A discussion in commemoration of Attica Day about its continued significance and the movement demanding prisoner labor rights. —————————————————————————— The forced labor of incarcerated people is a vestige of slavery still protected by the 13th Amendment today. On September 9th, 1971, nearly 1,300 men incarcerated at the Attica Correctional Facility led an insurrection against the prison — an institution undergirded by systemic oppression, racism, and violence. The Attica Liberation Faction Manifesto rooted the uprising in collective principled struggle: “In our peaceful efforts to assemble in dissent...we are in turn murdered, brutalized, and framed...because we seek the rights and privileges of all American People.” The State used brutal and deadly force to silence the rebellion. And yet, the vision for collective liberation forged during the Attica Uprising continues to shape demands of incarcerated people throughout the world. Join us on September 13th to commemorate Attica Day and discuss its continued significance, unfulfilled demands, and the movement to bring those demands to bear. Speakers: Orisanmi Burton is an Assistant Professor of anthropology at American University and a 2020 – 2021 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Burton’s research, which focuses on Black radical politics and state repression in the US, has been published in North American Dialogue, The Black Scholar, and Cultural Anthropology. He is an active member of the Critical Prison Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association and the Abolition Collective and is completing a book manuscript titled The Tip of the Spear: Black Revolutionary Organizing and Prison Pacification in the Empire State that analyzes the prison as a domain of domestic warfare. Darren Mack is an activist, advocate, and organizer based in New York. Darren served 20 years in New York State's prison system where he was politicized. Upon his release he became a member of the Education From the Inside Out coalition working to remove statutory and practical educational barriers for individuals impacted by the punishment system. In 2016, he became one of the outspoken advocates for the #CLOSErikers campaign. Robin McGinty is a PhD candidate (ABD) at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Doctoral Program in Geography. Robin McGinty’s research study “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” considers a re-imagination of the lived experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women and the production of an explicit political subjectivity that attends to the ways of knowing and living the world. Foregrounding the oral histories of formerly incarcerated Black women, the term ‘a labor of livingness’ is articulated as an expression of resistance to the prison as a site of living death, and its structural afterlives. Emani Davis is the CREATE(HER) of The Omowale Project, established to respond to the syndemic epidemics of COVID-19 and the racial violence targeting Black men and women. The project is designed to provide direct support to BIPOC-led organizations and the battle-scarred and emerging leaders who are at the helm of the national movement for racial justice. While reducing trauma and building resilience, The Project operates at the intersection of brain science, Ancestral wisdom and the healing arts. —————————————————————————— This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books and 13th Forward. 13th Forward is a campaign led by a coalition of workers’ rights advocates, criminal justice activists, grassroots organizers, and directly impacted individuals to end the forced labor and wage theft of incarcerated workers in New York. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/7ePHL7_Gpho Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Astra Taylor, Hannah Appel and Chenjerai Kumanyika discuss the urgent new book: Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition by the Debt Collective. The book is a powerful guide to action for people in debt. ---------------------------------------------------- Debtors have been mocked, scolded and lied to for decades. We have been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own incarceration. We’ve been told there is no way to change an economy that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small minority hoard wealth and power. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a political choice. In the early days of the crisis, elected officials drew up plans to spend trillions of dollars. The only question was: where would the money go and who would benefit from the bailout? The truth is that there has never been a lack of money for things like housing, education and health care. Millions of people never needed to be forced into debt for those things in the first place. Armed with this knowledge, a militant debtors movement has the potential to rewrite the contract and assure that no one has to mortgage their future to survive. Debtors of the World Must Unite. As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our debts can make us powerful. ------------------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Astra Taylor is a documentary filmmaker, writer, and political organizer. She is the director, most recently, of "What Is Democracy?" and the author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone and the American Book Award winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. She is co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and contributed the foreword to the group’s new book, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition. Hannah Appel is a Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies at UCLA and a political organizer. She is the author, most recently, of The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea, and serves as the Associate Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, where she leads the Future of Finance research stream. She is co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, and a writers bloc member for Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition. Chenjerai Kumanyika is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Media at Rutgers University who also commits acts of podcasting and organizing. His research and teaching focus on power, race , and promotional culture in the cultural and creative industries. In addition to being a proud Moth storyteller, Chenjerai Co-created and Co-hosted Gimlet Media’s Peabody award-winning Uncivil podcast and co-hosts on Scene on Radio’s widely influential seasons on “Seeing White,” and the history of American democracy. His writing appears in a variety of scholarly and journalistic outlets. Chenjerai organizes with 215 People's Alliance, the Media, Inequality, & Change Center, Philadelphia Debt Collective and continues to serve on Street Poets' board. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Can't Pay Won't Pay: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1520-can-t-pay-won-t-pay Learn more about the Debt Collective: https://debtcollective.org Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/V88AJhbHof0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

The second in a series of Critical Conversations organized by Study and Struggle discussing prison abolition and immigrant justice. ———————————————— The Study and Struggle program is the first phase of an ongoing project to organize against incarceration and criminalization in Mississippi through four months of political education and community building. Our Critical Conversations webinar series, hosted by Haymarket Books, will cover the themes for the upcoming month. Haymarket Books is an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. The second webinar theme is Abolition, Intersectionality, and Care and will be a conversation about what it means for abolition to be intersectional and how abolition demands a reimagination of what it means to be in community and to care for one another. ———————————————— Speakers: Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!,” and the creator of the mutual aid toolkit at BigDoorBrigade.com. His latest book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), forthcoming from Verso Press this summer. Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant police misconduct attorney and organizer whose writing, litigation, and advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is currently Researcher in Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, where she recently launched the Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action initiative. She is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, Say Her Name: What it Means to Center Black Women’s Experiences of Police Violence in Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States, Surviving the Streets of New York: Experiences of LGBT Youth, YMSM and YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex, and Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color, in The Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology and has published numerous articles, policy reports and research studies. Victoria Law is a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, and co-author of the new book Prison By Any Other Name. She frequently writes about the intersections between mass incarceration, gender and resistance. Pauline Rogers, is formerly incarcerated, and, Co-founder of the Reaching & Educating for Community Hope (RECH) Foundation in Jackson, Mississippi. Jarvis Benson (moderator) is originally from Grenada, Mississippi and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2019. He currently lives in Washington DC and works on youth leadership development, voting accessibility, and social justice initiatives on campuses across the country. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/T5xefwldPLk Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

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. ——————— 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 Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join the AbolitionNOW Network for a teach-in on the connections between the struggle for Black and Indigenous liberation and abolition. A workshop on the relationship between settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism that ties the threads of Black and Indigenous resistance through abolition of the PIC. ———————————————— Speakers: Lou Cornum - The Red Nation Mohamed Shehk - Critical Resistance Tynetta Muhammad - BYP100 Woods Ervin - Critical Resistance Moderated by Sheila Nezhad - Reclaim the Block ————————————————————— This event is presented by the AbolitionNOW Network and cosponsored by Haymarket Books, an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/J97ysOcrcm4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Award-winning author Imani Perry talks with Jaimee A. Swift from Black Women Radicals about her new book Breathe: A Letter to my Sons. Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, new from Imani Perry, explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love—finding beauty and possibility in life—and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition. “Breathe is a parent’s unflinching demand, born of inherited trauma and love, for her children’s right simply to be possible.” —The New York Times Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, and in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and spent much of her youth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago. She is the author of several books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons, Freeman Diallo Perry Rabb and Issa Garner Rabb. Jaimee A. Swift is the executive director of Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting Black women and gender non-conforming and non-binary people's radical activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Breathe: https://bookshop.org/shop/unclebobbies Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Wsgr52Z2qIw Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks