This is the third and final in a series of events curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston in collaboration with The BreakBeat Poets and Haymarket Books, to celebrate the release of his new collection, Doppelgangbanger. Poets: Cortney Lamar Charleston is originally from the Chicago suburbs. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and BA in Urban Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. While attending Penn, he was most interested in the business as a political entity, the relationship between the public and private sectors and the physical and sociological construction of cities. It was during his college years that he began writing and performing poetry as a member of The Excelano Project. Charleston's academic interests, coupled with his upbringing spent bouncing between Chicago’s South Side and its South and West suburbs, immediately influence his written work. Charleston’s poems paint themselves against the backgrounds of past and present; they grapple with race, masculinity, class, family, faith and how identity is, functionally, a transition zone between all of these competing markers. Said differently, his poetry is a kind of marriage between art and activism, a call for a more involved and empathetic understanding of the diversity of the human experience. This same line of thought frames his philosophy as Poetry Editor at The Rumpus. He also currently serves on the Alice James Books Editorial Board. Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Callaloo, BOAAT, Tin House, Milkweed Editions, and The Watering Hole. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Julian is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle and the 2019 Frederick Bock Prize. His poetry has been published in New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and POETRY and anthologized in The Breakbeat Poets Vol.4, Nepantla and Furious Flower. He has essays in Vibe, Black Nerd Problems, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ole Miss. He is the author of Refuse (Pitt, Fall 2018), winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, the Middle Grade novel Pilar Ramirez And The Prison of Zafa (Holt, Winter 2022). He talks a lot about poems and other things on Twitter at @JulianThePoet. 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. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/d7eErci3NLs Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join us for a panel discussion on the brutal repression of political dissenters in Egypt since 2016 and how to build solidarity. Since 2016, the tyrannical regime of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has built 30 new prisons to house the estimated 70,000+ political prisoners incarcerated since Sisi seized power in 2013. Egyptian civil society activists and journalists have been especially targeted. But the Sisi regime also routinely imprisons anyone whose speech, writing, or actions express the slightest criticism or deviation from its official line: be they doctors speaking out about deficiencies in Covid-19 treatment, lawyers denouncing corruption, Facebook posters or Tik-Tok influencers. Prisoners of conscience are disappeared, held in solitary confinement without trial, and denied access to food, health care, and family visits. Torture is widespread. Despite this, Western countries continue to maintain warm relations with Egypt. French president Emmanuel Macron recently presented Sisi with his country’s highest public award, the Légion d’honneur. Trump famously referred to Sisi as his “favorite dictator,” but there is no sign that US-Egyptian relations will be any different under President Biden: just days after Egyptian security forces detained family members of human rights activist and dual US-Egyptian national Mohamed Soltan, the State Department announced it is considering a sale of missiles to Egypt worth $197 million. Please join us for an urgent discussion about this situation and how to build solidarity with Egyptian activists facing this horrific repression. Speakers: Mohamed Soltan, human rights activist and former political prisoner in Egypt. Mohamed was imprisoned in the crackdown on pro-democracy activists following the July 3, 2013 coup d'état. He engaged in a 489-day hunger strike to protest his unjust imprisonment and was released in May 2015. He is a co-founder of the Freedom Initiative, a human rights organization dedicated to the release of political prisoners in the Middle East. @soltan Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of the organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Previously, she served as executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch (2004 – 2020), overseeing the work of the division in 19 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and human rights. @sarahleah1 Hussein Baoumi, researcher on Egypt and Libya for Amnesty International. Prior to joining Amnesty International, he was a fellow with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, Programs Director at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms in Cairo, and an international fellow with Dejusticia, a Bogotá-based organization dedicated to social justice and human rights in Colombia and the Global South. @husseinmagdy16 ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Internationalism From Below, the Arab Studies Institute, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), 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 organizing work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EY-CP1_BURs Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Black Lives Matter at School educators for a conversation about the new uprising for educational justice in early childhood education. Education activists Takiema Bunche-Smith, Laleña Garcia, Angela Harris, Denisha Jones, Makai Kellogg and Nancy Carlsson Paige discuss the struggle against systemic racism in schools, how we can win real educational justice and the lessons from Black Lives Matter at School organizing focused on early childhood education. These early childhood educators will discuss how racism impacts the early educational experiences of Black children and will share ideas for centering Black Lives Matter in School from the struggle against systemic racism from their own work. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Takiema Bunche Smith, Executive Director, Center on Culture, Race & Equity at Bank Street College Angela Harris, 1st Grade Teacher and Chairwoman of the Black Educators Caucus Laleña Garcia, 5-6s Head Teacher at Manhattan Country School Denisha Jones, DEY Co-Director and Co-Editor Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice Makai Kellogg, Early Childhood Educator at School for Friends Nancy Carlsson-Paige (moderator), DEY’s Co-Founder, Senior Advisor, and President of the Board ---------------------------------------------------- This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Defending the Early Years, and Black Lives Matter at School. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/sx6QALDCl5E Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Kim Moody and Kate Doyle Griffiths in conversation about updating the rank and file strategy and how it applies to labor organizing today. With the growth of the new socialist movement, a debate has emerged over strategy in the union movement. Kim Moody, author of On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War, will join Spectre editor Kate Doyle Griffiths to explain, discuss, and update the classic rank and file strategy and contrast it with the various alternatives on the contemporary left. Speakers: Kim Moody was a founder of Labor Notes in the US and is the author of several books on labour and politics, including On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Westminster in London, and a member of the University and College Union and the National Union of Journalists. Kate Doyle Griffiths is a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center in the department of Anthropology. They write about work, women and queers, strikes and social reproduction in the USA and South Africa. —————————————————————————————————————————— This event is sponsored by Spectre Journal and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/uPO2Pp5ftIA Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Sarah Jaffe and Dave Zirin in conversation about themes from Jaffe's new book, Work Won't Love You Back. Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone is a deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction. Get a copy of Work Won't Love You Back here: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781568589398 Speakers: Sarah Jaffe is a Type Media Center fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. Jaffe is the author of Work Won't Love You Back and Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and many others. She is the co-host, with Michelle Chen, of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, as well as a columnist at the New Republic and New Labor Forum. Dave Zirin is the sports editor for the Nation and the author of several books, most recently Jim Brown: Last Man Standing. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “Fifty Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN, and Democracy Now! Zirin is also the host of Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. He hosts WPFW's The Collision with Etan Thomas and has been called "the best sportswriter in the United States," by Robert Lipsyte. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/RYhSPPdVny0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Harm reduction is a critical movement tool used for generations to create change, build long-term relationships, and support healing while working to reduce harm in our community. Shira Hassan, a long-time harm reduction and transformative justice practitioner, shares her own experiences with harm reduction as a young person in the sex trade to her recent adventures as an instructor of one of social work's most sought after courses (University of Chicago and University of Washington, Seattle). This instructional and participatory session will provide an overview of harm reduction principles, values and practice - and how it intersects with transformative justice work within a social work context. There is no justice that leaves out people in the sex trade & street economy, drug users and street based young people. Shira offers her reflections, cautions and thoughts about the possibilities for the future of harm reduction as an abolitionist strategy. Sheila Vakharia, Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance, will introduce the webinar and moderate an interactive audience discussion at the close of the evening. Social work, historically and today, has been deeply embedded in systems of carceral control. With social work's legacy of ties to policing and oppressive family regulation through the child welfare system, the social work community is actively imagining and working towards a social work rooted in abolition, turning to traditions of resistance that also characterize its history. The Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAAASW) is a group of social workers from different parts of the U.S. building a year-long initiative to support abolitionist work in the field of social work. The initiative includes ongoing political education, research, knowledge generation around carceral and abolition social work, developing an online hub of abolitionist social work resources, and broader organizing and advocacy efforts to build abolitionist ideas and practices into social work. Shira Hassan is an organizer with nearly 25 years of experience. She is the former Director of the Young Women’s Empowerment Project where the participatory evaluation that she co-designed and implemented was recognized by the United Nations as part of its Universal Periodic Review of the U.S. treatment of people in the sex trade. Shira has focused on the experiences of girls, boys, transgender and queer youth involved in the sex trade and street economy and has stabled 4 syringe exchanges for young people in the sex trade and transgender people. She has trained and spoken nationally on transformative justice, harm reduction and leadership development of young people of color. Along with Mariame Kaba, she is the co-author of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators. Shira currently teaches in the graduate school of Social Work at both the University of Chicago and the University of Washington. She received her Masters in Social Work from New York University in 2002. Sheila P Vakharia is Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance. In that role, she helps DPA staff and others understand a range of drug policy issues while also responding to new studies with critiques and analysis. Prior to joining DPA, Dr. Vakharia was an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Long Island University, and had also worked as a clinical social worker in both abstinence-only and harm reduction settings. This event is sponsored by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work and Haymarket Books. For more info about Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work: https://www.naasw.com Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/_iFwX_Jzunk Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks