Category: Events

Upcoming events, including posters, registration information, and event details

CFP: The Word for World is Forest Symposium, October 2022.

(Photo Credit: Maksim Isotomin, Unsplash)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s anti-war novella The Word for World is Forest.

Written during the Vietnam conflict, The Word for World is Forest depicts a distant world invaded by human beings who are desperate for natural resources. It tells the tale of an alien culture that resists the invasion, but is forever changed by the decision.

The Anarres Project for Alternative Futures calls for abstracts for a multidisciplinary virtual symposium that aims to bring together activists, organizers, and scholars to consider the ways in which Le Guin’s tale can help us to diagnose social injustices in the present moment, and to imagine the ways we can catalyze solidarities to achieve more just futures.

Rather than strictly academic discussions or literary critiques, we are looking for presentations that take Le Guin’s novella as a basis for understanding themes such as oppression, patriarchy and toxic masculinity, racial justice, resistance, colonialism/imperialism, nonviolence and armed struggle, environmental justice, intersectional solidarity in the world today.  We are especially interested in how the tale might help us develop strategies for mutual aid and community organizing against injustice today.

The symposium will be held on-line over Zoom on Friday, October 14, 2022.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words by midnight (Pacific Time) Friday, September 9, 2022 using the submission form below.

Radical Imagination Conference “Healing and Collective Transformation” April 19-20, 2019

The Second Annual Radical Imagination Conference is now accepting applications until December 5, 2018.

Conference location is Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon

“Healing and Collective Transformation”

We strive to challenge the standard model of an academic conference, which often mimics rigid teaching styles with a “professional” lecturer speaking at a passive audience. Instead, we invite participants to create a common space for what we call the “radical imagination.” We wish to promote skill-shares and workshops, and go beyond such one-off activities by exploring possibilities for a revolutionary transformation of everything.

Opening Space for the Radical Imagination invites us to engage in a profound critique of what seems obvious (radical = that goes to the roots of something) and to explore alternative ways of living together – producing, loving, shaping spaces and time, inhabiting the land, working, using, struggling. It is an appeal to decolonize social relations and the dominant imaginaries that justify oppression and injustice. Radical Imagination is not just about dreaming alternative futures. It lures us into embodying alternatives in practices, actions, and thinking.

We are a group of professors, students, and community organizers from Oregon State University and the community of Corvallis, OR, who are dedicated to creating, facilitating, and protecting spaces that nurture the power of imagining alternatives. We imagine this conference to be an opportunity for people to begin lasting relationships with one another. To enable this, we will be making food together, dancing, singing, and hosting fun activities throughout the weekend while also holding workshops, presentations, and discussions on using our radical imagination for organizing toward social justice.

Presentation panels, workshops, art interventions, and group discussions may touch on but are not limited to the following topics and actions (NOTE: We will be limiting the number of lectures/panels given at this conference as these are readily available wherever a university is located):
Networking techniques
Theories, strategies, and ideologies behind social movements
Connecting theory and practice
Direct Action (thoughts and workshops) (theory and practice)
Practical Skills
Anti-Imperialism/Anti-War
Autonomous Communities
Class
Anti-Racism
Immigrant Rights
Indigenous Rights
Globalization and Neoliberalism
Gentrification and Housing
Labor Movements
Art and Visual Culture
Radicalism in Academia
Religion
Radical History
The analysis of past movements
Use of technology in social movements
Anarchist Processes and Models
Queer Theory
Feminism
Wellness and self-care
Anti-colonialism/post-colonial theory
Radical/social justice education
Student and Youth Movements
Deep/social ecology
Anti-Consumerism/Freeganism
Food sovereignty
Artivism
Poetry
Collective living
Relational organizing
Short Film Walk
Alternative transportation

For our second year of this conference, we explicitly encourage submissions addressing the theme of “healing and collective transformation” from a non-western perspective.

Sessions will be 1-2 hours long each

Tabling: During the whole conference we will have a Mercato of Alternatives. You can use the submission form for tabling as well

Please submit your proposal for any of the categories by December 5th, 2018 by using the online form you can find here: Presenter Application

Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31, 2019

Revolution: Past-Present-Future

(October 11, 2017)

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The Anarres Project for Alternative Futures announces a new series for Fall, marking the hundred year anniversary of revolutionary social change in Russia.  We will be hosting several events that seeks to understand the dynamics of social upheaval and political transformation.  We also want to know what we can learn today about revolutions from the past in order to imagine and build a more just and beautiful society in the future.

 

  1.  Guerrillas of Desire: A Conversation on Revolution, Organizing, and Everyday Resistance

Author Kevin Van Meter will join us to discuss his new book, Guerrillas of Desire (AK Press, 2017) on Friday, October 20, 2017 in MU 213 (Pan Afrikan Room) from 4-6pm.

About the book:
Behind the smiling faces of cashiers, wait staff, and workers of all sorts, a war is going on, usually without the knowledge of official political and labor organizations. Guerrillas of Desire begins with a provocation: The Left is wrong. It’s historical and current strategies are too-often based on the assumption that working and poor people are unorganized, acquiescent to systems of domination, or simply uninterested in building a new world. The fact is, as C.L.R. James has noted, they “are rebelling every day in ways of their own invention”: pilfering, sabotaging, faking illnesses, squatting, fleeing, and counter-strategizing. Kevin Van Meter maps these undercurrents, documenting the history of everyday resistance under slavery, in peasant life, and throughout modern capitalism, while showing that it remains an important factor in revolution and something radicals of all stripes must understand.

https://www.akpress.org/guerrillas-of-desire.html

Sponsored by: Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE), Corvallis-Albany I.W.W., Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, Allied Students for Another Politics (ASAP).

 

2. American Revolutionary:  The Grace Lee Boggs Story:  Film and Discussion

Join us to view the documentary “American Revolutionary:  The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”, with discussion on October 25, 2017 in Milam Hall 218 at 6pm.

“The documentary film, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS, plunges us into Boggs’s lifetime of vital thinking and action, traversing the major U.S. social movements of the last century; from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements and beyond. Boggs’s constantly evolving strategy—her willingness to re-evaluate and change tactics in relation to the world shifting around her—drives the story forward. Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs’s late husband James and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the 1967 rebellions, and non-linear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself to transform the world.”

3.  Revolution Matters:  A Discussion on the Lessons from Comparative Revolutions.

Join us for a community discussion with Dr. Barbara Muraca, Dr. Joseph Orosco, Dr. Robert Thompson, and Dr. Tony Vogt about what we can learn from the Haitian Revolution, Mexican Revolution, Russian Revolution, and the German Sparticist Uprising of 1918 for making social change today.

Thursday, November 9, 2017, in MU 208 (La Raza Room) at 12 noon.

Co sponsored by:  Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, Allied Students for Another Politics, and Students United for Palestinian Equality.

Star Trek and the Radical Imagination @ Oregon State

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To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: The Original Series, the Anarres Project for Alternative Futures presents a program of events that highlight the importance of this landmark science fiction franchise for advancing social justice and pushing the boundaries of the radical imagination.  Here is a listing of the events planned for Fall term 2016:

 

Star Trek and Black Lives Matter:  Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 6 pm in Milam Hall 318.

As part of its celebration of the 50th anniversary of the TV series Star Trek, the Anarres Project presents a viewing and discussion of Deep Space Nine’s “Far Beyond the Stars”. This award winning episode is a powerful and emotional examination of racial oppression and police brutality, as well as the power of the radical imagination to envision alternative futures, that is as poignant now as it was when it first aired almost 20 years ago.
Free pizza will be provided to help our conversation along.

 

The Cultural and Technological Impact of Star Trek:  Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 4pm in Learning Innovation Center 368

As part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the Anarres Project presents Dr. Randall Milstein (OSU Honors College and College of Science) discussing the cultural and technological impact the series has had on society and everday life. Discussion is Free and open to the public.

 

Star Trek and Social Justice:  Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 4 pm in Milam Hall 301

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the Anarres Project presents a discussion with Dr. Christina Allaback, the artistic director for the Eugene based Trek Theater, about the social justice emphasis of the classic TV series. She will explain the origins of Trek Theater, how she sees it embracing the lessons of the theater of the oppressed, and what we can learn about social justice from science fiction.

 

Trek Theatre:  The Drumhead@OSU:  Thursday, October 20, 2016, at 7pm in Learning Innovation Center 228

As part of its celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the Anarres Project hosts the Trek Theatre’s performance of Star Trek: TNG’s “The Drumhead”. This classic episode is a story about the clash between state security and the protection of human rights.

There will be a small reception at 6pm before the performance and guests are encouraged to come in their best Star Trek costume.  Small prizes will be available for the best cosplay.

 

Star Trek and Indigenous Science Fiction:  Thursday, November 10, 2016 12 noon, Native American Longhouse

As part of its celebration of the 50 anniversary of Star Trek, the Anarres Project presents a panel discussion with three Native American artists and scholars who will talk about the way they infuse their work with indigenous metaphor and science fiction/fantasy imagery that sheds new light on the experience of indigenous people in the United States.  Ryan Singer is a painter known for using the landscapes of Star Wars to explore life on the Dine/Navajo nation.  Joel South is an OSU alum and a hip hop artist and writer whose songs and stories bring to life indigenous ways of knowing.  Dr. Grace Dillon is a scholar of the genre of indigenous science fiction and who puts forth the idea that many tales within indigenous oral traditions can be understood as kinds of speculative fiction.

Notes to An Activist on Suggestions When Feeling Down About Infighting

By Chris Crass  (July 22, 2015)

burnout

1. Know that dealing with people talking badly about you, dealing with the heartache of movement building, feeling despair – these are all part of the process of being an effective activist/organizer for liberation. Continue reading “Notes to An Activist on Suggestions When Feeling Down About Infighting”

Behind the Scenes w/ the Guns & Badges

By Phoenix Calida  (July 21, 2015)

policeI was having a convo via pm. Someone suggested I do a ride along with police to “see the other side.” My first instinct was to laugh, but then I realized most people online don’t really know much about me, because I rarely talk about myself as a person. Continue reading “Behind the Scenes w/ the Guns & Badges”

Is the US flag racist like the Confed. flag?

By Chris Lowe  (July 21, 2015)

old glory
Boston, probably 1974. During conflict over school desegregation, supposedly, but mostly, not really over “busing.” At Government Center, near the New City Hall. I was in high school in a Boston suburb at the time. Continue reading “Is the US flag racist like the Confed. flag?”

Letter to the White Tourist Who Asked Me For Cocaine

octaBy Octaviano Merecias-Cuevas (July 19, 2015)

I have to walk across the street when I see a female at night walking during the evening; “No I’m not a rapist, I’m just traveling home from a late night at work.” Continue reading “Letter to the White Tourist Who Asked Me For Cocaine”

At Least I’m Not in East Texas

 

By Teka Lark (July 16, 2015)

July 14, 2015 Sandra Bland was found hanging in a cell in Waller County Jail in East Texas after being arrested after a traffic stop on her way to start a new job. On July 16, 2015 the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Blue Line Train celebrated its 25th anniversary of service. My great-great aunt was burned alive in her home in East Texas after she and her sister shot two white men who had raped her. Her sister, my great-great grandmother, disguised as a white woman escaped to Los Angeles with her new husband posing as her driver. They settled in a part of Los Angeles now known as South L.A. Continue reading “At Least I’m Not in East Texas”

We Must Name the Reality of the Black Holocaust

For all who, understandably, feel fear after a terrorist attack happens, from 9.11. to the Boston bombing.

By Chris Crass  (July 15, 2015)

Imagine now that these kinds of terror attacks happen regularly, persistently, for hundreds of years in your community, and the people in official power in the city and country you live in, are either directly involved, or support policies and a pathologically violent and racist culture that justifies it. Continue reading “We Must Name the Reality of the Black Holocaust”