2013 New York CIty Anarchist Book Fair
Clemente Soto Velez Community Center, April 6-7, 2013

The 2013 New York CIty ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR will be held April 6 and 7 2013 at the CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ COMMUNITY CENTER, 107 Suffolk Street in New York City's Lower East Side, from 10 AM to 6 PM both days.

Many workshops will be throughout venues in the nearby area.

For more information, please visit NYC Anarchist Book Fair.

Historical Materialism Conference: Confronting Capital
April 26-28, 2013, New York University

Critical investigations into the present moment quickly reveal that the current crisis of capitalism shows no sign of abating. The failure of austerity to restore growth has sent ruling class politicians scrambling, as the assault of capital on all fronts of life—ecological, economic and social—grows exponentially.

This is not without resistance however. From the ongoing Arab revolution, to Occupy and Greece, confrontations of capital and regimes of power continue to proliferate, push forth new political horizons and sustain influence on a global scale.

Rebel Newsprint: The Underground Press Exhibit
Interference Archive, New York City

An exhibition, running from February 21 to March 24, 2013
Opening reception: Thursday, February 21 , 2013, 7:00-10:00 p.m.

The Vietnam War, class inequality, black liberation, and women’s struggles—against this backdrop of social upheaval, a rebellious counterculture produced a vibrant underground newspaper scene. In four short years, from 1965 to 1969, the underground press grew from five small newspapers in as many cities in the United States to over five hundred newspapers—with millions of readers—all over the world. Completely circumventing (and subverting) establishment media by utilizing its own news service and freely sharing content among the papers, the underground press at its height became the unifying institution for the alternative culture of the 1960s and 1970s. It also allowed for all sorts of intriguing and compelling art, design, and writing on its pages.

Occupied Greek Factory Begins Production Under Workers Control
Occupy, Resist, Produce!

“We see this as the only future for worker’s struggles.”
Makis Anagnostou, Vio.Me workers’ union spokesman

Tuesday, February 12, 2013 is the official first day of production under workers control in the factory of Viomichaniki Metalleutiki (Vio.Me) in Thessaloniki, Greece. This means production organized without bosses and hierarchy, and instead planned with directly democratic assemblies of the workers. The workers assemblies have declared an end to unequal division of resources, and will have equal and fair remuneration, decided collectively. The factory produces building materials, and they have declared that they plan to move towards a production of these goods that is not harmful for the environment, and in a way that is not toxic or damaging.

The EZLN Announces Upcoming Meetings in its Territory
Desinformémonos

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) ended "a phase on the
path" of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the
start of its next political steps, which include upcoming meetings
(encuentros) in its territory and the explicit selection of those who
will accompany future initiatives, that will have as its main objective:
"to be in direct contact with the Zapatista support bases in the way
that, in my long and humble experience, is the best: as students," said
Subcomandante Marcos.

Christianity and Black Oppression:
Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten
Zay D Green

February 8th, 2013 7:30 PM,
Brecht Forum, New York City

"Christianity and Black Oppression: Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten" presents the argument: How is it that Blacks have been Christianized for more than four hundred years and yet Blacks are stereotyped as morally and mentally inferior. At the very first encounter between Europeans and Africans, Africans were perceived as “pagan”, “heathen”, “devil worshippers”.

The Beginning and End(s) of the Internet:
Surveillance, Censorship, and the Future of Cyber-Utopia

The Departments of Communication and History at the University of Utah
are seeking submissions for the fourth Frontiers of New Media Symposium
to be held on the campus of the University of Utah, September, 20-21,
2013. The Frontiers symposium, which has been held every other year
since 2009, brings together a diverse group of scholars to discuss the
past, present, and future of media and communication technologies.

This year’s theme, “The Beginning and End(s) of the Internet:
Surveillance, Censorship, and the Future of Cyber-Utopia,” asks
scholars, activists, and journalists to consider the past, present, and
possible futures of the Internet as a force for good in the world.

Remembering the Impossible Tomorrow:
Italian Political Thought and the Recent Crisis in Capitalism
The British Society for Phenomenology 2013 Annual Conference
5th- 7th April, 2013 St Hilda’s College Oxford

During Marx’s time radical thought was formed from a convergence of three sources: German philosophy, English economics, and French politics. In the introduction to Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (1996) Michael Hardt argued that these tides had shifted, with radical movements drawing from French philosophy, US economics, and Italian politics. More recently, Matteo Pasquinelli has argued that ‘Italian theory’ has attained an academic hegemony comparable to that held by French philosophy in the 1980s.

But despite the proliferation of analysis and organizing drawing from and inspired by the history of autonomous politics in Italy, where are these voices today? In 2012, if you listened to the mainstream politicians and economic experts and no one else, you would hardly know that there was any financial crisis in 2008. You might have a faint recollection that for a brief moment alternative voices were heard in the media, but now it as if nothing at all had happened. The waters that once had parted have now engulfed us again. It is the same voices articulating the same tired ideas as the whole of Europe slides into the nightmare of austerity, despite the fact they do not appear to have any relation to reality, and even those who speak them seem exhausted and worn out.

London's Freedom Bookshop Firebombed
International Times

FREEDOM BOOKSHOP, London’s most famous anarchist press and bookshop, has been firebombed. The attack on the Whitechapel premises took place on Friday morning in the small hours. Police were alerted by the Fire Brigade at 5.30am. The downstairs section of the shop is badly damaged. Electrics are damaged. Many books are burnt or charred. Upstairs is untouched. No one was hurt.

My Encounter with the "Precarious and Service Workers Assembly" of Occupy Oakland
Alexander Selkirk

In early spring of 2012, announcements appeared at various internet sites calling for a “Workers Against Work -- Precarious and Service Workers Assembly,” ostensibly connected to or an outgrowth of the Occupy movement in Oakland, California.

The first leaflet I saw for it said this:

“As service workers, we are often both overworked and underpaid; with Management forcing workers to work ever faster in an ever shorter amount of time. Productivity and speed-of-service requirements increase while hours per week are slashed. It’s clear: The harder we work, and the less we get paid, the richer they get! Many of us are already in tough situations as parents, immigrants, young people and students. Racism is blatantly apparent at many of our workplaces, with Latino and immigrant workers confined to back of the house positions, maintaining a racial hierarchy to keep us separated. For some, a job at a restaurant or a café is a 2nd or even 3rd job, a result of the declining wages of other careers. Even worse, we often find ourselves forced into student loan and credit card debt because of low pay. All the while, rent, food, and transportation costs climb through the roof.