Join Arundhati Roy and Nick Estes for an urgent and timely conversation on the present crisis, resistance, and the meaning of freedom.
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The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.
Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could.
In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.
The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.
The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.
Arundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A collection of her essays from the past twenty years, My Seditious Heart, was recently published by Haymarket Books. Her latest book is Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.
Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization. For 2017-2018, Estes was the American Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Estes is the author of the book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance and he co-edited Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement, which draws together more than thirty contributors, including leaders, scholars, and activists of the Standing Rock movement.
Co-presented by Haymarket Books and Elliott Bay Book Company, with the support of Tasveer, this event is to celebrate the release of Arundhati Roy’s new book of essays, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.
Order your copy of Azadi from Elliott Bay: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781642592603
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/iEr4wCWJ9GM
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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More Episodes
Mar 4, 2021
How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America (10-6-20)
Join these Indigenous women for a conversation about their contemporary struggles to protect Native lands and lives.
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Celebrate the book launch of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, a new book edited by Sara Sinclair from Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness, with a roundtable conversation about Indigenous sovereignty today.
How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life. In myriad ways, each narrator’s life has been shaped by loss, injustice, resilience, and the struggle to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous.
“How We Go Home is a testament to modern-day Indigenous revitalization, often in the face of the direst of circumstances. Told as firsthand accounts on the frontlines of resistance and resurgence, these life stories inspire and remind that Indigenous life is all about building a community through the gifts we offer and the stories we tell.”
—Niigaan Sinclair, Winnipeg Free Press
“The voices of How We Go Home are singing a chorus of love and belonging alongside the heat of resistance, and the sound of Indigenous life joyfully dances off these pages.”—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of As We Have Always Done
Speakers:
Sara Sinclair is an oral historian, writer, and educator of Cree-Ojibwe and settler descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University. She has contributed to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. She has conducted oral histories for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the International Labor Organization, among others. Sara is co-editor of Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, published with Columbia University Press in 2019.
Gladys Radek (Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations) is a tireless grassroots advocate fighting for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Canada. Gladys' niece Tamara went missing in 2005 at age 22 along the notorious Highway of Tears. This inspired Gladys to become a community activist and eventually a Family Advocate for the National Inquiry into MMIWG in Canada. Gladys is a co-founder of Walk4Justice, an organization created to fight for the families and all women who went missing or were found murdered, as well as to get all of the answers they deserve. With Walk4Justice, Gladys has crossed the country 7 times and has spoked to thousands of families whose lives have been impacted by violence perpetrated against Native women and girls.
Ashley Hemmers is an enrolled member of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, whose reservation spans the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada. Ashley is a strategic specialist in multi-state cross-jurisdictional Development and Management of Tribal Economies. She holds over 10+ years of experience in Tribal Enterprising including fiscal and capital wealth strategies. In addition to capital projects and operational development, Ashley is experienced in grants administration and administrative oversight in the areas of Telecommunications, Tribal Law, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Management, Public Safety, Healthcare, Systems of Care, Education, Intervention, and Community Relations. During her time within Tribal Government, she has worked to strengthen Tribal/Federal and Tribal/State partnerships by developing strategic models.
Order a copy of How We Go Home: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1555-how-we-go-home
In Canada order here: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/how-we-go-home
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/LplWft8t7DI
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Trumps Shock Election Politics & How to Fight Them w/ Naomi Klein & Johann Hari (10-7-20)
Naomi Klein in conversation with Johann Hari about to fight back against Trump's shock politics — and for a fundamentally different world.
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In the face of a global pandemic, we are once again seeing politicians, from President Trump to Jair Bolsonaro and beyond, using shock doctrine tactics to seize power for themselves and push through policies that systematically deepen inequality and destroy lives.
But in this perilous moment, with so much at stake for the future of our planet, we are seeing new forms of collective resistance gathering energy and momentum.
With the highly contested and U.S. election less than month away, join a conversation with Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, On Fire, and No Is Not Enough, among other vital works, to discuss how to fight back against shock politics — and for a fundamentally different world.
In the face of these new power grabs by politicians and surveillance capitalists, we need to engage in the work of repair, reconstruction, and reimagination. We can’t go back to where we were before this crisis hit.
Naomi Klein will be in conversation with author Johann Hari.
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Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept, a Puffin Writing Fellow at Type Media Center and is the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University.
Johann Hari is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, Chasing the Scream: the First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, and Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, which was recently released in paperback.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/dKjM3Z-Wiho
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
The Brother You Choose: Life, Politics, and Revolution After the Panthers(10-8-20)
Join Paul Coates, Eddie Conway and Susie Day as they talk about life, politics, and the revolution.
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In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn't know Eddie well – the little he knew, he didn't much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie's charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie – and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie's release. Paul's founding of the Black Classic Press in 1978 was originally a way to get books to Eddie in prison. When, in 2014, Eddie finally walked out onto the streets of Baltimore, Paul Coates was there to greet him. Today, these two men remain rock-solid comrades and friends – each, the other's chosen brother.
When Eddie and Paul met in the Baltimore Panther Party, they were in their early twenties. They are now into their seventies. This book is a record of their lives and their relationship, told in their own voices. Paul and Eddie talk about their individual stories, their work, their politics, and their immeasurable bond.
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Speakers:
Eddie Conway is an Executive Producer of The Real News Network. He is the host of the TRNN show Rattling the Bars. He is Chairman of the Board of Ida B’s Restaurant, and the author of two books: Marshall Law: The Life & Times of a Baltimore Black Panther and The Greatest Threat: The Black Panther Party and COINTELPRO. A former member of the Black Panther Party, Eddie Conway is an internationally known political prisoner for over 43 years, a long time prisoners’ rights organizer in Maryland, the co-founder of the Friend of a Friend mentoring program, and the President of Tubman House Inc. of Baltimore. He is a national and international speaker and has several degrees.
Paul Coates is the founder and director of Black Classic Press, and BCP Digital Printing. the Press specializes in republishing obscure and significant works by and about people of African descent. BCP Digital Printing is the only African American owned book printer in the US.
Susie Day began listening to people in prison at the DC Jail, where she interviewed four women charged with the 1985 bombing of the U.S. Capitol. She lives in Manhattan with her partner (and Capitol-bomber), Laura Whitehorn.
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Order a copy of Brother You Choose: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1466-the-brother-you-choose
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/K971Yh__lHE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
BreakBeat Poets Live Chapter 5 (10-14-20)
The BreakBeat Poets Live! is a virtual, multi-generational showcase of some of the illest writers on the planet rock. Each chapter features writers and performers who are part of the Haymarket Books family.
While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work.
Penelope Alegria is the 2019 Chicago Youth Poet Laureate and a two-time member of Young Chicago Authors’ artistic apprenticeship, Louder Than a Bomb Squad. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in La Nueva Semana, El Beisman, Muse/A Journal, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, as well as BBC Radio 4 and WBEZ Radio Archives. She is a Brain Mill Press Editor’s Pick, and she was awarded the 2018 Literary Award by Julian Randall and both the 2019 and 2020 Poetry Award by the Niles West English Department. She has performed spoken word at the Obama Foundation Summit, Pitchfork Music Festival, and other venues in the Chicagoland area. She started at Harvard College in the fall of 2020.
Nilah Foster is considered a part of the queer black youth that comes from the far south side of Chicago and represents it all with her pen. She was a Louder Than A Bomb Indy finalist of 2019 and Indy winner of 2020 which also allowed her to be a part of the bombsquad 2019 and 2020 cohort. But nothing serves a better medium of learning about her than from her writing where she interrogates her own truths and where she and the audience learn together.
E’Mon Lauren is from the South Side of Chicago. She is a Scorpio enthusiast and a firm believer in Dorthy Dandridge reincarnation. E’mon uses poetry and playwriting to explore a philosophy of hood womanism. She was named Chicago’s first Youth Poet Laureate. A former Kuumba Lynx Performance Ensemble slam team member and Louder Than a Bomb champion, E’mon has performed in many venues including The Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival and The Chicago Hip Hop Theatre Fest. She was a 2016 finalist for The Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. E’mon has been published in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, The Down Dirty Word, and elsewhere. She has been featured in Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and on WGN Radio. She is a member of Young Chicago Authors Teaching Artist Corps.
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His book, Citizen Illegal, won of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize and was named a top book of 2018 by NPR.
He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, and the Bronx Council on the Arts. Olivarez was awarded the Author and Artist in Justice award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. He is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Jamila Woods is an activist, award-winning poet, and singer/songwriter whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison, as well as Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar. As a solo artist, she specializes in an accessible yet non-commercial form of R&B that is rooted in soul and wholly modern, which can be heard on her albums HEAVN (2016) and LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019). She is also the co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic.
Kevin Coval is a poet and author of A People’s History of Chicago and over ten other collections, anthologies, and chapbooks. He is the founder and editor of the BreakBeat Poets series for Haymarket Books, artistic director for Young Chicago Authors, and the founder of Louder than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/NPvZi_3U_ZE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Utopia From the Ashes: A Teach-In on Building the Future We Deserve (10-14-20)
A virtual teach-in featuring movements leaders who came together to launch the short film, Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair. Watch the film here: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/01/naomi-klein-message-from-future-covid/
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What if 2020 was an historic turning point, where the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and global uprisings against racism drove us to build back a better society in which no one is sacrificed, and everyone is essential?
This virtual teach-in used the animated short film Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair to help envision this kind of a transition, and will features representatives from incredible organizations engaged in the kind of work that could make it a reality.
Join Haymarket Books, The Leap, writer & producer Avi Lewis, and others for a conversation on the role of radical utopianism in a time of crisis
Speakers:
David Boys is PSI Deputy General Secretary and coordinates PSI’s work on privatisation, climate and emergency workers and water, waste and energy utilities. David joined the PSI team in 1999. Public Services International is a Global Union Federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries. It brings their voices to the UN, ILO, WHO and other regional and global organisations. It defends trade union and workers' rights and fight for universal access to quality public services.
Cathy Kennedy is President of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), and Vice President of National Nurses United (NNU), the largest U.S. union and professional association of registered nurses. NNU is a founding affiliate of Global Nurses United.
Annie Leonard is the Executive Director of Greenpeace US, the US office of the global Greenpeace network which is includes more than 50 countries. Greenpeace uses research, creative communication, people power and non violent direct action to create a green and peaceful future for all. Prior to Greenpeace, Annie created the Story of Stuff internet film and book.
Avi Lewis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. In 2017, he co-founded and is now Strategic Director of The Leap – an organization launched to upend our collective response to the crises of climate, inequality and racism. He produced, and co-wrote with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Emmy nominated short film, Message from the Future and is producer and co-writer with Opal Tometi of the new short film, Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair
Leila Salazar-López has served as the Executive Director of Amazon Watch since 2015. She is a mother, proud Chicana-Latina woman, and passionate defender of Mother Earth, the Amazon, Indigenous rights and climate justice.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/UjIcTHioAVU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 4, 2021
Straight out of Confinement: #DefundPolice, #FreeThemAll and #AbolitionNow (10-15-20)
Join Critical Resistance and the AbolitionNOW coalition for the third in their series of virtual teach-in's.
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A panel of experts will connect the dots between imprisonment and jail expansion in the movement to defund policing and how all of these pieces tie into the larger movement towards abolition.
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Speakers:
Marlene Ramos - Critical Resistance Member
William Palmer - Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, All of Us or None
Kelly Savage - Survived and Punished
Jonathan Butler - BYP100, National No New Jails Network.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2-DZpxYPdUA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks