Join us for a conversation with education activists about the current struggles in public education for safe and equitable schools for all.
Sponsored by: Baltimore Teachers Union, Boston Teachers Union, Chicago Teachers Union, Journey for Justice, Little Rock Education Association, Massachusetts Teachers Association, National Educators United, and United Teachers Los Angeles.
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A conversation with some of most dynamic teacher union leaders, community and student organizers in the country, will invite dialogue on pressing issues impacting public education in this unprecedented moment.
They will discuss the importance of a burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement to defund police and the need to replace them with counselors, social workers, nurses and restorative practices in our schools. Intimately connected to this question is how we can ensure that our students and communities are provided with the schools they deserve if and when they reopen in the Fall.
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Speakers:
Priyana Cabraal is a Leaders Igniting Transformation fellow and an incoming junior at Milwaukee School of Languages in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She recently led the fight to get MPD out of MPS and is determined to do more for other Black and Brown youth in her city. She is passionate about creating a significant shift in leadership that results in the dismantling of all systematic discrepancies. She hopes to become a defense attorney after high school to defend those unlawfully prosecuted due to factors such as race, sex, economic status, and immigration status. Eventually, Priyana hopes to run for Congress and advocate for her community. Cabral is of Black and Asian heritage and enjoys visiting her family in Sri Lanka every year.
Moira Casados Cassidy is a teacher and activist in Denver, Colorado. She has worked to advance social justice and liberation in Denver schools as a member of the Caucus of Today’s Teachers.
Cecily Myart-Cruz is a teacher, activist and the United Teachers Los Angeles President. The first woman of color in the union’s 50-year history – having previously served as NEA Vice President for six years. Cecily has taught for 26 years, at both elementary and middle school levels, most recently at Angeles Mesa Elementary. As a UTLA Area leader, she has worked with schools, parents, students and the community to oust 23 “bully principals”. Cecily has collaborated with school communities in initiating the year-long boycott of district periodic assessments in protest of excessive testing of our students. She is no stranger in taking direct action, whether it is fighting against co-locations, demanding Ethnic Studies for our students, declaring the end the criminalization of youth, local and statewide lobbying efforts and much more.
Jonathan Stith is a founding member and National Coordinator for the Alliance for Educational Justice, a national network of intergenerational and youth-led organizations working to end the school-to-prison pipeline. He has 20 years of experience working with youth and community organizations to address social inequities. As the former Executive Director of the Youth Education Alliance (YEA), he was a critical leader in the School Modernization Campaign that won 3.2 billion dollars for school renovation and repair in the District. He was also a steering committee member of the Justice for DC Youth Coalition that successfully organized youth and their families to win critical juvenile justice reforms in the District.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/KJilE6uOFEw
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More Episodes
Nov 4, 2022
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
Join Mosab Abu Toha, Refaat Areer, and Jehad Abusalim for the launch of the book, "Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire." They will discuss the brilliant new book Light in Gaza, which is a seminal, moving and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. The book constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle for liberation.
Get the book, Light in Gaza, here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1885-light-in-gaza
Speakers:
Refaat Alareer is a professor of English, teaching world literature, comparative literature, and both fiction and nonfiction creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza. He is the coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books, 2015) and the editor of (and a contributor to) Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (Just World, 2014).
Jehad Abusalim is a scholar, writer, and public speaker completing his PhD in the History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies joint program at New York University. He has worked with AFSC since 2018. He contributed to other anthologies including Gaza as Metaphor (Hurst Publishers, 2016) and Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (Haymarket Books, 2020).
Mosab Abu Toha is a poet, essayist, short story writer, and the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. In 2019–20, he was a visiting poet and librarian-in-residence at Harvard University. His published work includes Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza (City Lights Books, 2022).
Get the book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1861-light-in-gaza
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/4u6aagh4ZIE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Nov 7, 2022
After Life: A Conversation on Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America
Join us for a discussion on the collective history of the experience of COVID-19, mass uprisings for racial justice, and more.
Join Rhae Lynn Barnes, Keri Leigh Merritt, Yohuru Williams and Heather Ann Thompson as they discuss their the new book After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America. They will share their thoughts on the collective history of how Americans experienced, navigated, commemorated, and ignored mass death and loss during the global COVID-19 pandemic, mass uprisings for racial justice, and the near presidential coup in 2021 following the 2020 election.
Get After Life from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1927-after-life
Speakers:
Rhae Lynn Barnes is an Assistant Professor at Princeton University and the Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. She was the 2020 President of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. Barnes is the author of the forthcoming book Darkology: When the American Dream Wore Blackface.
Keri Leigh Merritt is a historian, writer, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and the co-editor of Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power.
Yohuru Williams is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History, and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He is the author of Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven, and Teaching Beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies, and, co-author with Bryan Shih of The Black Panthers: Portrait of an Unfinished Revolution.
Heather Ann Thompson is a historian and the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy, as well as a public intellectual who writes for such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, TIME, and The Nation. Thompson has received research fellowships from such institutions as Harvard University, Art for Justice, Cambridge University, and the Guggenheim, and her justice advocacy work has also been recognized with a number of distinguished awards.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/4i6x8KDkirc
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Nov 9, 2022
Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: Boston Female Liberation, 1968-1972
Join Boston Female Liberation members for a discussion about the group’s history, strategy, and legacy, as well as lessons for today.
Join us for a conversation celebrating the release of Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: Boston Female Liberation, 1968-1972 An Account By Participants.
Author Nancy Rosenstock together with Delpfine Welch, two of the women featured in the book who were members of Boston Female Liberation—a key radical feminist organization during the second wave of feminism, will provide an inside account of the group’s history, strategy and numerous activities from fighting to legalize abortion, to campaigning for free 24-hour childcare, to linking up with the anti-Vietnam War movement.
They will be joined by two members of Chicago for Abortion Rights, Lauren Bianchi and Gina Rozman-Wendle, to discuss the relevance of this history for today’s feminist movements.
Get a copy of "Inside the Second Wave": https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Fa6rvig5yVk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Nov 22, 2022
Yes We Do Mean Smash the State: In Defense of Revolution
brian bean speaks at this session recorded at Socialism 2022. This session was sponsored by Rampant magazine.
https://rampantmag.com
Contemporary capitalism exploits and degrades human beings around the world, relying on the violent power of states to create profits, guarantee the functioning of markets, and cheapen labor through violence. There is no way to build a liberated future for all of us without overthrowing capitalism, and that will mean confronting and dismantling the capitalist state, its prisons, policing, borders, and military. It’s time we talk about smashing the state.
***Listen to all of the sessions from the Socialism 2022 conference by subscribing to the Socialism Conference podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts.***
Listen on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soci…ce/id1648960830
Listen on Soundcloud: @socialismconf
Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/38mBCw7Kwu0rkOKRARIfDk
Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Nov 28, 2022
Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win with Helen Shiller and Laura Washington
Join Helen Shiller and Laura Washington as they discuss Shiller's new biography, Daring to Struggle Daring to Win.
Helen Shiller went from radical anti-war activist in Wisconsin, to a member of a collective of white allies of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, to an elected city council person who helped break the back of the racialized opposition to Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.
Shiller participated, when few others did, in the historic fight against the gentrification of a unique economically and racially mixed Chicago community on the Northside. With insight into historic community organizing and political battles in Chicago from the 1970s through 2010, this book details numerous policy fights and conflicts in Chicago during this time, illuminating recurrent political themes and battles that remain relevant to this day.
Join us for a limited-capacity in-person book launch event and discussion with Helen Shiller and Laura Washington about the struggle for justice then and now in Chicago.
Masks and proof of vaccination are required for those attending in person. For those attending in-person doors will open at 6 PM.
The event will also be livestreamed for those unable to attend in-person. Closed captioning will be available for the livestream.
Order your copy of Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1952-daring-to-struggle-daring-to-win
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Speakers:
Helen Shiller, raised by migrant Jewish parents, was radicalized by the anti-war and civil rights movements. Shiller was in a collective of whites aligned with the Black Panther Party in Chicago. Beginning in 1987, Shiller was a radical Chicago alderperson for 24 years. She is the author of Daring to Struggle, Daring to Win.
Laura S. Washington is a Chicago Tribune contributing columnist and political analyst for ABC 7, Chicago’s ABC-owned station. She is the former editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, served as deputy press secretary to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Her work and commentary has been widely featured in the national media, including Time Magazine, the Associated Press, New York Times, NBC Nightly News, MNSBC, PBS News Hour and the BBC. Washington is a frequent lecturer and moderator for local and national audiences. Twitter: @MediaDervish
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/03ReVPRb9Bc
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Nov 28, 2022
The Role of the State in Abolitionist Futures
A conversation with authors Andrea Ritchie, Robyn Maynard, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
As movements to defund and divest from policing and invest in community safety expand in the wake of the 2020 Uprisings, abolitionist organizers are increasingly grappling with questions around the role of the state in abolitionist futures. Where do we want funds diverted from police budgets to go: into other institutions currently controlled by the carceral state, to subsidize the creation of new state entities, or into community-based organizations? What actions and behaviors do we think should be regulated by the state? How should they be regulated? How do we think resources should be distributed? These are not just theoretical questions - they shape the sites of struggle we choose, our organizing objectives and strategies, and the contexts in which they unfold.
Organizers Robyn Maynard, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson explore these questions and more through Black feminist and Indigenous frameworks in their recently released books No More Police: A Case for Abolition and Rehearsals for Living.
Get a copy of No More Police: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781620977323
Get a copy of Rehearsals for Living: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1880-rehearsals-for-living
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Speakers:
Robyn Maynard is an award-winning Black feminist scholar-activist based in Toronto and the author of the national bestseller Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Her writings on policing, feminism, abolition, and Black liberation are taught widely across North America and Europe.
Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant police misconduct attorney and organizer whose writing, litigation, and advocacy have focused on the policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is the co-founder of, most recently, Interrupting Criminalization and the author of many books, including "Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color" (Beacon Press 2017).
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Leanne is the author of seven books, including her 2021 novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/tqaz90hfGhk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks