Thursday, 25 March, 7pm
Red & Black Cafe – 400 SE 12th avenue (at Oak)
www.redandblackcafe.com <http://www.redandblackcafe.com/>

This is Forever: An Exploration of Contemporary Autonomist Politics
An evening with Autonomedia, Minor Compositions and the Team Colors Collective.

Join us for an evening with two autonomist authors and organizers from Portland and London in exploring contemporary politics, the continued imposition of work, current struggles in the University and elsewhere, militant and co-research, and in celebrating the release of their recent books.  In the U.S. and across the planet struggles against enclosures, the dismantling of the University, for public and community space, against “the endless imposition of work”, and against a form of life that is increasingly precarious – are currently taking place.  By “reading” these and neighboring struggles we seek to create a world in which many worlds fit. A discussion on these issues and other topics will follow short talks.

“This is Forever” is a discussion series based in Bluestockings Books (NYC) and currently expanding to other cities around the United States.

Event presenters:
Stevphen Shukaitis | Autonomedia / Minor Compositions. Shukaitis is the author of the recently book Imaginal Machines: Autonomy and Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life (Minor Compositions, 2009), an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.  www.autonomedia.org & www.minorcompositions.info.

Kevin Van Meter | Team Colors Collective. As member of the militant research collective, Van Meter has been involved in editing the collectives forthcoming collection Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (AK Press, 2010), co-authoring Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible (Pamphlet, 2010), and has participated in radical community organizing initiatives for more then a decade. www.warmachines.info.

Copies of Imaginal Machines and Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible will be available at the event.

Team Colors is a national militant research collective. Their approach has developed from involvement in community organizing projects, resistance activities and radical research efforts for more than a decade.  Their forthcoming pamphlet “Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible” will be available for sale at the event.

Team Colors included an article of hers in their 2008 publication ‘In the Middle of a Whirlwind.”  You can find that article here.

Please see UPCOMING EVENTS for more info.

The series emerged out of a 2005 seminar hosted by Bluestockings Bookstore called “Strategies of Refusal” and came into its own throughout much of 2006 and late into 2007, engaging in numerous discussions both formal and informal.  We put together a few more events under the formal title of the series in 2008 before embarking on other projects.  Now in 2009, we find ourselves galvanized by two recent events:  first, the tremendous effort of Team Colors in putting together the “In the Middle of a Whirlwind” journal (May 2008) and second, the increasing urgency in which movements across the world are responding to capitalist crisis and formulating their own ‘exits’ from capitalist command. 

As we reconstitute and look around, we have a lot of questions about the shape of many movements to come.  We hope you will join us and look forward to seeing you at the next event.