Culture and Everyday Life

People often talk about love and revolution as though their relationship was self-evident. In this session, movement-based thinkers, authors, and organizers will explore the connection in greater depth. If it's true, as Che proclaimed, that "the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love," it is necessary to devise a clear understanding of those feelings and their implications.
Join AK Thompson (Co-Editor of Spontaneous Combustion: The Eros Effect and Global Revolution [SUNY Press, 2017]), Kazembe Balagun (Staff Person, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, New York), and Kelli Korducki (Author of Hard To Do: The Suprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up [Coach House Books, 2018]) as we get to the heart of the matter.

Donald Trump announced goal for his administration- both during the campaign and at the start of his term- was to "drain the swamp". In the words of Steve Bannon this meant the "de-construction of the administrative state". Subsequently, the current administration has chosen a whole host of incompetent department heads in crucial sectors which helped to implement draconian measures, threatening the quality of U.S. life A panel of media professionals. activists and critics discuss the importance and role of Black media in the Trump era and the future impact of information technologies on the political landscape.

The entire left is struggling towards a coherent electoral strategy. On
the one hand, many committed activists continue to feel they must vote
for 'progressive' Democrats. On the other, a huge segment of newly
radicalized fighters for social change have become totally disillusioned
from electoral politics altogether. Perhaps there is a third way. Hear
different perspectives from activists who have run or are running
electoral campaigns independent of the Democrats and join a discussion on
how the movement can make a definite break with the parties of big
business.

We will discuss how the unstable economics of the US affect working women and the family; creating Depression, Anxiety, and oppressive sexual attitudes in the US. This will then be compared with the economic and social position of East German women under Socialism.

Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, we have seen the rise of authoritarian regimes, of populist parties, of growing inequality… These trends diminish social cohesion and undermine democratic governance. Our future depends on how we will address the unprecedented number of political, social, and economic challenges. It is necessary to revitalize democratic governance and preserve civil rights and fundamental liberties. Arts, Culture, Humanism play a vital role in contemporary societies, and can contribute to achieving this goal. The current panel aspires to present some visions on creative democracy: in what ways the current wave of authoritarianism can be transformed through the Arts, Culture, Health Visions and Humanism. In particular, the speakers will examine how poets use language as a way to stabilize their sense of self, reclaim language and resist homogenized meaninglessness; how to narrate from a path of unity in diversity and embrace integration; some cultural perspectives from migrants in the US, and today´s initiatives on creative attempts to promote social change and civic engagement.

This panel of three writer-speakers will present the lives, writings and legacy of three authors whose art became explicitly enmeshed within their revolutionary activism: John Reed, Langston Hughes and Sonia Sanchez.

“No is not enough.” To save the planet from impending catastrophe, people need a positive vision of a better world and the roads leading to it. In other words, a credible picture of a possible Ecotopia and plausible account of how to get from here to there. But is “Another World” REALLY possible?

To answer that question, we “Future Historians” have decided to perform a thought experiment. Our premise: if there is even once chance in a hundred for a better world – we ought to be able at least to imagine it. So we place ourselves in the position of Future Historians living in the year 2118 on a damaged, but stabilized, planet. Our project is to look backward a century and reconstruct HOW our great-grandparents got us from THEN - today’s capitalist death-spiral - to NOW - a sustainable, egalitarian global society free of war, oppression and exploitation.

Future Historians is an international study group of scholar/activists from Moscow to California meeting bi-monthly via conference call and publishing our findings on a wiki at futurehistorians.org