Indigenous

We are now in the midst of an epoch of death and mass extinction. Conventional approaches are failing. Social and ecological regeneration must be rooted in communities of liberation and solidarity. The new book, Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community, by celebrated philosopher and educator John P. Clark explores significant recent progress in this direction, including indigenous movements of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, in West Papua, and many more. Longtime human rights activist, educator, organizer Matt Meyer joins this conversation with his own work on international and intersectional organizing. This is a call to arms for the rebirth of a libertarian and communitarian social imaginary, and the flourishing of a free cooperative community globally. Join us!

In this session we will explore the rising movement to dismantle “Francafrique,” a particularly destructive form of neocolonialism that affects 14 countries in Africa, and influences many more. Propelled into popular awareness by French activist and economist François-Xavier Verschave in his 1999 bestseller La Françafrique: le plus long scandale de la République, the critique of Francafrique has been popularized within the French left through various efforts including La France Insoumise movement and Jean Luc Melenchon’s 2017 presidential campaign. With leading strategists and organizers from throughout some of the most misunderstood parts of the continent, the panel puts modern-day resistance and decolonization struggles into historic contexts which gives hope for the future. With discussion of best-practice tactics, unity across borders, and collective visions of and end to all forms of colonialism — direct, economic, cultural, gendered, and otherwise — we will explore new ways forward for solidarity and Pan-Africanism.

This panel will feature African diaspora activists from Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, DRC, Chad and Ambazonia who are working in close relationship with grassroots home-front movements against French neocolonialism. Questions we will seek to unpack include: What is happening on the ground in these countries? What is the historical context of these struggles? What is the role of Francafrique in the issues people are mobilizing around? What are the limits of the critique of Francafrique? How does the critique of Francafrique relate to critiques of other colonial and neocolonial influences, and other forms of oppression within the fabric of these societies? What coalitional work is going on to bring these voices together internationally? What forms of international solidarity are needed?

We are honored to dedicate this panel to the late Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between Kwame Nkrumah’s pan-African movement and the African American civil rights movement, in this the year of his centenary. The panel will feature Matt Meyer, co-author with Sutherland of Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation, one of the few texts which has sounded the alarm about Francafrique to the English-speaking world.

Book launch: Presentation followed by discussion. The book being presented is Occult Features of Anarchism - With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples: In the nineteenth century anarchists were accused of conspiracy by governments afraid of revolution, but in the current century various “conspiracy theories” suggest that anarchists are controlled by government itself. The Illuminati were a network of intellectuals who argued for self-government and against private property, yet the public is now often told that they were (and are) the very group that controls governments and defends private property around the world. Intervening in such misinformation, Lagalisse works with primary and secondary sources in multiple languages to set straight the history of the Left and illustrate the actual relationship between revolutionism, pantheistic occult philosophy, and the clandestine fraternity. Exploring hidden correspondences between anarchism, Renaissance magic, and New Age movements, Lagalisse also advances critical scholarship regarding leftist attachments to secular politics. Inspired by anthropological fieldwork within today’s anarchist movements, her essay challenges anarchist atheism insofar as it poses practical challenges for coalition politics in today’s world. Studying anarchism as a historical object, Occult Features of Anarchism also shows how the development of leftist theory and practice within clandestine masculine public spheres continues to inform contemporary anarchist understandings of the “political,” in which men’s oppression by the state becomes the prototype for power in general. Readers behold how gender and religion become privatized in radical counterculture, a historical process intimately linked to the privatization of gender and religion by the modern nation-state.

In recent years the fascist movement in India has been growing. Led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), their electoral wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and sponsored by the big corporate houses in India, this fascist movement has sponsored and carried out viscous attacks on Muslims, Dalits (the so-called "untouchables"), women, Adivasis (indigenous people), religious minorities, and national minorities. All this has been coupled with extractive neoliberal policies aimed at maximizing corporate profits while undercutting the most basic and meager social welfare programs that still exist in India. Recently, a series of poets, human rights lawyers, professors, and civil liberties activists have been arrested on trumped-up charges and accused of terrorism. This is all part of the government's plan to forcible evict 800 million people from their land and move them from the countryside to the city by 2050. When coupled with draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (which give the state legal cover for arresting and killing activists with impunity), it clear that the people of India face a very dire situation. This panel will examine the growing fascist movement in India, speak on the dire situations that people face, and highlight the courageous resistance being waged across the country. We will also examine the role of US imperialism in supporting and sponsoring the fascist movement in India and the associated neoliberal extractive policies.

We are often too familiar with the victims of nationally recognized police homicide cases, but what do we know of those they left behind: their families? What do we really know about the impact police violence has on our communities? Forced Trajectory Project (FTP) sought to answer these questions in 2009 by documenting and interviewing family members of police homicide victims. 8 years later, this inquiry has developed into a nationwide, long term, multimedia documentary project, providing a unique portal into the lives and narratives of those directly impacted by police homicide, individuals who suffer the agony of a devastating life event yet find strength and hope by building with community and through commemorating their loved ones.

FTP serves as a sister organization to Families United 4 Justice, a growing nationwide coalition of families impacted by police violence, organizing for self-determination, collective healing and justice, and political power. FTP works in concert with those on the frontline of the anti-police brutality movement by hosting their stories, providing crucial media analysis on how the construction of mainstream police brutality narratives perpetuates the problem, and through offering media training so that families and organizers can return to their communities equipped with media weaponry to preserve the truth.

In this session you will meet the FTP media team who will introduce the project and explore how citizen journalism and grassroots public relations can foster change through empowering those on the frontline and engage local communities, ultimately serving as a catalyst for social revolution.

For at least five hundred years of global colonial occupation and imperial plunder, the devaluation, abuse, and exploitation of womxn has gone hand-in-hand with the depletion and degradation of the Earth. By the same token, however, Indigenous, peasant, racially marginalized, and other womxn targeted by cishteropatriarchy and anthropocentrism have been on the frontlines of mobilizations for broad-based autonomy, dignity, equity, justice, and sustainability, from the Chipko movement of India to the neo-Zapatista uprising of southwestern Mexico. As interlocking global crises intensify, the ecofeminist alternatives articulated by these womxn become more important than ever to the fight for another world. This panel will feature reportbacks on ecofeminist interventions from the Americas and South Asia. Its presenters will discuss how community gardens and urban farms, permaculture and agroecology projects, biodiversity farms, traditional medical practices, and counter-hegemonic learning initiatives across these parts of the world are recentering multiply marginalized womxn at the same time as they address pressing threats to land, food, and water sovereignty.

1960s, the world was set ablaze with protests and movements against racism, imperialism and institutionalized oppression. In a period when organizing against oppressive powers, this panel will cover the similarities between the Algerian Independence movement against French Colonialism and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. From political organizing to guerilla warfare, revisiting two movements that helped shape the 60s revolution.

Performing artists and authors face a matrix of impediments to success: barriers to publicity and venues, theft of intellectual property, poverty despite the "day jobs" that inhibit productivity, directors’ couches and willing exploitation, and art for investment rather than insight. The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003) planted in the public mind the reality of an invisible, overarching financial structure that frustrates the idealism of artists and other altruists in their struggle to reveal truths and improve life on Earth. The most renowned of politically engaged artists, anti-war hero John Lennon, provided insight into his dark inner world while targeted. What might he have done, had he lived? Now, anodyne creations and variations on past successes are valued over new and vital political-artistic actions. How can truth-seeking artists not only connect with a hungry public to be rewarded for their work, but also protect themselves? In this panel, targeted and marginalized artists share their experiences, strategies, workarounds, and successes.

Like a generator in a hurricane, the Working Group on Globalization and Culture offers a collective presentation on “generation” to assess its theoretical purchase for a cultural studies laboring in a moment of widespread emergency. Generation is a keyword in understanding social conflicts over competing visions of the future: struggles over seeds and soil, and investments and inheritance. Insurgent movements are often viewed through the lens of new generations, and histories of migrant communities structured through generational concepts. In this panel, we reconsider the power of generational change and its meaning for inter-generational justice, while reflecting on the history of the generation and regeneration of life, power and energy. The Working Group on Globalization and Culture http://wggc.yale.edu/ is an interdisciplinary cultural studies laboratory that has been practicing collective research at Yale University since 2003. Recent projects have been published as “Going into Debt,” online on Social Text’s Periscope, and as “Spaces and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” recently appeared in French Review of American Studies.

The co-operative movement was built by people who took on the responsibility for their collective wellbeing in the face of government neglect, economic exclusion and cultural discrimination. As the modern economy increasingly denies vast sectors of the population basic amenities for decent life, this co-operative spirit is as critical as ever. However, over the years the co-op sector has become insular and poorly understood. A Silent Transformation sets out to explore the innovative self-help efforts of diverse communities across the Province of Ontario, which by addressing their needs collectively are helping to regain the radical vision of co-operation. In these communities are the seeds of economic democracy, global solidarity, and a new popular movement to transform society!