Roosevelt University, 430 S Michigan Ave, Second floor Congress Lounge
Facilitator:
Alex Billet, an openly radical music journalist
UPDATE: This event has rescheduled for April 21 .
It’s no news to anyone involved in Occupy that the support among musicians of all stripes for our movement is high. In the months since Occupy Wall Street took off, we’ve had countless songs and statements released by artists in solidarity with this movement. Some of these artists are no surprise (Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, Lupe, etc), some totally out of left field (Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, etc). All in all, this is the largest proportion of musicians who have openly allied with a social cause since the 1960s.
This session will seek to explain why. In doing so it will briefly examine what music’s social role has been historically and anthropologically. It will look at the reality of the modern music industry as a hindrance on free speech and artistic expression and ask what might be needed to overcome the strictures that said industry has imposed on music. Finally, it will look briefly at both modern and historical examples of what it looks like when movements provide the breathing room for new, rebellious forms of art to gain more traction.
This meeting will be hosted by Alex Billet, a Chicago-based music journalist and member of the Occupy Chicago Arts & Rec Committee. He has had articles published in Z Magazine, TheNation.com, New Politics, SocialistWorker.org, and others. He can be found online at http://rebelfrequencies.blogspot.com/
Sponsored by the Occupy Chicago Arts & Recreation Committee.
**Note: this event has been re-scheduled from April 1 to April 8th**
How do societies change? It has long been observed that capitalism develops in forty-to-sixty year cycles, bookended by great crashes and periods of stagnation. Technologies and relations of production are transformed along with modes of government and social reproduction. New patterns of trade and nternational relations emerge on the geopolitical level. Ten or fifteen years later, people look back and realize: "That was a turning point. The world is totally different now."
Such a change has been experienced in living memory, with the crisis of the late sixties/early seventies that ushered in neoliberalism. What will happen now? By bringing together various strands of Marxist crisis-theory (the technological innovation school, the regulation approach, world-systems theory) it's possible to show how a distinctly neoliberal society emerged from the political upheaval, long recession and monetary chaos of the sixties-seventies. Once we have identified the full range of neoliberal institutions, we can generate an analytical picture of the status quo around, say, 2005. And on that basis we can see what's changing right now, in many different arenas. Who are the agents of social change? Could we intervene in some of those arenas while everything is still in flux? Why wait fifteen years to discover the solutions that the elites will have arranged for us? The idea of this lecture/workshop is to lay the groundwork for a strategic observatory of the still-unfolding crisis.
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Brian Holmes is an activist researcher and cultural critic. This proposal grows out of a collective seminar carried out last year at Mess Hall in Chicago, under the title "Three Crises: 30s-70s-Today." Archive at http://messhall.org/?page_id=771.
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and War Resisters League
This training is primarily for Chicago organizers and activists working to build the leadership and collective power of communities who are most directly affected by U.S. government policies and their enforcement (policing, prisons, detention centers, border patrol, etc.) and to put that power into action for social change.
Marco Rossi, experienced Chicago anti-imperialist and solidarity activist, will present "Libya, the West, and the Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention: A Critical Examination of Foreign Military Intervention in the Battle for Libya":
Members of the Chicago chapter of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
In October, ABC7 featured a news report "focused on a major Jewish organization expressing concerns about the presence of anti-Semitic signs and some disturbing statements made at Occupy protest events in Chicago and elsewhere." We argue that this was, in fact, a disingenuous claim aimed at discrediting the Occupy/Decolonize movement and marginalizing the struggle for Palestinian self determination, as well distracting attention from the core demands for economic justice. Wielding charges of anti-Semitism has been a particularly common tactic used against leftist movements, particularly the Palestine Solidarity Movement--with the intention of silencing activists and isolating that liberation struggle from other struggles for liberation.
At this workshop, we will spend a little bit of time explaining how anti-Semitism has functioned historically and its relationship to Zionism, racism and white supremacy. We will define anti-Jewish oppression/anti-Semitism and discuss how to differentiate between real anti-Jewish sentiment, and just criticism of the state of Israel or the ideology of Zionism. Within this conversation we will examine some instances when anti-Jewish sentiment/anti-Semitism has been privileged over all other forms of oppression/racism for political ends, as well as engage with the specific material consequences of different forms of oppression/racism including anti-Semitism and anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism.
Finally, we will explore ways in which to recognize and confront the misuse of allegations of anti-semitism, as well as how to confront real anti-Jewish sentiment when it occurs.
Occupy Chicago Headquarters, 500 W. Cermak Room 700
Facilitator:
Frank of Occupy Chicago
Salt of the Earth was made by blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers in the early fifties who wanted to make the kind of movie that the studio system would never let them make. They found a miners' strike in New Mexico where a Taft-Hartley injunction prevented striking miners from picketing. The women of the community took over the picket line and consciousness and relationships changed. The movie is a triumph in many ways and works as a labor and a womens' movie (both rare).
Calles y Sueños Gallery, 1900 S. Carpenter, Chicago
Facilitator:
Dr. Castillo, MD
Dr. Castillo is a Honduran graduate of Cuba’s free international medical school, built hospital in Afro-Honduran community. He believes in health care as a right. He will speak on his experiences starting grassroots clinics in Honduras, the medical needs and responses in Haiti, and on Cuba’s preventative approach to public health and the role of Cuban doctors abroad. Castillo will lead a discussion on the possibilities of implementing people’s medicine.
Occupy Columbia / P-fac / Students, Staff, Faculty / CACHE / Occupy Chicago
This is an emergency event. Your programs are being threatened with cuts and closure. Your tuition is being raised. Your teachers' jobs are insecure. This is not 'just another meeting,' it is not a 'speak out,' (since your administration has declined to listen), it is a chance for YOU to help make the decisions which impact your education and your future. BE THERE. (share widely. bring a friend.)
Columbia College, Hokin Lecture Hall, Room 109, 623 S. Wabash.
Facilitator:
The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (CWC)
After so much technological progress, why do we have to work more than ever before? Why does the old labor movement seem to be powerless to stop the new assault on workers? Can capitalism survive another century of crises? And how do we get out of this mess?
Please join us for a high-energy discussion of these questions and more. We'll focus on the ways capitalism has changed over the past few decades, and scrutinize recent examples of resistance in the US and overseas to propose anti-capitalist strategies for the 21st century.
About the speakers: The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (CWC) is a decentralized anarchist collective composed of many cells which act independently in pursuit of a freer and more joyous world. Visit them online @ http://crimethinc.com
Text @OccupyChicago to the phone number 23559 for situations requiring rapid changes to plans/tactics — rallying in an emergency, location changes, etc.
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Text @NATOACTION to the phone number 23559 for frequent updates regarding anything NATO-related.
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You can also help the information flow! If you become aware of an emergency, you can text it to the number above, for instance sending the message: @NATOACTION Help, uniformed bullies at [location]!
so we can notify everyone. See you on the streets!
Communities United Against Foreclosure and Eviction
Don't feel shorted if you feel like an organization should be featured here — e-mail allies@occupychi.org instead and help out!
Who We Are
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Occupy Chicago is a nonviolent nonpartisan people’s movement. We welcome all, who, in good faith, act to reclaim our economy and democracy from corruption and corporate influence in government.”Read More >
OccupyChicagoRT @Federal_flashes: Saying #NATO is good for foreign countries is like saying the prison industrial complex is good for the black and b ...
