Caribbean Basin

ecent years have witnessed new studies on the impact of capital’s drive to augment value and profit at the same time as figures in postcolonial studies, critical race theory, and intersectionality have explored the social, psychological, and cultural dimensions of anti-black racism. While both currents have made vital contributions, they have tended to assume different or even opposed trajectories, as reflected in some reverting to "class first" analyses while others focus on issues of identity abstracted from class relations and the logic of capital accumulation. This panel will explore the potential for anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles to posit an emancipatory alternative to capitalism, by re-examining what Fanon called the "new humanism" that is integral to anti-racist struggles.

Panelists: A. Shahid Stover, "Decolonization is a Humanism"; Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, "Wright, Fanon, and Marx on Humanism: What’s Decolonial About it?"; Peter Hudis, "Racism and the Logic of Capital"; Anna Stetsenko, "Political Imagination and Transformative Agency: Developing Revolutionary Praxis with a Radical Activist Agenda"

Puerto Rico – The Sun Still Rises

This workshop is about hope – what the people of Puerto Rico, on the island and in the states, can do to raise themselves up. Hurricane Maria compounded the economic crisis on the island. Based on all environmental indicators and climate change, the next hurricane could be more powerful. In addition, the government is suffering from a severe debt crisis.

Blaming the US for their slow response is legit – maybe that is the role of the US as ‘colonizer’ – the question is what ‘colonized people’ should do to free themselves? Capitalism and colonialism have clearly failed as a development model for island. What alternatives are springing up on the island, and what have other countries done in similar situations? What can progressives in the US do to help the island?

Roundtable participants--Rodolfo Pastor de María y Campos from the LIBRE Party, Vicki Cervantes of the Honduras Solidarity Network, Alex Main from CEPR and Adrienne Pine (American University) will discuss the ongoing crisis in Honduras, with a particular focus on the increasing, and increasingly militarized consolidation of power since the recent installation of Juan Orlando Hernández as dictator following blatant electoral fraud. Today, over 40 people who protested the 2017 fraud are dead and dozens of anti-fraud political prisoners languish, pre-trial, without healthcare, adequate food or access to family members in new, post-coup U.S.-style maximum security prisons that have enriched foreign corporations with no accountability or transparency. International extractive and tourist corporations, in collusion with powerful drug lords, oligarchs and politicians (often the same people) harass and murder activists and journalists with complete impunity. While the 2017 electoral fraud was roundly and internationally condemned, it came as no surprise to Hondurans that the U.S. State Department supported its outcome, just as the Clinton State Department supported the 2009 coup that laid the path for the nation's downward spiral into neoliberal fascism. Similarly unsurprising are the crickets coming from mainstream media regarding U.S.-supported violence in Honduras, compared with depictions of state violence in, for example, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Despite this bleak panorama, Hondurans continue to bravely resist. This panel will provide examples of that resistance on multiple levels, and will discuss strategies for effective solidarity.

This will be an opportunity to discuss the Cuban Revolution today and the prospects for the normalization of US-Cuban relations.

Examination of the continuing neocolonial structures, imperial polices and designs of USA and Western imperial nations in creating and perpetuating crisis in political and social economies of Africa, Haiti-Caribbean, African descendants of slavery in USA and Western Nations and territories. A focus on those designs and instruments including that oppress and the refusal to honor UN call for Reparations.

Venezuela has been a driving force for the nations of the Americas attempting to free themselves from US domination. Washington’s actions against Venezuelan sovereignty represent an attempt to reassert imperial control over Latin America. Human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik will address the US threats, sanctions, and disinformation campaign, along with the International role of Venezuela. Venezuelan diplomat Carlos Ron will highlight Venezuela’s accomplishments and its response to the ever-increasing US intervention. Most importantly, human rights activist Ajamu Baraka will discuss solidarity with Venezuela, building a broad anti-imperialist movement in the US.

The panel discussion is intended to have each speaker highlight the transcontinental social and radical movements that are currently being built by Black and Brown bodies within the ultra left. In conversation of its different identities, many Black and Brown bodies choose to adopt a form of Black radicalism that we must identify, support, and acknowledge for the ultimate purpose of being in solidarity.

We are PhD students working in the realm of immigration with diverse positionalities, disciplines, methodologies, levels of focus, and research contexts, as well as traditionally understood identities (race and ethnicity, languages spoken, gender expression, country of origin). Our Moderated Dialogue embodies an anti-hierarchical, Bakhtinian approach to scholarship as an ongoing, polyphonic, future-making collaboration, signifying a disruption to traditional academic authority. As emerging immigration scholars with a variety of experiences, commitments, and visions in our work, we propose a transdisciplinary challenge to paternalistic, U.S.-centric ways of doing immigration scholarship. We will present our diverse research, which takes place across three continents, and identify key topics to be discussed, including the dialectics of local and transnational positionality, racialization and racialized experiences across borders, the complex relationship between sending and receiving countries, ethics in nonprofit education, and the complexities of volunteerism and national identity. This strategic project is an extension of our already powerful dialogical work as colleagues, and we look forward to sharing this radical methodology of knowledge production to inspire new, dynamic ways of approaching scholarship as a shared, transformative experience that values all voices and visions.

The event is about how solidarity missions between unions in Puerto Rico, USVI and the US after the hurricanes have helped to build solidarity in challenging privatization and austerity measures that harm workers and the public and, importantly, how workers in Puerto Rico are fighting back.