Join Arundhati Roy and Nick Estes for an urgent and timely conversation on the present crisis, resistance, and the meaning of freedom.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Jul 8, 2021
Sisi’s Many Jails — From Gaza to Tora
Join a panel of experts for a discussion of el-Sisi's role in repressing human rights in Egypt and Palestine.
Trump’s reference to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as his “favorite dictator” revealed the former US president’s penchant for lawlessness and authoritarian rule. But the Biden administration continues to provide carte blanche for Sisi’s widespread repression and human rights abuses, based on the premise that Egypt plays an important role in enforcing US policies for the region, in particular as a mediator between Palestinians and Israel. This Realpolitik logic of unconditional support for tyrants is shortsighted. The Sisi regime is currently imprisoning an estimated 60,000 political prisoners while it also plays a central role in maintaining the longstanding blockade of Gaza and jails Palestine solidarity activists in Egypt.
This forum will address the state of human rights in Egypt, Sisi’s role in besieging Palestinians (in collusion with Israel and the Palestinian Authority), how US policy fuels repression in Egypt and Egypt’s nefarious role in Israel-Palestine, and what progressives can do to improve human rights conditions for Egyptians and Palestinians.
Speakers:
Raed Jarrar is Advocacy Director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2005, he has worked as a lobbyist on political issues pertaining to the U.S. engagement in the Arab world. Widely recognized as an expert on political, social, and economic developments in the MENA region, he has testified in numerous Congressional hearings and briefings. He is a frequent guest on national and international media outlets in Arabic and English, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Sky News Arabia.
Yasmin Omar, a human rights lawyer, is Egypt Legal Associate at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). She has been a practicing human rights lawyer for the last nine years. She has worked with several NGOs in Egypt and is a member of the Front of Defense for Egyptian Protesters. She holds an L.L.M. from Syracuse University with a focus on counter-terrorism, national security, and refugee and asylum law.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Prior to his current role, he was a Bertha Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he focused on US counterterrorism policies, including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees. As the 2013-14 Arthur R. and Barbara D. Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch, he investigated human rights violations in Egypt, including the Rab’a massacre, one of the largest killings of protesters in a single day.
Ted Swedenburg (moderator) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past and co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity.
----------------------------------------------------
This event is co-sponsored by the Middle East Research & Information Project (MERIP), US Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Internationalism from Below, and Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.
Learn more about our sponsors:
MERIP: https://merip.org/
DAWN: https://usegyptsolidarity.org/
Internationalism From Below: https://www.facebook.com/intlfrombelow/
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/2Gbf3Tfkwc0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jul 21, 2021
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation w/ Michelle Alexander & Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Michelle Alexander on the history and politics of the most recent phase of the Black Freedom struggle.
First published in 2016, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is an indispensable account of the history and political trajectory of the most recent stage in the Black Freedom Movement. To mark the timely release of an updated and expanded edition of the book, Taylor will join Michelle Alexander for a wide-ranging discussion of the history, present, and possible futures of the struggle for Black Liberation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Order the expanded second edition of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation here!
Speakers:
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes and speaks on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. She is author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, which was a semifinalist for the 2019 National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2020. She is also editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBQT nonfiction in 2018. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, and a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.
Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — the bestselling book that helped to transform the national debate on racial and criminal justice in the United States. Currently she is a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/oaH8pfgS88M
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jul 28, 2021
If God Is A Virus Poems w/ Seema Yasmin, Aracelis Girmay, & more
Seema Yasmin gathers a powerful line-up of poets—George Abraham, Aracelis Girmay, José Olivarez, Janice Lobo Sapigao, and Yalini Thambynayagam—to celebrate Yasmin’s poetry collection, If God Is A Virus.
Based on original reporting from West Africa and the United States, and the poet’s experiences as a doctor and journalist, If God Is A Virus charts the course of the largest and deadliest Ebola epidemic in history, telling the stories of Ebola survivors, outbreak responders, journalists and the virus itself. These documentary poems explore which human lives are valued, how editorial decisions are weighed, what role the aid industrial complex plays in crises, and how medical myths and rumor can travel faster than microbes.
These poems also give voice to the virus. Eight percent of the human genome is inherited from viruses and the human placenta would not exist without a gene descended from a virus. If God Is A Virus reimagines viruses as givers of life and even authors of a viral-human self-help book.
Featuring:
Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, medical doctor, disease detective and author. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news reporting in 2017 with her team from The Dallas Morning News for coverage of a mass shooting. Yasmin was a disease detective in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she chased outbreaks in maximum-security prisons, American Indian reservations, border towns and hospitals. Currently, Dr. Yasmin is a Stanford professor, medical analyst for CNN and science correspondent for Conde Nast Entertainment. Find her at seemayasmin.com, Twitter @DoctorYasmin and Instagram: @drseemayasmin.
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three books of poems: the black maria (BOA, 2016); Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007), winner of a GLCA New Writers Award; and Kingdom Animalia (BOA, 2011), the winner of the Isabella Gardner Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Girmay currently serves as the Margaret Bundy Scott Professor in the English Department.
George Abraham is a Palestinian-American poet, educator, and engineer who grew up on unceded Timucuan lands. They are the author of their debut collection Birthright, winner of the Big Other Book Award, finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry, and was named on Best of 2020 lists with The Asian American Writers' Workshop and The New Arab.
Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines, and the author of two books of poetry: microchips for millions and like a solid to a shadow. She's been profiled in Content Magazine, Mercury News, SF Gate, and Metro Silicon Valley. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Apogee Journal, Entropy, The Offing, poets.org, Split This Rock's Poem-of-the-Week, and Waxwing Literary Journal.
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext. https://joseolivarez.com/
YaliniDream is a touring performing artist, organizer, somatics practitioner, and consultant with over twenty years’ experience using artistic tools for healing, organizing, and dignity with communities contending with violence and oppression.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/QPIZZhVeTGY
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jul 29, 2021
Gay 4 History: A Dialogue Across Eras
A conversation examining the history of struggles over gender and sexuality as it relates to emancipatory struggles today.
About this event
What do emancipatory struggles over gender and sexuality have to do with history, and what does history do for the wider project of emancipation as such? The authors and editors of Histories of the Transgender Child, Transgender Marxism, and Sexual Hegemony discuss the difficulty of drawing directly from, or detaching ourselves altogether from nominally discontinuous social categories, and how historical citation operates to transform the present.
***Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and have live captioning.***
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Jules Gill-Peterson is an Associate Research Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota, 2018), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Jules is also a General Co-Editor at TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.
Jules Gleeson is a writer, comedian and historian. She has published essays in outlets including Viewpoint Magazine, Invert Journal and VICE, and performed internationally at a wide range of communist and queer cultural events.
Max Fox is the editor of Christopher Chitty's posthumous Sexual Hegemony (2020), the translator of Guy Hocquenghem's posthumous The Amphitheater of the Dead (2018) and a founding editor of Pinko magazine.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/76YYms_S830
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Aug 13, 2021
Counting Crime: A Lecture on the Politics of Crime Data and Its Uses w/ Tamara K. Nopper
Join Tamara K. Nopper for an urgent discussion of the politics, history, and methods of counting crime—and who benefits from crime data.
Politicians, pundits, and mainstream media are claiming crime is going up and some are blaming defund the police campaigns. But how we measure crime is a socially constructed, political process and more data literacy on this topic can be useful in this political moment. In this educational lecture we will learn about some of the history of counting crime during the post-Emancipation period, who has pushed for crime data to be collected, some of the major data sources (including the samples and methods), and how crime data is deployed for various purposes.
While this event and all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of this important work. Part of the proceeds from this event will go to the National Bail Fund Network.
***This event is recorded with live captioning and ASL at the Haymarket Youtube Channel.***
Speaker:
Tamara K. Nopper is a sociologist, writer, and editor. She is the editor of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, a book of Mariame Kaba’s writings and interviews (Haymarket Books), and researcher and writer of several data stories for Colin Kaepernick’s Abolition for the People series. She is a Fellow at Data for Progress, an Affiliate of The Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, and a member of the inaugural cohort of the NYU Institute for Public Interest Technology. She is also an incoming 2021-2022 Faculty Fellow at Data & Society.
This event is sponsored by Interrupting Criminalization, Survived & Punished, Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability, 18 Million Rising (18MR), Critical Resistance, Civil Rights Corps, and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/I0tE96ICNF0
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Aug 16, 2021
Salvage Live: Decolonisation and its Discontents
Join Salvage and Haymarket Books for a conversation on Decolonisation and its Discontents with Kevin Ochieng Okoth.
About this event
Decolonization has become a recurring subject in an endless stream of op-eds, think pieces, and books. Yet despite so much ink spent on the topic there seems to be little agreement on what exactly we want to achieve by ‘decolonizing’ something. Answering this, and clarifying what is at stake in these conversations, requires posing additional questions like ‘what is our relationship to the institution or discipline we want to decolonize? Are we asking for those things to be reformed, or do we want them abolished altogether? Or is decolonizing a method of critique, intended to expose the colonial and racist foundations of its target? And, crucially, how do contempary movements for decolonization—emerging almost exclusively from universities, museums and art institutions—relate to the aims and achievements of the national liberation movements that dismantled colonial states?
Building on Kevin Ochieng Okoth’s forthcoming article in Salvage #10, Annie Olaloku-Teriba and Barnaby Raine will aim to answer these questions and discuss what today’s calls to decolonize can learn from the struggles that defeated imperial powers in the twentieth century.
This discussion will be part of the ongoing Salvage Live events series, hosted by Haymarket Books.
https://www.salvage.zone for more info.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Ochieng Okoth is a writer and researcher living in London. He is a corresponding editor at Salvage.
Annie Olaloku-Teriba is a writer and podcaster whose research focuses on how neoliberalism has transformed the theory and practice of ‘race.’
Barnaby Raine is writing his PhD at Columbia University on visions of ending capitalism. He teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Salvage. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/m9bIvWBVWJQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks