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Crisis, Austerity and Resistance in the US, UK, and Beyond — A Circulation of International Experiences with the Bristol Radical History Group

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:46:22 +0000

On TUESDAY, December 6th at NOON at 16 Beaver, we host the Bristol Radical History Group (UK) to share our experiences of living, working, and organizing in these days, months, and years of crisis, to consider the effect of austerity on both sides of the Atlantic, and explore forms of resistance currently emerging. What will the future hold? And what chances are there of a further generalization of sectoral and community struggles?

The event will be at 16 Beaver at 12PM. See UPCOMING EVENTS and SEMINARS for information.

C.L.R. James, “A New Notion”

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:48:55 +0000

On Thursday, July 1st, THIS IS FOREVER Event and Discussion Series will be hosting Noel Ignatiev for a presentation and discussion of C.L.R. James’ classic essays “Every Cook Can Govern” and “The Invading Socialist Society.” Both essays can be found with an introduction by Noel in the recently published “A New Notion” (PM Press, 2010).

The event will be at Bluestockings Bookstore at 7PM. Discussion to follow.

Noel Ignatiev is a teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the editor of Lesson of the Hour: Wendell Phillips on Abolition and Strategy, the co-editor of Race Traitor and the author of How the Irish Became White. He lives in Boston.

Resurrecting a Revolutionary Cinema

Malav Kanuga — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:05:05 +0000

On Sunday — 04.04.10, noon to 6PM — join us for Resurrecting a Revolutionary Cinema: The Hour of the Furnaces, a film screening and discussion co-presented by DocTruck, Libertad Gills, Red Channels, and the UnionDocs Collaborative and co-sponsored by Cinema Tropical and This is Forever.

On Easter Sunday we will present a daylong, open-ended, collaborative and community screening of Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas’ The Hour of the Furnaces. In organizing such an event the usual questions arise: what does a film about Argentina mean to us in the United States; what does a film from 1968 mean to us in 2010; and, more broadly, what is the function of a political film, a revolutionary cinema, in our contemporary cultural political and digitally mediated landscape.

The Hour of the Furnaces is historically seen as a benchmark, a landmark, of militant cinema; but with that it also becomes a remnant of a certain time and a place, a relic of a long-since-passed Zeitgeist. The danger
comes from the potential of presenting a memorial service; that the ceremonial structure of such an event will be an acting out, an anachronism.

The film’s tone, scope, scale, and exhibition demands necessitate a certain theatricality. Furnaces has a 4-hour running time, and three distinct parts with built-in intermissions designed for audience participation and open discussion. We will discuss all of this with a focus on the present. Coffee, tea, juice, bagels, and a simple brunch will be available throughout the day.

–The Hour of the Furnaces: Notes and Testimonies on Neocolonialism, Violence and Liberation -

Octavio Getino & Fernando Ezequiel Solanas,
1968, 230 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 230 minutes | Digital Projection

Marcel van der Linden on Working Class History from Below

Malav Kanuga — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:42:01 +0000

On Saturday, October 31st at 12PM, Marcel van der Linden will be presenting research from his book, “Workers of the World, Essays Towards a Global labor History,” which builds the foundations of a global history of capitalism from below: a history freed from Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism. Using literature from diverse regions, epochs and disciplines, van der Linden provides arguments and conceptual tools for a different interpretation of history – a labor history which integrates the history of slavery, indentured labor, and subsistence labor; and which pays serious attention to diverging yet interconnected developments in different parts of the world.

This event will take place at 16 Beaver Group (16 Beaver Street, 4th fl., New York, NY 10004). See the UPCOMING EVENTS and SEMINAR page for more information or click here.

Niklas Frykman on the Revolutionary Atlantic

Malav Kanuga — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:25:57 +0000

Join Niklas Frykman on Saturday, OCT 3rd for a long history of the class and political compositions that comprised resistance struggles against Empire during the Late 18th-Century. Frykman will focus on the naval wars of the 1790s, the “shock proletarianization at sea,” and the wide-scale desertion and mutiny of workers forced into warships.

At the height of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, hundreds of mutinies repeatedly pushed military discipline in Europe’s war-fleets to the very brink of collapse, and sometimes beyond. Please join Niklas Frykman in remembering one of the largest, most radical frontline resistance movements of our history.

The event will take place at Bluestockings Bookstore at 7pm on Saturday, OCT 3rd. Niklas Frykman currently lives in Pittsburgh where he is finishing his PhD with Marcus Rediker (author of The Many-Headed Hydra with Peter Linebaugh) at the University of Pittsburgh.

You can find Frykman’s article, “Seamen on Late 18th-Century European Warships“ here.