Venezuela: We are a threat because we Resist

Venezuela is under attack again. Livio Rangel (part of the 1st Ecosocialist International in Venezuela) in conversation with Kali Akuno (Cooperation Jackson), explains the nature of the attacks from the United States government, the relation to the revolutionary process of the people, the reasons for founding the 1st Ecosocialist International and why international solidarity is needed now more than ever.

Many thanks to the Reel Video for making this video for us and the movement.

Learning from Jackson - Boston

Reconstructing Economic Development for People and Planet: Stories of Just Economic Democracy

Co-sponsored by the Murphy Institute, CUNY, and Democracy @ Work New York For the first time in decades, cities round the country are advancing progressive innovations and solutions to too-long-sustained poverty and inequality. In New York City worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting, and community land trusts are on the policy platform of the City Council’s progressive caucus and elected officials in the democratic party are pushing legislation for employee and worker ownership at the state and federal levels. With greater visibility and support from the public sector some believe that these pilots and experiments for neighborhoods to drive wealth creation and capture and create equitable economic opportunities can reach into broad-based and mainstream policy. There is an opening here to expand the horizon of what is seen as possible for genuine equitable urban economic development, and its relationship to labor, communities and the political economy. In short, we can change the conversation from mostly pushing for greater accountability and transparency in the existing economic development order, to a conversation about what should come next and what policies and institutions would be a part of getting us there. Speakers include: Michael Menser, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, Earth and Environmental Science and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, Chair of the Board of The Participatory Budgeting Project, and author of We Decide! Theories and Cases in Participatory Democracy.
Gabriela Alvarez, Chef and founder of Liberation Cuisine, a catering company dedicated to preparing meals collectively with sustainable ingredients and practices. Alvarez recently took her passion for healing and organizing with food to Puerto Rico to help with relief and rebuilding efforts.
Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, a network of cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises and the author of Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi.
Yorman Nunez, Program Manager at Community Innovators Lab MIT and coordinator of Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative.

Marx and Political Identity

Featuring Kali Akuno, Ravi Ahmed, and Suzanne Schneider

Why Marx Now?

Karl Marx is 200 years old. And yet, whenever Marx seems dead and buried, a new moment of economic or political crisis brings Marx’s critical understanding of capitalism back to the fore. In Marx Now, a two-day symposium co-presented by the Goethe-Institut New York and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, leading scholars, activists, and artists will discuss, in a series of panels and learning sessions, why Marx endures: how does Marx speak to our moment of extraordinary inequality, political upheaval, fractured identity, ecological degradation, technological acceleration, alienation, and exhaustion? To answer, presenters and audience members will draw from stories, objects, scholarship, art works, and the lessons of contemporary politics.

Featuring Kali Akuno, Chiara Bottici, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Drucilla Cornell, Benjamin Kunkel, Anwar Shaikh, and McKenzie Wark