivors look like from a prison abolitionist perspective? What can it look like in practice to support survivors while being acutely aware of both the dangers of abuse and the overwhelming violence of the criminal legal system? Join us for a lively exploration of the concept of "abolitionist safety planning" from feminists and abolitionists, who will share their experiences, challenges, and lessons learned from supporting survivors in situations of active and ongoing violence.
Speakers:
Mariame Kaba (moderator) is an organizer, educator, curator, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame is currently a researcher at Interrupting Criminalization, a project she co-founded with Andrea Ritchie in 2018. Kaba is the author of We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, Missing Daddy, See You Soon and Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators with Shira Hassan.
Aracelia Aguilar (she/her) is one of the Empowerment Directors at DeafHope, providing direct services to Deaf DV/SV survivors. DeafHope recognizes the system barriers and institutional oppressions Deaf survivors navigate through to get to safety, and Aracelia's advocacy strongly focuses on putting the survivor at the center of the work. Aracelia has also received training under Sujatha Baliga and Mimi Kim to incorporate Restorative and Transformative Justice into the work of DeafHope. Aracelia provides Teen Dating Violence, Consent & Boundaries, and Sexual Violence presentations for Deaf teens at High Schools all over the Bay Area.
Rachel Caidor (she/her) has spent over 25 years providing direct service and organizational support to rape crisis and domestic violence survior support agencies in Chicago. She is a member of Love and Protect and supports the work of the Chicago Community Bond Fund.
Shira Hassan (she/her) is the founder, co-creator and principal consultant for Just Practice, a capacity building project for organizations and community members, activists and leaders working at the intersection of transformative justice, harm reduction and collective liberation. She is the former executive director of the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, an organizing and grassroots movement building project led by and for young people of color that have current or former experience in the sex trade and street economies.
Hyejin Shim (she/her) is a Building Community Power Fellow at Community Justice Exchange. She has over a decade's experience in supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence, particularly immigrant, refugee, and criminalized survivors of abuse. Hyejin is a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a national organization dedicated to supporting criminalized and incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence.
This event is sponsored by Community Justice Exchange, Survived and Punished, Interrupting Criminalization, and Haymarket Books.
https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org
https://survivedandpunished.org
https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QEVuJuBrj5A
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 23, 2022
Marx in Paris, 1871: Book Launch w/ Michael Löwy & more
Join Haymarket for a discussion celebrating the release of Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy’s Marx in Paris, 1871.
This deeply informed, eminently enjoyable work of historical fiction places Karl Marx in the thick of the unprecedented events of the Paris Commune. In disguise, employing imperfect but serviceable French, Karl and his eldest daughter, Jenny, encounter and debate many important figures of the movement, including Léo Frankel, Eugène Varlin, Charles Longuet, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Louise Michel, eventually returning to England with a profoundly changed sense of political possibility.
“This book adds to the tradition evolving since Marx and Lenin. Remarkably accessible, it refreshes, provokes, and thereby develops that movement still further.” — Richard Wolff
“This fictional account is a remarkable piece of historical criticism and revolutionary imagination.” —Enzo Traverso
Get Marx in Paris, 1871: Jenny’s “Blue Notebook” from Haymarket here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1770-marx-in-paris-1871
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Speakers:
Michael Löwy is emeritus research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). His books, including On Changing the World and the Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, have been translated into thirty languages.
Natalia Tylim is active in the NYC-DSA labor branch. She’s a restaurant worker, a founding member of DSA’s Restaurant Organizing Project, and a member of the Tempest Collective.
Valerio Arcary is a professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology in Brazil.
Todd Chretien (moderator) is an organizer, author, translator, and high school Spanish teacher. He has contributed to several books, including Socialist Strategy and Electoral Politics, and is editor of Eyewitnesses to the Russian Revolution.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/HdPcBkE7OlM
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 24, 2022
Social Work and Family Policing w/ Dorothy Roberts & Joyce McMillan
Join Dorothy E. Roberts, J.D. and Joyce McMillan for a conversation highlighting the harms within the so-called child welfare system.
Join Dorothy E. Roberts, J.D. and Joyce McMillan for a conversation highlighting the harms, and in particular the damage social workers have caused and continue to perpetuate, within the so-called child welfare system. "Social work and Family Policing" will draw on Professor Roberts' decades of research, culminating in her recent book Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World and Joyce McMillan's years of abolitionist organizing against family policing. This conversation will explore the systemic oppression of the family policing system, especially against poor Black, Indigenous, and Latinae families. We will explore concrete ideas for how social workers and others working with families can adopt an abolitionist approach.
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Speakers:
Dorothy E. Roberts, J.D. is a Professor of Africana Studies, Law, and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law whose latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.
Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator. Joyce is the founder and executive director of JMacForFamilies a nonprofit whose mission is to abolish the family policing system while creating concrete community resources in communities of color who are disproportionately affected by systems of harm.
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This event is sponsored by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Q7xo9PsA7ic
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 27, 2022
You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Book Launch w/ Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, & more
Join Seven Stories Press and Haymarket Books for a launch of Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s important new book, "You Have Not Yet Been Defeated".
“The text you are holding is living history.” — Naomi Klein, from the foreword to You Have Not Yet Been Defeated
Alaa Abd el-Fattah is arguably the most high-profile political prisoner in Egypt, if not the Arab world, rising to international prominence during the revolution of 2011. A fiercely independent thinker who fuses politics and technology in powerful prose, an activist whose ideas represent a global generation which has only known struggle against a failing system, a public intellectual with the rare courage to offer personal, painful honesty, Alaa’s written voice came to symbolize much of what was fresh, inspiring and revolutionary about the uprisings that have defined the last decade.
To celebrate the launch of the first English language collection of his essays, social media posts, and interviews, Alaa’s sister Sanaa Seif—herself an activist, filmmaker, and former political prisoner of the Sisi regime in Egypt—will be joined by Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous for a conversation on the wide range of subjects covered in this important new book.
To order a copy of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated visit: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781644212455
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Speakers:
Sanaa Seif is an Egyptian filmmaker, producer and political activist. Imprisoned three times under the Sisi regime, she is currently touring the US promoting her imprisoned brother, Alaa Abd el Fattah's, newly published book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He has reported from across the Arab world for a number of print and broadcast outlets including Democracy Now, and is currently an editor and reporter at Mada Masr, Egypt's leading independent media outlet.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of eight books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire, which have been translated into over 35 languages. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and an inaugural Marielle Franco fellow of the Social Justice Initiative Portal Project at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network, Gilmore is author of the prize-winning Golden Gulag, as well as the forthcoming Change Everything, and Abolition Geography. Her recent honors include the SUNY-Purchase College Eugene V. Grant Distinguished Scholar Prize for Social and Environmental Justice; the American Studies Association Richard A Yarborough Mentorship Award; The Association of American Geographers Lifetime Achievement Award; and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Seven Stories Press.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QdUpDKJ7tKg
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
May 30, 2022
Feminists vs. the War Machine w/ Lux Magazine
Join Lux and Haymarket for a discussion about feminist internationalism in the face of war.
How do we practice feminist internationalism? The question has never been more urgent than today, as war rages in Ukraine.
This is a problem feminists have faced many times before. Remember when Laura Bush tried to sell the war in Afghanistan as women’s liberation? At the time, the left was hampered by thin relationships with our feminist counterparts in these countries, leaving the anti-war movement vulnerable to claims that women there really did want the help of the US military. Today, we’re committed to strengthening those relationships through conversations like this one.
The spring 2022 issue of Lux features several explorations of US empire from a feminist perspective. We talk with the women of the Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association about the US withdrawal, profile National Book Award-finalist poet Solmaz Sharif whose work confronts the War on Terror and her own exile from Iran, report on Okinawa’s multigenerational anti-US-base movement, and pay tribute to Puerto Rican radical Luisa Capetillo.
This event will take on the special role that feminism continues to play in anti-imperalist struggles, from the Middle East to East Asia to Latin America, connecting these struggles, and activists, across borders.
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Speakers:
Rozina Ali is a contributing writer at New York Times Magazine and a fellow at Type Media Center. Her writing covers the War on Terror, Islamophobia, and the Middle East and South Asia. She was previously on the staff of The New Yorker and The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. She is currently working on a book about the history of Islamophobia in the United States.
Margo Okazawa-Rey is a professor emerita at San Francisco State University and a transnational feminist activist. She works on militarism, armed conflict, and violence against women in the US and around the world. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, and was a founding member of the Combahee River Collective. Her recent publications include “‘Nation-izing’ Coalition and Solidarity Politics for US Anti-militarist Feminists,” and Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (Oxford, 2020).
Sophie Pinkham is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine. She has written about Russian and Ukrainian culture and politics for The New York Review of Books, The New Left Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and many other publications. She produced the short documentary Balka, on women, drugs, and HIV in Ukraine.
Sarah Leonard (moderator) is editor-in-chief of Lux magazine. She is contributing editor to Dissent and The Nation. (@sarahrlnrd)
This event is sponsored by Lux magazine and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/vRuCwaSiHyg
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks