Tuesday – 12.06.11 — Crisis, Austerity and Resistance in the US, UK, and Beyond — A Circulation of International Experiences with the Bristol Radical History Group
Contents:
1. Introduction to Tuesday
2. About Bristol Radical History Group
3. Useful Links
PLEASE NOTE: This Event is at 12:00pm Tuesday Afternoon
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1. Introduction to Tuesday
What: A conversation organized with Bristol Radical History Group
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: Noon (12pm)
Who: Free and open to all
Some of you may recall our last event with the Bristol Radical History Group in November 2009. We hope you will be able to join us for this afternoon discussion. We would like to encourage individuals who have been taking part in various local struggles to participate and have a chance to join in a discussion with friends across the Atlantic.
The “hysterical attachment to a politics of austerity in recessionary times” as David Harvey has recently put it, has been met in the last months with a growing movement of resistance in New York City and internationally. As every part of the world feels the varied effects of the economic and political crisis in our midst, so too do new publics, new people, new commons and new political cultures emerge. An anti-cuts movement is mutating into a debt abolition movement that is hybridizing into new student and labor movements. Students and workers are walking out, striking, occupying on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
Locally, CUNY students are organizing, assembling and marching against tuition hikes and for a (once again) free university; organized public teachers from Wisconsin, to NYC, to California have militantly pushed against attacks on their unions with new forms of protest and worker self-activity.
Like the US, the UK is experiencing the biggest public sector budget cuts in several generations. A political class and economic ideology, which has produced sovereign debt crises and new forms of enclosures, impoverishing growing multitudes, is now responsible for structurally dismantling the social welfare won through over a century of political struggle. Throughout Europe, these efforts have produced protests and the UK has seen its fair share.
From the winter of 2010 to 2011, student demonstrations and occupations initiated a wave of protests which have developed into public campaigns against austerity. In Tottenham, North London, U.K. on 4th August this year an unarmed man, Mark Duggan, was shot dead by police firearms officers. A demonstration outside Tottenham police station on the following Saturday exploded into serious ‘rioting’. Over the succeeding
four days ‘rioting’ and ‘looting’ spread to numerous locales across London and other major cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and Liverpool. November 30th this year saw the biggest strikes by public sector workers in living memory.
On Tuesday, December 6th, we host the Bristol Radical History Group 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?
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2. About Bristol Radical History Group
In the past five years, the Bristol Radical History Group has organized over one hundred ‘radical history from below’ events; they regularly stage walks, talks, gigs, reconstructions, films, exhibitions, trips through the archives and fireside story telling, all the while bring together an ever-teeming network of footballers, artists, techies, drunks, rioters, publicans, ranters, ravers, academics, Cancan dancers, anarchists, stoners
and other ne’r do wells. Their forays into the battles over the historical representations of their city of Bristol, from slavery to labor history, reveal influences ranging from E.P.Thompson to punk rock.
They also publish a range of pamphlets and host a comprehensive website. Most recently, they’ve launched a book store and social center in Bristol called the Hydra.
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3. Useful Links
http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2011/11/few-unexpected-subjects-of-class.html
http://www.reclamationsjournal.org/issue_debt_george_caffentzis.htm
http://cunygraduatecenterga.wordpress.com/
http://www.versobooks.com/books/799-springtime
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/002984.php
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16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th fl.
New York, NY 10004
for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org
TRAINS:
4,5 — Bowling Green
2,3 — Wall Street
J,Z — Broad Street
R — Whitehall
1 — South Ferry