More Episodes
Sep 24, 2021
Mi María: Surviving the Storm—Voices from Puerto Rico
Join us for a conversation about recovering from climate disaster and building community within the context of colonialism in Puerto Rico.
Celebrate the launch of Mi María: Surviving the Storm, a new book from Voice of Witness and Haymarket Books, with a roundtable conversation about the aftermath of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico.
Mi María: Surviving the Storm brings together 17 first-person stories that explore how government neglect and colonialism impact recovery, how communities come together in the wake of disaster, and how precarity and inequity are exacerbated on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Weaving together long-form oral histories and shorter testimonios, the book offers a multivocal history of the storm and its long aftermath as people waited for relief and aid that rarely arrived and communities collectively organized to support one another in recovery.
This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able please make a solidarity donation in support of our important educational and publishing work. Donations from this event will support our work with Voice of Witness.
You can also support by purchasing the book, Mi María: Surviving the Storm, online here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1746-mi-maria-surviving-the-storm
Speakers:
Dr. Ricia Chansky is a professor in the English department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the co-editor of Mi María: Surviving the Storm. She is the co-editor of the scholarly journal, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and the editor of the Routledge Auto/Biography Studies book series. Ricia is also a Research Affiliate at the York University Centre for Research in Latin America and the Caribbean and a Global Fellow at the Brown University Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. For her work directing the large-scale public humanities project, “Mi María: Puerto Rico after the Hurricane,” Ricia won the MLA Innovation in the Humanities Award and the Oral History Association’s Post-Secondary Teaching Award, and was selected as a partner in the Humanities Action Lab. She has been recognized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance as a Global Human Rights Leader in the Climate Crisis.
Zaira Arvelo Alicea is a narrator in Mi María: Surviving the Storm and the Curriculum Specialist for the project. Zaira is a writer, editor, and educator with a focus on English language learners (ELLs) and equity in the continental US and Puerto Rico. She was born in Lares, Puerto Rico, a mountainous town in the archipelago with a tradition of anticolonial insurgency. Zaira and her husband survived Hurricane María by floating on an air mattress for sixteen hours, trapped in their home. Her story highlights several failures in the federal disaster-response system, which led them to remain homeless for well over a year after the hurricane. She currently lives on Puerto Rico’s largest island where she spearheads a small business.
Lorel Cubano Santiago is a narrator in Mi María: Surviving the Storm and a community organizer with a background in tourism. She is the founder of the Old San Juan Heritage Foundation and the community arts center Colectivo PerlArte. After Hurricane María, Lorel mobilized mutual aid efforts with her community to feed hundreds of people despite not receiving any aid from the supply ships that docked just minutes away from their neighborhood of La Perla in San Juan.
Brenda Flores Santiago is a researcher, translator, and oral historian. Brenda was a student interviewer for the Mi María project at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. She is currently a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Translation and Interpreting program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/4J-e1ITH3ZQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Sep 28, 2021
A Pause in the Storm: Episode 1 with Rory Fanning
A Pause in the Storm is a new series from Haymarket Books and Gargi Bhattacharyya. Join Gargi Bhattacharyya and one Haymarket author every month to explore ways of collectively rebuilding our crumbling world. Short and accessible, these conversations encourage us to pause and reflect on how to change everything.
Our chat this month features Rory Fanning, author of Worth Fighting For (Haymarket, 2014). In 2008, Rory walked across the United States for his friend Pat Tillman. Pat’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan was covered up just days before Rory left the Army Rangers as a conscientious objector. Worth Fighting For traces Rory’s journey across the US, but also his political journey towards becoming a socialist and anti-imperialist.
Gargi Bhattacharyya is one of the UK’s leading scholars on race and capitalism. She is the author of Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018), Dangerous Brown Men (2008), Traffick (2005) and co-author of Empire’s Endgame (2020).
Oct 4, 2021
What's Happening in Myanmar?
Join us to discuss the popular uprising in Myanmar and its global repercussions in labor, feminist dynamics, and for ethnic minorities. A panel of women will discuss three specific aspects of this momentous upheaval: labor struggles, the feminist dynamic, and the role of ethnic minorities.
Since February, an uprising has been in progress against a military coup in Myanmar. The military, which has been in power since 1948 when the country became independent from Britain, declared the coup to overturn the results of a legitimate election in which the National League for Democracy gained a majority of seats in the parliament. Over 1000 protesters have been killed, over 4000 arrested and 20 sentenced to death since the coup. The majority of the population have been denied any type of COVID care or vaccination. A general strike involving most sectors of the population has been ongoing. Women, who have been explicitly challenging misogyny and the second-class status of women in Burmese society, have come out in support of the uprising. Various oppressed national minority populations, including the Rohingya, have also joined the uprising. The opposition National Unity Government is now calling for a federalist alternative to the military-civilian government that ruled from 2015 on.
The combined might of the capitalist state-army, which promotes ethno-religious chauvinism and misogyny, and the important strategic role which Myanmar plays for various global powers, makes its military government hugely powerful. Authoritarian powers around the world are also learning from the coup for their own fascistic purposes. The struggle in Myanmar and similar struggles around the world cannot move forward without global grassroots solidarity to oppose the military government and to give voice to Myanmar women, striking labor activists and ethnic minorities.
Speakers:
Debbie Stothard is an active promoter of human rights in Burma and the ASEAN region. During her 32-year career, she has worked as a journalist, community education consultant, governmental advisor, and trainer in Malaysia, Australia, and Thailand. In 1996, she founded the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (ALTSEAN-Burma) and was elected Secretary-General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in 2013. She developed the first women-specific human rights training program for Myanmar in 1997, an initiative which is ongoing, and has supported many local and national young women leaders in Myanmar.
Yasmin Ullah is an independent Rohingya social justice activist. She was born in the Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar. Her family fled to Thailand in 1995 when she was a child and she remained a stateless refugee until moving to Canada in 2011. Yasmin has served as the President of the Rohingya Human Rights Network, a non-profit group led by activists across Canada advocating and raising public awareness of the Rohingya genocide.
Myra Dahgaypaw is the Managing Director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. She is a Karen human rights activist from Karen State, Eastern Burma. She was an internally displaced person and a refugee prior to resettling in the U.S. at age of 13. Myra has played a strong role in her community as an organizer and a human rights advocate. Previously, Myra worked as a human rights advocate at the United Nations with the Burma Fund United Nations Office.
Moderator
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator, and activist. She produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and writes about the Middle East and the politics of solidarity for a variety of publications, including New Politics magazine.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/hyXXPJxnq6Y
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Oct 6, 2021
The Second International and Revolutionary Marxism
Join Mike Taber, Eric Blanc, Lars Lih, and Anne McShane for a book launch celebrating the release of Under the Socialist Banner: Resolutions of the Second International, 1889–1912, edited by Taber.
Recent years have seen a massive growth of interest in socialism, particularly among young people. But few are fully aware of socialism’s revolutionary history. For this reason, an appreciation of the Second International—often called the “Socialist International”—during its Marxist years is particularly relevant.
What is the record of the Second International in its Marxist years? What is its legacy, and what lessons does it offer for today? These and other questions will be discussed.
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Order a Copy of Under the Socialist Banner: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1649-under-the-socialist-banner
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Eric Blanc is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics and Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire, 1882-1917.
Lars T. Lih is an independent scholar who lives in Montreal. He is the author of Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, co-author of Stalin’s Letters to Molotov , author of Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? In Context , and co-editor, with Ben Lewis, of Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle . He has also authored a short biography entitled Lenin . At present, he is working on a study of the 1917 revolution that brings out the overlooked role of consensus and continuity in the Bolshevik outlook.
Mike Taber is the editor of Under the Socialist Banner: Resolutions of the Second International, 1889–1912. He has edited and prepared a number of other books related to the history of revolutionary and working-class movements—from collections of documents of the Communist International under Lenin to works by figures such as Leon Trotsky, Malcolm X, and Che Guevara.
Anne McShane has been involved in Marxist politics for over 30 years. She has a particular interest in the struggle for women’s emancipation within socialist projects and has completed a PhD on the role of the Zhenotdel (Women’s Department of the CPSU) in Soviet Central Asia. She works as a human rights lawyer in Ireland.
This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/wcdUfdo2C_w
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Oct 13, 2021
Fortress Europe, Fortress USA: How Borders Work
Join Haymarket Books and Salvage for a discussion of Fortress Europe, Fortress USA: How Borders Work
Contemporary capitalism relies heavily on an inter-connected working class which extends across borders. Cross-border production and supply chains, logistics networks, and retail and service firms have aligned and fused a growing number of workers into one common class, regardless of where they happen to live. While money moves without restriction, the movement of displaced migrant workers across borders is restricted, punished—often violently so. And all of this is before imperial adventures and decades of neoliberal structural adjustment policies conspire to create the dire circumstances that lead to “refugee crises.”
In both the US and across Europe this context has been seized on and converted to political fodder by mainstream parties of the liberal and the reactionary varieties. While often flavored differently—from outright scapegoating of migrants to handwringing calls for ‘kinder-gentler’ deportation regimes—the growth and violence of the police state dedicated to the repression of transborder populations has proceeded unabated for decades.
Drawing on Justin Akers Chacón’s new book "The Border Crossed Us", and Chloe Haralambous’s work with Sea-Watch, this Salvage Live event will look at the differences and similarities between Fortress USA and Fortress Europe, examine how to effectively dismantle their respective border regimes, and aim to explain how borders work (and for whom). The conversation will be hosted by Annie Olaloku-Teriba and Barnaby Raine.
This discussion will be part of the ongoing Salvage Live events series, hosted by Haymarket Books.
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Justin Akers Chacón is an activist, labor unionist, and educator living in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. He is a Professor of Chicana/o History at San Diego City College. His most recent book is The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border. He is also the author of No One is Illegal (with Mike Davis) and Radicals in the Barrio.
Chloe Haralambous is a member of Sea-Watch, participating in and coordinating maritime rescue missions in the Central Mediterranean migration corridor to Europe, and the co-founder of the Mosaik Support Center for Refugees and Locals on the Greek island of Lesvos. She is also a PhD candidate in comparative literature at Columbia University.
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.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/bPCaw1e-3dA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Oct 14, 2021
Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, History w/ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Join Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Bill Fletcher Jr. for an urgent discussion of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and a history of exclusion
Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, a new book from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States.
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and ahistorical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
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Get the book, Not “A Nation of Immigrants” from Beacon Press: http://www.beacon.org/Not-A-Nation-of-Immigrants-P1641.aspx
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Speakers:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian, writer, speaker, and professor emerita at California State University East Bay. She is author of numerous scholarly Indigenous related books and articles, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico and The Great Sioux Nation, as well as a memoir trilogy and is author of the award-winning book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Her book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment was published in 2018, and her new book, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion is out now from Beacon Press.
Bill Fletcher Jr is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice, and the author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And 20 Other Myths about Unions. Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.
This event is sponsored by Beacon Press and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/bNvn0jVWcfw
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
